F-35 Won't Cut It: Why the Navy Needs a 6th Generation Stealth Fighter The F-35 just isn't enough. by David Axe

The Navy doesn't yet know what its next warplane will look like.

The U.S. Navy will need a new “sixth-generation” warplane eventually to follow the F-35C stealth fighter that’s just beginning to enter service. But no one has any idea what that new plane might look like. Not even the Navy.

The Navy in February 2019 declared its first front-line F-35C squadron “ready for flight.” Strike-Fighter Squadron 147, based in California, in 2021 is slated to embark on the aircraft carrier USS Vinson for the type’s first deployment.

The fleet aims to integrate a 10-plane F-35C squadron into each of its nine carrier air wings, which embark on the 11 Ford- and Nimitz-class carriers. The U.S. Marine Corps plans to equip four squadrons with F-35Cs as that service’s contribution to the carrier wings.

It will be at least a decade before the sea services deploy all of the roughly 300 F-35Cs they plan to acquire at a cost of around $100 million per plane. The stealth fighters could fly for 25 years or longer before they wear out.

By the time the F-35Cs arrive, each wing also will include three F/A-18E/F squadrons plus detachments of EA-18G radar-jamming planes, E-2 radar planes, V-22 transports and MQ-25 tanker drones. All of the types are in production and none should leave service before the mid-2030s, at the earliest.

In other words, the Navy is in no rush to decide what its next warplane should look like. Hence the ambivalent comments from Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday. “I do think we need an aviation combatant, but what the aviation combatant of the future looks like?” Gilday said at U.S. Naval Institute’s Defense Forum Washington conference in early December 2019.

“I don’t know yet,” Gilday added, according to USNI News. “I think there’s going to be a requirement to continue to deliver a seaborne launched vehicle through the air that’ll deliver an effect downrange. I do think that that will likely be a mix of manned and unmanned. The platform which they launch from? I’m not sure what that’s going to look like.”

Gilday’s remarks underscore the uncertainty in the Pentagon regarding next-generation aircraft programs. The Navy isn’t alone in needing a new warplane but being unclear as to what that actually means. The U.S. Air Force, too, is struggling to define the plane that should follow that service’s F-35A. The Air Force plans to buy as many as 1,700 F-35s.

In April 2018, senior Air Force leaders told Congress there was “no silver-bullet solution” when it comes to developing a new fighter, The War Zone reporters Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway explained.

The service has established the Next-Generation Air Dominance office in order to being developing concepts for the F-35-successor. Those concepts aren’t just traditional manned fighters. “As NGAD [effort] has evolved, it has steadily shifted more and more toward unmanned and pilot-optional concepts linked together by powerful networks so that they can operate at least semi-autonomously, if not autonomously, as necessary,” Trevithick and Rogoway noted.

Not coincidentally, the Air Force’s Skyborg program is scrambling to develop the software and hardware for operating inexpensive, missile-armed drones as so-called “loyal wingmen” for manned fighters.

Remarkably, the service also is mulling an air-to-air mission for its new B-21 stealth bomber. Maj. Gen. Scott L. Pleus, Pacific Air Forces Director of Air and Cyber Operations, floated that idea in September 2019 comments to Air Force magazine.

“If we were to characterize [NGAD] as a fighter, we would be … thinking too narrowly about what kind of airplane we need in a highly contested environment,” Pleus told Air Force. “A B-21 that also has air-to-air capabilities” and the ability “to work with the family of systems to defend itself, utilizing stealth—maybe that’s where the sixth-generation airplane comes from.”

The first B-21 could fly as soon as 2021. The Air Force wants at least 100 of the subsonic, highly-stealthy new bombers for a cost of around $600 million per plane.

If we extrapolate officials’ recent comments decades into the future, it’s possible to imagine the Air Force in the 2030s and 2040s operating include a dwindling number of older fighters plus F-35s and air-to-air-capable B-21s, all-controlling expendable wingman drones.

