this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
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Chapotraphouse

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[–] BobDole@hexbear.net 35 points 3 days ago (2 children)

They haven’t even finished laying the keel in five years? China would have a whole fleet of them by now.

[–] LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 32 points 3 days ago (2 children)

if China were even a quarter as imperialist as western nerds would believe they'd be pumping out aircraft carriers and shit right now but huh, would you look at that, their manufacturing focus seems to be on solar power and high speed trains and increased connectivity with neighbors and important markets

[–] SkeletorJesus@hexbear.net 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

IIRC, China has something like 80+ times the shipbuilding capacity of the US. Towards the end of WW2 when the US was kicking the shit out of Japan and obliterating their production capacity, they had something around 9 times the capacity. China's just using it mostly to build container ships, but if they wanted to make carriers (though I have heard people smarter than me say carriers aren't as important as they used to be) they absolutely could. It wouldn't be 100% straightforward because obviously container ships are pretty simple, but it'd be a hell of a lot less of a problem than it would be for the US to spool up production.

[–] Biggay@hexbear.net 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Carrier doctrine isnt as firmly rooted like the rest of warfare because any near peer conflict we've seen has relied extensively on smarter smaller weapons systems. Outside of very pricey stealth fighters/bombers, missiles and drones seem to be where the utility of warfare is bleeding towards. What good is a carrier when a smart naval mine/torpedo planted on the sea floor months beforehand can sink it before it can even react?

[–] SkeletorJesus@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago

Yeah, seems reasonable to me. Sort of like the Spanish Armada, a bigass boat can be a double edged sword.

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Because soft power is more important, and in a shooting war, everyone loses.

in a shooting war the u.s. loses, the only way "everyone" loses is if they nuke everyone to death

[–] goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 3 days ago

I read it as they've spent that much and still don't have the design finished.