South China Sea and China (2011-2017)

[carl]

THOSE would be Taiwan, the Philippines (and even Guam...) -- your outer barrier...That could be my fault for a lack of specificity, I guess...Or maybe not...As emphasized, I wrote about CBGs and surface warships -- Committing them to major action in a high intensity war ala WW II is likely to have the same result the initial commitment it then did -- loss of half the fleet. So I asked why would one make such a dumb commitment. If one does not, then one does not need bases 'conveniently' located to the conflict zone.Not what I wrote but I can accept that as often if not always correct.

Ok, good. We agree that islands and land bases are useful in a general sense, sometimes more, sometimes less.

I'd design a force that didn't need them, at least as currently used (a more than 30-40 year old concept, more like 3-4,000...) but I'm not in charge and we have what we have.

What would this force consist of? How would you do it?

Your basis for those conclusions is? I'm particularly interested in your rationale for the first statement as that seems to be the crux of your argument. You can again elect not to answer but that assertion is not supported by any evidence of which I have knowledge. In fact all those statements appear to be assumptions on your part that have no basis other than whimsy.

How do I conclude that if we lose those barrier islands we will never take them back? Well let's confine it to Taiwan for simplicity's sake. If the PLA was ensconced on Taiwan, they could re-enforce from across the Taiwan Strait. Not very far. We would have to come over from North America. That is real far. Nothing whimsical about looking at the map and figuring that with economy's that are getting to be of similar strength, you can't dislodge somebody from an island only a Taiwan Straits away from the main base by mounting an attack across the breadth of the Pacific.

Which is where we now are and then some; thus my suggestion it might be wise to eschew 30-40 year old ideas.

Only if they don't still make sense. Forrest was to reputed to have said "Keep up the scare". Made sense 4X30-40 years ago. Still does.

...the SSGN with 154 Tomahawks is unsettling to a lot of folks if not to you.

The Navy wanted to develop high explosive warheads to replace the nuclear warheads on some Trident missiles back in '03. Congress denied it -- but now, they are more receptive and HE Warhead Tridents will be even more worrisome than Tomahawks...

154 Tomahawks means 154 1,000 pound warheads. That will worry Libya and Argentina. Red China would laugh at the notion that 154,000 pounds of warheads is going to phase them at all. That is a continental power we're talking about. And once those missiles were used, back to base the sub would have to go to reload. The farther away the base, the longer that would take.

HE Tridents? Congress was wise. That would have been a real expensive way to miss.

Others also worry about what the X-37 is for even if you don't...

Buck Rogers in my view. Looks cool though and will probably show up on the next iteration of "24".

I realize what you define as 'conveniently.' Similarly, I'm sure you understand that I disagree with your definition. I asked the question as a suggestive you might want to rethink that.

Then why did you ask? I already thought about it.

The Navy didn't decide to do that. The Administration, the SecDef and SecNav decided to do that. Totally different thing. A really rather unimportant thing other than as political fodder. Happens after every war. This is probably your first post war interlude.

I'll concede that, though I am older than you believe.