The Navy and Marines also could embrace that construct, although it’s worth noting that the sea services don’t at present possess any combat aircraft as large as a bomber.  Think tanks however have urged the fleet to acquire unmanned bombers that could help to extend the striking range of the carrier air wings.

100,000 Troops or More: How the United States Would Invade Venezuela An invasion of Venezuela would require more forces than the invasions of Grenada and Panama did. by David Axe

 The problem is that an invasion could further destabilize Venezuela, hurt, kill or displace countless innocent Venezuelans, alienate the U.S. government in a region that is hostile to American meddling and also get a lot of Americans killed.

The U.S. Defense Department’s regional command for South America is the smallest of the department’s 10 unified commands. It permanently oversees just 1,200 personnel plus a few thousand troops and a handful of ships on temporary deployments.

But that doesn’t mean the U.S. military couldn’t invade Venezuela in the event Pres. Donald Trump makes good on his threats and orders the Pentagon to intervene in the slowly-collapsing South American country.

Not, of course, that invading Venezuela is a good idea. Experts agree it’s not.

Most major U.S. military forces are by nature expeditionary, as they typically must travel long distances to participate in major operations.

Ships can sail from sea to sea and even cross between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Planes can deploy to air bases close to the action. Ground forces, transported by road, rail, air and sea, can concentrate on nearby U.S. or allied soil.

It helps that the United States, uniquely among major powers, devotes a huge proportion of its military spending to logistics, including maintenance of the world’s largest sealift and airlift fleets.

It’s for those reasons that the Pentagon in the past has been able to muster tens of thousands of troops plus scores of warships and planes for major operations in South America.

Nearly 10,000 U.S. troops in 1983 invaded Grenada in response to a Marxist coup in the Caribbean country. Six years later 27,000 Americans invaded Panama after that country’s leader Gen. Manuel Noriega made overtures to Soviet-aligned Cuba. The Pentagon in 2010 mobilized dozens of ships and aircraft and nearly 20,000 personnel to help Haiti in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake.

On command, the U.S. Navy, Army, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard quickly could concentrate potentially tens of thousands of people, dozens of ships and hundreds of aircraft in the vicinity of Venezuela. Forces and logistics aren’t the problem.

The problem is that an invasion could further destabilize Venezuela, hurt, kill or displace countless innocent Venezuelans, alienate the U.S. government in a region that is hostile to American meddling and also get a lot of Americans killed.

Retired Navy Admiral James Stavridis, SOUTHCOM commander from 2006 to 2009, said he opposes intervention. “I would not advise it,” Stavridis said of a potential U.S. invasion. “I commanded U.S. Southern Command for three years in Miami, so I can picture pretty much what is happening there,” he added in comments to Foreign Policy.

An invasion of Venezuela would require more forces than the invasions of Grenada and Panama did, and also could be riskier, Shannon O’Neil noted at Bloomberg. Venezuela “is twice the size of Iraq with only a slightly smaller population, and teeters on the verge of chaos. Any invasion requires preparations on a similar scale, meaning a 100,000-plus force.”

“U.S. troops are unlikely to be welcomed,” O’Neil wrote. “A February [2018] poll shows a majority of Venezuelans, including a plurality of those in Venezuela’s opposition, oppose an invasion. A U.S. military presence would play into, and would at least in part validate, [Venezuelan president Nicolas] Maduro’s loudly proclaimed imperialist conspiracies.”

Navy admiral Craig Faller, SOUTHCOM commander, on May 2, 2019 told a Congressional committee the most likely scenario is a military-led mission to help U.S. citizens evacuate Venezuela. Around 200 U.S. troops are in Colombia and immediately could assist with an evacuation.

Stavridis agreed. “The most aggressive contingency plan they are looking at would be one that would protect American citizens if for some reason there were a backlash against them. That would be the only circumstance in which I could see U.S. troop presence.”

