It doesn't matter at this point. US hard power is largely worthless with US soft power wrecked.
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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The hard power will be the next thing to go. Trump and his buddies are trying to make the US into Russia, and that comes with all the problems that rotted the Russian military from within. We already have plenty of corruption, but our generals have enough integrity to put their foot down when something might impact combat readyness. Trump's loyalist buddies care only about the grift.
It matters to pirates. China isn't worried about a war with the US. Let's face it the US is gone in a decade at most.
China is worried about transporting goods over sea from their belt and road allies using routes that pass by nations famous for naval piracy... Something currently kept in check by us patrols. If the US does start divesting one way or another from its navy, nations will need to guard their own ships from piracy, and that's China's clear goal with their entire naval forces.
You don’t need an aircraft carrier to take on pirates. You need destroyers and frigates.
China wants a blue water navy that can control/contest the seas in Asia with any nation.
It's still worth something in the Middle East, just in case they want to give out "freedom" again.
Just to put this into perspective: There are 13 ships comparable to US "Aircraft Carriers" on the planet. The US operates 11 of them. France has one. China is building one.
There are an additional 38 ships on the planet designed to carry aircraft, but with less than half the capacity of actual carriers. The world calls them carriers; the US calls them "Amphibious Assault Ships" and operates 9.
If we remove all 11 US "Aircraft Carriers", its 9 Amphibious Assault Ships still carry more than twice as many aircaft as the entire Chinese Navy.
The real advantage of CATOBAR carriers is the ability to deploy heavily loaded, long-range strike aircraft and large support aircraft, like the Hawkeye, Growler, buddy tankers, etc.
STOBAR and STOVL carriers are reliant on land-based support aircraft.
Not quite? China already has 1, the type 003. Which while gas powered is able to carry a similar compliment as the Nimitz class and more than the French Charles de Gaulle.
Your also ignoring that China has 2 types of Amphibious Assault ships as well, the type 075 and 076. In terms of pure numbers, if you removed all of the US carriers, China will have a similar number of aircraft in their navy. The quality and abilities of these aircraft would be wildly in USA's favor, but that's not what you said.
In terms of pure numbers, if you removed all of the US carriers, China will have a similar number of aircraft in their navy.
To be fair, I assumed 30 aircraft on the Wasp and America class ships. 20 is a more realistic number, so my estimate was high. I don't know why I had it in my head that they could carry 30 aircraft each, but that was the basis of my claim. I was also under the impression that that 003 was another STOBAR carrier, rather than a CATOBAR.
Still, 9 US ships times 20 STOVL aircraft:
- 180 US aircraft total.
001, 002, and 003 are reported to carry 24 STOBAR, 24 STOBAR, and 50 CATOBAR aircraft, respectively:
- 98 Chinese aircraft total.
My claim of "more than twice as many" was wrong, but by single-digit margins.
Their Type 075 and 076 ships are described as "Helicopter Docks". To the best of my knowledge, China doesn't currently have any STOVL aircraft to operate off these ships. They are developing a STOVL aircraft, the J-35, which would almost certainly be able to operate off 075/076, but it's not operational yet. I'm disinclined to count the four operational 075s, and the 076 they are building.
The US Navy has 13 "Landing Platform, Docks" (San Antonio Class) that I'm not counting, because they only carry helicopters (up to 78 total) or tiltrotors (up to 65 total). They did do some evaluations on using them with the Harrier, but I dont think that went anywhere.
Pretty much every large ship in both navies can embark a couple helicopters; I'm not counting any of them either.
Russia's Admiral Kuznetsov is also very large and theoretically more able to defend itself than at least the Nimitz class...if it wasn't a reeking shitpile that can't even move under its own power consistently.
The reason is that they expected that carrier to sail with little backup or none at all. Meanwhile every American carrier is just the centerpiece of a larger, exorbitantly expensive battle group. They can't afford that, so they have to compensate somehow.
I'd assume the logic is the same with Chinese ambitions here.
The Kuznetsov has better weapons because it had to be technically classed as a missile cruiser to navigate the Bosporus.
Yes, operating an aircraft carrier away from home is a massive logistics problem. They've been practicing with their rebuilt Russian carriers, but they're still a long way from being able to sustain a battle group at sea.
I have a deja vu, I think around ten years ago someone on reddit said the same thing about China having naval aviation at all.