[jboog]

The US and NATO is so far ahead of China and Russia in the conventional fight it's comical.

No one outside of the US or its allies even has a blue-water Navy. China has ONE carrier and it's a pile of shit compared to what we have. We have 11 super carriers, add in the smaller ones and we have another 40 or so. That's not even counting the rest of NATO.

Let's not even get into to the backwater that is the PRC's air force.

Yeah they have 1.3 billion people. Big deal. How exactly do they get them over here?

Nuclear war, now that's a different story but having another cool bleeding-edge fighter jet isn't going to stop a full scale nuclear conflict. China and Russia have enough nukes they all might not make it to the continental US but it's enough to destroy us. We can certainly do the same. The basic game theory of MAD hasn't changed much in the past few decades.

[hef19898]

There are multiple account of carriers being "sunk" during excersices by non-nuclear subs. Numbers still matter, and while the Russians and Chinese are't he best in force projection, the Chinese not yet, neither one is to be triffeled with in their backyards.

[jboog]

I'm not saying China can't sink a carrier or two.

What I am saying is that if they do we have a backup of about 40-50 more. And that's not even counting Nato.

Or the fact that hundreds of other ships and subs led by Navy folks that are far better trained and with better equipment than anything China or Russia could ever hope to compete with in the next 15-20 years at best.

My point isn't that China can't give us a bloody nose or two, it's just that they are so far behind the NATO force's militaries that we don't need to waste another few trillion on the latest greatest tech.