“There are probably close to 100,000 American citizens in Venezuela, so Maduro would be very well advised to avoid any kind of program that harassed or arrested American citizens,” Stavridis added. “I think that would be a red line. I don’t think the Maduro administration, as befuddled as it is, would be willing to cross that kind of a line because I think that would invite a military response.”

“In the end, this, I think, will play out politically and diplomatically, not militarily,” Stavridis said.

A 2002 Simulation Proved Iran Could Beat America in a War Did the military learn anything from this harsh lesson? by David Axe

Tehran should not be underestimated.

As tensions escalate in the Persian Gulf region, it’s worth recalling a 2002 Pentagon war game in which a U.S. Marine Corps played the part of an enemy commander waging a bloody defensive campaign against a much more powerful U.S. force.

Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper’s own hodgepodge of troops, ships and planes was similar in organization and capability to Iran’s actual forces. Van Riper’s success in blunting a simulated American assault could reveal how Tehran might fight in the real world.

“The exercise was called Millennium Challenge 2002,” Blake Stilwell wrote for We Are the Mighty.

It was designed by the Joint Forces Command over the course of two years. It had 13,500 participants, numerous live and simulated training sites, and was supposed to pit an Iran-like Middle Eastern country against the U.S. military, which would be fielding advanced technology it didn't plan to implement until five years later.

The war game would begin with a forced-entry exercise that included the 82nd Airborne and the 1st Marine Division. When the blue forces issued a surrender ultimatum, Van Riper, commanding the red forces, turned them down. Since the Bush Doctrine of the period included preemptive strikes against perceived enemies, Van Riper knew the blue forces would be coming for him. And they did.

But the three-star general didn't spend 41 years in the Marine Corps by being timid. As soon as the Navy was beyond the point of no return, he hit them and hit them hard. Missiles from land-based units, civilian boats, and low-flying planes tore through the fleet as explosive-ladened speedboats decimated the Navy using suicide tactics. His code to initiate the attack was a coded message sent from the minarets of mosques at the call to prayer.

In less than 10 minutes, the whole thing was over and Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper was victorious.

Micah Zenko provided some context in a piece for War on the Rocks. “The impact of the [opposing force’s] ability to render a U.S. carrier battle group — the centerpiece of the U.S. Navy — militarily worthless stunned most of the MC ’02 participants.”

The shock compelled exercise planners to rig the rest of the war game for U.S. forces.

[Joint Forces Command commander Gen. Buck] Kernan received an urgent phone call from [exercise planner, retired Army general Gary] Luck: “Sir, Van Riper just slimed all of the ships.” Kernan recognized that this was bad news because it placed at risk [Joint Forces Command’s] ability to fulfill the remaining live-fire, forced-entry component of the exercise — a central component of MC ’02.

The actual forces were awaiting orders at Fort Bragg, off the coast of San Diego, and at the Fort Irwin National Training Center. Kernan recalled, “I didn’t have a lot of choice. I had to do the forcible entry piece.” He directed the white cell [exercise planners] to simply refloat the virtual ships to the surface. [Army general B. B.] Bell and his blue team — now including the live-fire forces operating under his direction — applied the lessons from the initial attack and fended off subsequent engagements from the red team.

That and other interference by exercise planners made Van Riper “furious,” Zenko wrote.

Not only had the white cell’s instructions compromised the integrity of the entire process, but also his own chief of staff — a retired Army colonel — was receiving conflicting orders about how his force should be deployed. When Van Riper went to Kernan to complain, he was told: “You are playing out of character. The OPFOR would never have done what you did.”

Van Riper subsequently gathered the red team and told them to follow the chief of staff’s orders. The independence that he believed a red team must be granted to do its job had been corrupted. Six days into the exercise, he stepped down as commander and served as an advisor for the remaining 17 days.

During that time, the blue team achieved most of its campaign plan objectives by destroying the OPFOR air and naval forces, securing the shipping lanes, and capturing or neutralizing the red regime’s WMD assets. The OPFOR was capable of partially preserving the red regime, but it was substantially weakened and its regional influence was much diminished.

