Re: Who cares
Voland's right hand,
I'm sure China has lots of ships with missiles on. Some of them aren't very good though. And they've got to survive to get into missile range. Against a carrier battle group with lots of naval aircraft. And also a picket line of submarines, remember the US have lots over very good attack subs - which are great at sinking ships.
I don't know if saturation attacks can be defeated. Though lots of money has been poured into trying. What I do know is that lots of people talk about them working, pointing out all the downsides of the defence option, and none of the downsides of the attack option. Which are considerable.
Carrier warfare is combined arms with defence in depth. Park your carrier battle group off Shanghai and it's dead. Move it around the (very large) Pacific and it's much harder to concentrate forces. Remember that the US also has nearby airbases, and a very large and capable airforce for support.
The Russian surface fleet is probably no threat whatsoever, I get the impression most of Russia's money has gone on the army, special forces and airforce. They've got good submarines. But they haven't even got the cash to operate the carrier they just sent to Syria for more than 6 months a year. Which is why their pilots aren't so well trained and they lost 10% of their air group in a couple of weeks.
One unanswerable counter to a carrier group is nukes. They make excellent targets.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
