China could sink all US carriers in 20 minutes, Pentagon chief warns

Rule 1. When you're having political problems at home, create a foreign enemy to distract the population.

Also, a foreign threat tends to gather the citizens together. Our post-9/11 unity allowed them to create the Homeland Security Gestapo.
- Also a common liberal tactic.

This is both believable, and actually makes me feel safer about world security

Apparently the crucial moment for the US to attack was a few year ago, when they still had naval superiority. They missed their window luckily for us. Thanks to the PRC the US doesn't get to use SE Asia and Europe as their cannon fodder.

Lol sounds like he's doing a great job in his role checks notes in charge of US defense.

The enemy is both weak and strong.

That would be so funny.

US can't even beat Ansarallah

I remember how they bragged that the operation against Yemen was the biggest naval operation since WW2.
And they lost that, against country having no navy and no airforce.

inshallah

Therefore we need to cut all non-essential government spending, for example everything that isn't defense spending, and reallocate it to defense spending so we can overwhelm China's defenses with wave attacks of billions of big beautiful boats that cost billions to build and only a million to sink

US generals are not idiots, they're not going to sail their Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs) straight into a hailstorm of Anti Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs) equipped with either Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicles (MaRVs) or Hypersonic Glide Vehicles (HGVs) as warheads. The Chinese DF-17 HGV equipped ASBM, and the DF-21D MaRV equipped ASBM, have a range of around 1600km/1000mi. The DF-21 is said to be a Chinese equivalent to the now retired Pershing-II from the United States. So these weapons will act as area denial weapons, with the CSGs remaining outside of their effective range during the majority of their operations. Aircraft will rely on mid air refueling and/or external drop tanks to have the required range to conduct missions from this far out. This of course restricts their operations, but they can still carry out missions. This is also why there's a huge focus on increasing the internal fuel capacity and range for the US Navy's 6th generation strike fighter (F/A-XX), and why the F-35C has such a large internal fuel capacity.

Pershing-II (left), hypothesised DF-21D MaRV on top of DF-15 booster stage (centre), DF-21 with nosecone shield (right):

We can see this in Yemen in the Red Sea (where ASBMs were used as weapons for the first time in history), where the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier spends the majority of time around Jeddah, around 700-800km away from the Houthi/Ansarallah controlled parts of Yemen, and resupplies at Yanbu. This keeps them out of range of the Zulfiqar Basir MaRV equipped ASBM (700km range) during normal operations, and keeps them out of range of Anti Ship Cruise Missiles like the Abu Mhadi (1000km range) when resupplying.

Zulfiqar Basir, with a close up on the electro optical sensor on the MaRV for terminal guidance:

Area denial is still a great capability to have, but ASBMs aren't magic wands that can just eliminate CSGs. They have their own limitations, hitting a moving target such as a ship with a ballistic missile, even one equipped with a HGV or MaRV, is quite complex, especially at longer ranges where you'd have to provide midcourse guidance updates and resulting trajectory changes to a ballistic missile in space. This is why longer range ASBMs aren't there yet. To try extend the effective range of existing ASBM platforms, they could be launched from aircraft, which give a small range boost from the launch point, and allowing the aircraft to fly out over sea before launching, for a combined range extension (aircrafts range + ASBM range). China does have the KF-21, an air launched DF-21. The challenge then becomes avoiding the launch aircraft being intercepted by hostile combat air patrols before launching, such patrols will limit how far out the launch aircraft can fly.

Air launched DF-21 variant mounted on a Xian H-6, the two solid fueled booster rocket stages and MaRV are clearly visible.

US generals are not idiots
while i agree with everything else in your post, a lot of them absolutely are very, very stupid
- Honestly, we shouldn't assume they'll always do stupid things, but they will do stupid things.
  How they handled this training exercise rlly maeks me think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
  edit: and then I scrolled down and saw people already discussing it lol

And so you're going to reduce the military budget and start approaching diplomacy with an eye for mutual benefit and international cooperation, right?

a trillion into military spending.

Please, Xi. Press the button. Almighty Allah please steel Xi's heart to do what must be done

Lots of comments that "this is a false distraction to justify war on Panama". War on Panama is about interdicting Chinese commerce with Brazil and other countries south of US. Including FDI in Panama to boost its cross ocean trade volume through a railway.

This is more of a classified leak exposing US weakness and impotence. This does compromise stupid people's faith in US protections across the world, and their rulers corrupt submission to US under propaganda of US protection.

Someone got fired for unauthorized leak today. https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-850238
- I'm only aware of 30% tariffs on Chinese steel in Brazil, which is same mistake any manufacturing country can make. This was under Biden. They are unpopular, and Brazil still does significant trade with China.

China has Max Payne bullet time technology confirmed

All Chinese soldiers are the guy from FEAR

Lol @ the guy in the EE thread talking about how the opposing force in the Millennium 2002 challenge cheated

This has to be one of the funniest wiki pages I've read in a while
Over the course of the simulation, heavy constraints were placed on the Red force's ability to free-play "to the point where the end state was scripted",[4] resulting in a Blue victory.
At this point, the exercise was suspended, Blue's ships were "re-floated", and the rules of engagement were changed; this was later justified by General Peter Pace as follows: "You kill me in the first day and I sit there for the next 13 days doing nothing,
Van Riper's forces were ordered not to shoot down any of the approaching aircraft.[7][8] Van Riper also claimed that exercise officials denied him the opportunity to use his own tactics and ideas against Blue Force, and that they also ordered Red Force not to use certain weapons systems against Blue Force and even ordered the location of Red Force units to be revealed
The exercise involved both live exercises and computer simulations, costing US$250 million (equivalent to about $437M in 2024)
how dare opfor use an actually effective strategy! they have to fight like we want them to ;__;
- When you think about it, the Viet Cong cheated by not using loud bomber planes and napalm.

I guess this is why we need to invest 102931203921 gazillions money into the military and do more austerities

It’s not like China has to lift a finger, the US government is doing a fine job of destroying the country.

anyway, 30 billion more for Israel

I hope that's true, but this is a common refrain with various adversaries used as the boogie-man.

https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-117-the-always-lagging-us-war-machine

The scam goes something like this: A weapons contractor and military-funded think tank publishes a supposedly neutral "report" or a handful "U.S. officials" run to a media outlet insisting the United States is "lagging behind" in a sector that incidentally coincides with said think tank's funders or government entity's interests. Credulous American media mindlessly repeats the claims, everyone acts panicked, treating the warning like a work of good faith, sober and objective analysis. Congress then reacts and uses media coverage to rationalize even more contracts to the very funders of the think tank that raised the warning, further bloating the Pentagon, State Department and CIA budgets. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, all the while portraying the U.S.'s gargantuan defense expenditures as paltry and insufficient.

The only thing this pentagon chief can sink in 20 minutes is a fifth of whiskey

Good.

...and the US could make a China shaped nuclear crater to the west of Taiwan. Then everyone clapped.

"Bro, what if...."

"Well we could immediately escalate any conflict to end human civilization" is not the boast you think it is.
Look at the current war in Ukraine -- the closest we've come to direct conflict between two nuclear superpowers. Nukes are useful only to the extent they make the other side think twice about a large, conventional invasion. If you actually use them against someone who can retaliate, you lose.
Could they though? You think China would just sit around and let the U.S fire nuclear missiles at them without intercepting them and firing their own? Why are you so sure that wouldn't just end up with a U.S sized crater north of Mexico?
Also, dismissing any predictive situation as some crazy out there "what if" is hilarious.
War games are an extremely important part of any strategy so that you don't just walk right into an easily predictable slaughter because you "don't care about what ifs".