Of course, in a real shooting war no one can tweak the rules to preserve an American advantage. If Iran actually were to deploy Van Riper’s brutally effective tactics, it just might inflict even more damage than Van Riper’s own hamstrung forces did in their simulated, and rigged, war. 

Why Did B-52 Bombers Practice Nuclear Attacks on Russia? "If you missed signs of new Cold War, this should wake you up." by David Axe

 In recent years Russian bombers have stepped up their probes of NATO and allied air space, occasionally following flight profiles matching atomic bombing runs.

The U.S. Air Force in early March 2019 deployed five B-52 bombers from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana to the United Kingdom. Some of the eight-engine, long-range planes flew mock nuclear attacks on Russian soil.

The American operation mirrors Russia's own simulated aerial raids. In recent years Russian bombers have stepped up their probes of NATO and allied air space, occasionally following flight profiles matching atomic bombing runs.

Six B-52s arrived at the Royal Air Force base at Fairford starting March 14, 2019. "The deployment of strategic bombers to the U.K. helps exercise RAF Fairford as United States Air Forces in Europe’s forward operating location for bombers," the Air Force stated.

"The deployment also includes joint and allied training in the U.S. European Command theater to improve bomber interoperability. Training with joint partners, allied nations and other U.S. Air Force units contributes to our ready and postured forces and enables us to build enduring and strategic relationships necessary to confront a broad range of global challenges."

The Air Force's statement fails to mention one of the B-52s' other missions -- to practice nuclear attacks on Russia.

At least two of the B-52s that deployed to the United Kingdom are nuclear-capable models, identifiable by a special fin that the Air Force added in order to comply with the New START treaty that limits the number of U.S. and Russian nuclear-delivery systems.

But it was one of the non-nuclear-capable B-52s, serial number 60-0024, that initially flew a mock cruise-missile attack on Russia's Kaliningrad exclave on March 14, 2019, according to Steffan Watkins, an independent imagery analyst. Observers can track military flights via their transponders and radio traffic.

"USAF Boeing B-52H 60-0024 ... took off from Barksdale AFB [on] 2019-03-14 [at] 01:30 Zulu [time], flew over [Canada] and conducted a mock nuclear cruise missile strike on the Russian Federation, only turning around 60 nautical miles from Russian air space [at] 11:10 Zulu, landing at RAF Fairford [at] 13:32 Zulu," Watkins tweeted.

On March 28, five B-52s joined a pair of Royal Norwegian Air Force F-16AMs and a lone two-seat F-16BM for a mission over the Norwegian Sea.

"The deployment is clearly meant to be a signal of the U.S. military's strategic capabilities to America's 'great power' competitors, primarily Russia," Joseph Trevithick wrote at The War Zone.

"Though the Air Force has regularly sent small detachments of B-52s to the United Kingdom for training exercises throughout Europe over the years, having six of the bombers there at once is the single largest deployment of the [B-52s] to the region since the invasion of Iraq in 2003," Trevithick continued, citing Military.com. "During the opening phases of that conflict, 20 B-52s flew strike missions from the United Kingdom."

Compare the recent American bomber flights to Russia's own, similar flights. Eleven Russian Su-24 bombers in early 2018 flew a mock attack on a Norwegian radar site, Lt. Gen. Morten Haga Lunde, the director of Norway’s intelligence service, revealed in early February 2019.

Seventeen Russian warplanes in May 2018 buzzed the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Duncan in the Black Sea. And a year earlier in March 2017, nine Russian warplanes conducted another raid targeting a Norwegian military site. Three months later in May 2017, 12 Russian planes simulated attack runs on NATO vessels exercising in Norwegian waters.

NATO and allied warplanes routinely intercept Russian planes conducting mock raids. But Russian fighters did not interfere with the U.S. Air Force's March 14 mock raid. They, however, did intercept and monitor B-52 60-0024 and presumably other B-52s when they repeated the mock raid on March 20.

