Comment by dukeyukey
> China has the largest navy in the world.
China has the most ships.
Most of those ships are tiny.
By tonnage, the US comes _way_ out on top.
> China has the largest navy in the world.
China has the most ships.
Most of those ships are tiny.
By tonnage, the US comes _way_ out on top.
I think the number is a lot higher than two ASBM per carrier. There's always a group of carrier, cruiser, and a destroyer squadron that provide a layered defense. So it's probably not that simple.
https://totalmilitaryinsight.com/aircraft-carrier-defense-sy...
Before adding up ship tonnage, we should subtract one US carrier for every, I dunno, two ASBMs possessed by the PRC, and if (lol, I mean when) we get to zero, move on to, say, the Arleigh Burke class.
I guess we can give the US some bonus points here for each SM-6 they have, but pretty sure those'll run out in a week too.
On the "plus" side, China is food-insecure, so the US can cause millions of civilian deaths via famine. So it can/would still win, just via genocide. It would take a decade though, and require a strong campaign by the media to maintain domestic support.
Actually, no, I'm overstating things. The strategy would not be so much to kill so many people, as to "make the economy scream" (as in South and Central America), so as to hopefully bring about regime change. The net result might actually be an increase in immigration from China to the US (to the extent that people are able to make that migration). In the long run that'd be a net win for the US, actually.
Indeed, you could say that the first shots of that campaign have already happened. Look at Chinese youth unemployment.