So, as the wags like to constantly remind us, China has the largest navy in the world. But that's by numbers, not gross tonnage. The majority of China's navy is a green water navy. Still good for trying to invade Taiwan or other regional coastal nations but useless for projecting anything more than regional power.
Their Type 52 Destroyer "boasts" a naval radar that allegedly has 4 times the detection range as US naval radar. Even assuming that it does, which is unlikely, with the chip technology they have to rely on and power supply issues, the naval radar on the Type 52 is almost useless. Without sub-5nm chips, which China can't make and has a difficult time obtaining, the effective radar range is about 1/4 that of the US navy. And when they try to provide full power to the system, the screen clutters up and they can only keep it on for a few minutes before overheating issues occur.
Their aircraft carriers are way behind Western carriers. Their first operational carrier is a cheap knock-off of the Kuznetzov's sister ship, and we know what a piece of crap the Kuznetzov was. Their second carrier is an "improved" version of their first one. The third and largest is the Fujian. It is not nuclear powered and thus takes 48 hrs to fire up. It also has a turning radius of about 3.4km. Compare that to America's latest super carriers which can "turn on a dime" in just 500m. The Fujian is also smaller, about the size of the Kitty Hawk class, which makes its performance even more laughable. And as usual the CCP claims the Fujian, the third carrier China has ever built, is more advanced and bad-ass than America's newest super carriers. Yet the Fujian cannot launch and receive a/c at the same time as opposed to US carriers which have been doing it for decades and it isn't nuclear powered. Which is going to cause them serious issues with power supply if the Fujian ever has to engage in actual combat operations since they tried to copy America's electro-magnetic catapults and didn't quite get it.
But ultimately, the US could literally blow the PLAN out of the water with a handful of assets. 6-10 C-130s to launch decoy "cruise missiles" to make the PLAN waste ship defence ammo, 16 B1-Bs fully loaded with anti-ship missiles (36 each), and then multiple launches from a few US cruise missile subs. Even accounting for the Chinese taking several ship killers out, and accounting for a handful getting "lost" and missing their targets, those few assets could destroy the PLAN as an effective naval force in one go. The benefit being these weapons could be launched from 1200-2000km away keeping the weapons platforms well out of range of anything China has to shoot them down or sink them, or even spot them with.
And that's just the USN and USAF. The CCP would also have to deal with the Japanese and Australian navies and Japan's Air Force. And quite possibly India's navy as well, which has at least one carrier and has been doing flight operations for longer than China.
The final kick in the pants is the PLAN has a serious manpower shortage meaning not all 370 ships are capable of operations, of any kind. This is just more of Xi's "build big, build fast" without worrying about the quality or if it even really serves any purpose other than an ego boost.
In short, any naval battle involving the PLAN and the USN would see the PLAN get fucking mauled, and in pretty short order too.
Their Type 52 Destroyer "boasts" a naval radar that allegedly has 4 times the detection range as US naval radar. Even assuming that it does, which is unlikely, with the chip technology they have to rely on and power supply issues, the naval radar on the Type 52 is almost useless. Without sub-5nm chips, which China can't make and has a difficult time obtaining, the effective radar range is about 1/4 that of the US navy. And when they try to provide full power to the system, the screen clutters up and they can only keep it on for a few minutes before overheating issues occur.
Their aircraft carriers are way behind Western carriers. Their first operational carrier is a cheap knock-off of the Kuznetzov's sister ship, and we know what a piece of crap the Kuznetzov was. Their second carrier is an "improved" version of their first one. The third and largest is the Fujian. It is not nuclear powered and thus takes 48 hrs to fire up. It also has a turning radius of about 3.4km. Compare that to America's latest super carriers which can "turn on a dime" in just 500m. The Fujian is also smaller, about the size of the Kitty Hawk class, which makes its performance even more laughable. And as usual the CCP claims the Fujian, the third carrier China has ever built, is more advanced and bad-ass than America's newest super carriers. Yet the Fujian cannot launch and receive a/c at the same time as opposed to US carriers which have been doing it for decades and it isn't nuclear powered. Which is going to cause them serious issues with power supply if the Fujian ever has to engage in actual combat operations since they tried to copy America's electro-magnetic catapults and didn't quite get it.
But ultimately, the US could literally blow the PLAN out of the water with a handful of assets. 6-10 C-130s to launch decoy "cruise missiles" to make the PLAN waste ship defence ammo, 16 B1-Bs fully loaded with anti-ship missiles (36 each), and then multiple launches from a few US cruise missile subs. Even accounting for the Chinese taking several ship killers out, and accounting for a handful getting "lost" and missing their targets, those few assets could destroy the PLAN as an effective naval force in one go. The benefit being these weapons could be launched from 1200-2000km away keeping the weapons platforms well out of range of anything China has to shoot them down or sink them, or even spot them with.
And that's just the USN and USAF. The CCP would also have to deal with the Japanese and Australian navies and Japan's Air Force. And quite possibly India's navy as well, which has at least one carrier and has been doing flight operations for longer than China.
The final kick in the pants is the PLAN has a serious manpower shortage meaning not all 370 ships are capable of operations, of any kind. This is just more of Xi's "build big, build fast" without worrying about the quality or if it even really serves any purpose other than an ego boost.
In short, any naval battle involving the PLAN and the USN would see the PLAN get fucking mauled, and in pretty short order too.