Russia swiftly retaliated. On March 29, 2019, two Russian air force Tu-160 nuclear-capable bombers flew over the North Sea, heading toward the United Kingdom. RAF fighters rose to intercept.

The dueling mock raids alarmed Hans Kristensen, a nuclear expert with the Federation of American Scientists. "If you missed signs of new Cold War, this should wake you up," Kristensen tweeted.

The U.S. Army And Marines Could Soon Sink Your 'Battleship' The Marines and Army now want anti-ship missiles. by David Axe

Marine and Army units with anti-ship missiles could spread out across islands in order to control strategic ocean checkpoints. 

U.S. Army soldiers and U.S. Marines need to become ship-killers, one Marine Corps lieutenant argued.

With the Chinese and Russian fleets fielding more and better ships and missiles and the U.S. Navy struggling to grow its own fleet, it’s time for American ground troops to contribute to naval battles, 1st Lt. Walker Mills argued in Proceedings, the professional journal of the U.S. Naval Institute.

“Both the Marine Corps and the Army need to rapidly develop and deploy redundant land-based capabilities to strike ships in the littoral, as well as concepts for their employment,” Mills wrote.

The Army and Marines clearly agree with Mills’s assessment. "There’s a ground component to the maritime fight," Gen. Robert Neller, the outgoing Marine Corps commandant, said at a February 2019 conference in San Diego.

"We’re a naval force in a naval campaign," Neller said. "You have to help the ships control sea space. And you can do that from the land."

Marine and Army units with anti-ship missiles could spread out across islands in order to control strategic ocean checkpoints. "So there’s a lot of geographical chokepoints, and you know what they are, and the potential adversaries know what they are," Neller said. "So if you get there first and you can control that space, then you have an operational advantage."

The hardware slowly is coming. Both the Army and Marines in recent years have experimented with ground-launched anti-ship missiles.

The Army in a 2018 war game in Hawaii fired a truck-mounted Naval Strike Missile at a target vessel. During the same event, an Army HIMARS battery struck the decommissioned U.S. Navy amphibious ship Racine with five unguided 227-millimeter-diameter rockets. An aerial drone provided the coordinates for the 50-mile strike.

The Marines are buying a small number of the 900-pound NSMs to go with their wheeled High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers. Fighter jets could help the Marine missile batteries to locate targets. In a 2018 demonstration in Arizona, an F-35 stealth fighter detected a test target and transmitted the target's location to a HIMARS battery.

But the U.S. ground-combat branches “are far behind U.S. adversaries as well as allies in land-based anti-ship fires,” Mills warned.

“Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Japan and Poland, to name a few countries, all have deployed land-based anti-ship missile capabilities in the past decade,” the lieutenant pointed out. “China tested anti-ship missiles on aircraft carrier–shaped targets in the Gobi Desert, and Iran test-fired several new anti-ship missiles in response to the United States pulling out of the nuclear agreement last year. Even Pakistan and Ukraine have tested land-based anti-ship cruise missiles.”

There’s a good reason the rest of the world favors land-based anti-ship weaponry. “Land-based fires are a cheap alternative to buying more frigates, destroyers and aircraft,” Mills wrote. “They can be more easily hidden and distributed than sea-based fires but pack the same punch. They also are more survivable—you cannot sink the parking lot or the motor pool.”

There’s precedent for equipping the U.S. land services with anti-ship weaponry. The Army maintained coastal-defense artillery batteries as recently as the 1950s. The Marine Corps “reorganized, converted, or abolished all 19 Marine Defense Battalions in 1944,” Mills noted.

“Initially organized with five-inch naval guns, these battalions saw action almost everywhere in the Pacific but proved most critical in early defensive actions, such as the Battle of Wake Island. In that instance, Marine gunners sank a Japanese destroyer—the first Japanese ship sunk by U.S. forces during the war—and managed to hold off an invasion for 15 days. As the war progressed, however, the battalions increasingly shifted toward an anti-aircraft role.”

A modern version of these forces could operate HIMARS launchers with various compatible anti-ship missiles. The benefits to U.S. maritime strategy would be immediate, Mills claimed.

Land-based anti-ship missile systems are an effective tool in countering maritime aggression, and this is being increasingly recognized inside and outside the force. ... Employing these systems in the littorals of the western Pacific would disrupt current adversary investments and strategy.

The Army and Marine Corps must continue to invest in and prioritize long-range anti-ship fires for littoral operations so they can support the Navy in sea-control and sea-denial missions. The services need to work together—the Marine Corps has extensive experience in naval operations, but the Army has a much larger and more robust fires complex, as well as more resources for acquisition and development.

Concurrently, Marines and soldiers need to drive forward the discussion on how these new systems should be employed. Land-based anti-ship fires are exactly the type of cross-domain capability the joint force needs to fight and win a high-end conflict in a littoral environment.

China's Air Force is Getting an Upgrade (But There Is a Problem That Needs Fixing) Production and development gaps could result in the latest Chinese warplanes flying with older engine models, including imported Russian motors that might be underpowered and unreliable. by David Axe

As demanding as the J-20 is on its engines, a successor fighter likely would be even more demanding.

The Chinese military is building up a meaningful force of J-20 stealth fighters, Y-20 strategic airlifters and other high-tech military aircraft while also developing a new stealth fighter, fighter-bomber and heavy bomber.

But for all of these advancements, Chinese industry still is struggling to manufacture arguably the most important subsystems for these new planes. Their engines.

Aviation website Alert 5 spotted a stock-exchange filing by the Hebei subsidiary of China’s Central Iron & Steel Research Institute. The filing including production projections for military engines for the next decade, and reveals some startling shortfalls.

Production and development gaps could result in the latest Chinese warplanes flying with older engine models, including imported Russian motors that might be underpowered and unreliable. The mismatch between airframes and engines could be a drag on the overall performance of Chinese military aircraft.

Perhaps the biggest shortfall is in the production of WS-15s and WS-19s, the custom motors respectively for J-20 stealth fighters and FC-31 export stealth fighters. “Data provided by Hebei Cisri Dekai Technology Co. Ltd. shows a maximum of only five WS-15 and WS-19 engines each year from 2020 ‘til 2026,” Alert 5 reported.

The first few combat-capable J-20s reportedly entered service in 2017. Flight Global’s survey of all the world’s military aircraft for 2020 listed 15 J-20s in front-line use. J-20s usually appear in public with Russian-made AL-31 motors, which experts consider to be inadequate for the heavy, long-range, supersonic fighter.

Even the up-rated 117S version of the AL-31F “would likely not be sufficient to extract the full performance potential of this advanced airframe,” wrote Carlo Kopp and Peter Goon, analysts with the Air Power Australia think tank.

A dearth of WS-15s could force J-20 regiments to continue flying with AL-31s. Meanwhile it could be difficult for Chinese industry to find buyers for the FC-31 if the plane lacks a custom engine. Prototype FC-31s fly with what appear to be Russian-made RD-93s.

Chinese industry has been trying to develop the WS-18 engine for heavy subsonic aircraft. The type could power Y-20 airlifters and H-6K bombers. But Hebei “is running into trouble with development,” Alert 5 reported. Work on the new turbofan is “half-suspended as the company researches into new materials.”

“Another alternative engine for the Y-20, the WS-20, will also enter limited production starting from 2024,” Alert 5 explained. But for now, the Y-20 and H-6K fly with Russian D-30 turbofans.

The D-30 however is a low-bypass model that’s better suited for supersonic fighters than for an efficient, slow-flying cargo-hauler.

Troubles with the WS-15, WS-19 and WS-18 should worry Chinese military planners. Shortfalls could prevent new aircraft types from performing to their maximum potential. Beijing perhaps should worry the most about a new “sixth-generation” stealth fighter that Chinese officials want to develop in order eventually to replace the J-20.

As demanding as the J-20 is on its engines, a successor fighter likely would be even more demanding.

The H-20 stealth bomber that’s reportedly under development likewise probably cannot adequately perform with the same hand-me-down motors that power the Chinese military’s current heavy aircraft. For the next generation of warplanes, China needs custom engines.

But it’s not impossible for Chinese industry to overcome engine-development problems or to scale up production.

The WS-10 engine, which powers older J-10, J-11, J-15, J-16 fighters, “is having a successful production run,” Alert 5 explained. The stock filing anticipated production of 320 WS-10s in 2020 and 450 engines in 2026.

It’s unclear whether, and when, the Chinese military might solve its engine problems. But there’s strong incentive for Beijing to devote vast resources to solutions, especially when it comes to the WS-15 and WS-19.

“If the technological barrier of a fighter engine is overcome, China will be able to produce advanced fighters indigenously,” said Arthur Ding, a professor at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University. “And, along with other capable aircraft, such as airborne early-warning and air-refuelling aircraft, the Asian Pacific’s political landscape will be changed, as China’s military capability can win over countries in this region.”

The U.S. Navy Proves That Sinking an American Aircraft Carrier is Easier Said Than Done A U.S. Navy test in 2005 proved that even if you hit them, carriers are really hard to sink. by David Axe

A virtual wall of defensive weaponry surrounds the flattop out to a distance of several hundred miles.

A Chinese admiral and pundit told a trade-show audience that Beijing could resolve China's territorial disputes by sinking two U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and killing thousands of American sailors.

Rear Adm. Lou Yuan's threat isn't an empty one. The Chinese military has deployed an array of weaponry that it acquired specifically to target American flattops.

But a U.S. Navy test in 2005 proved that even if you hit them, carriers are really hard to sink.

Lou made his provocative comment on Dec. 20, 2018 at the Military Industry List summit, according to media reports.

“What the United States fears the most is taking casualties,” declared Lou, an anti-American author, social commentator and military theorist at the PLA Academy of Military Science.

Sinking just one carrier could kill 5,000 Americans, Lou pointed out. Sink two, and you double the toll. "We’ll see how frightened America is" after losing 10,000 sailors, Lou crowed.

Leaving aside the likelihood of a full-scale war breaking out between the world's two leading military powers and economies, sinking a carrier is easier said than done. History underscores the difficulty of the undertaking.

In 1964 Viet Cong saboteurs managed to damage and briefly sink the former U.S. Navy escort carrier Card while the vessel, then operating as an aircraft ferry for U.S. Military Sealift Command, moored in Saigon.

But the last time anyone permanently sank a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in combat was during World War II. Twelve American carriers sank during the war, usually following intensive air attacks. The last to sink, USS Bismarck Sea, fell victim to Japanese kamikazes in February 1945.

In subsequent decades, American flattops suffered serious accidents including collisions and fires, but none sank. It's very difficult to sink a buoyant, thousand-feet-long ship that's mostly made of steel.

The U.S. Navy knows this from experience. In 2005, the Navy itself targeted the decommissioned carrier America in order to determine just how much punishment the vessel could withstand before slipping beneath the waves.

"The ship was pummeled by explosions both above and below the waterline," The War Zone reporter Tyler Rogoway explained in 2018. "After nearly four weeks of these activities, the carrier was scuttled. On May 14, 2005, the vessel's stern disappeared below the waterline and the ship began its voyage to the seafloor."

"America stood up to four weeks of abuse and only succumbed to the sea after demolition teams scuttled the ship on purpose once and for all, it's clear that America was built to sustain heavy damage in combat and still stay afloat."

Consider also the carrier-shaped pontoon ship that Iran built as a scale target for a 2015 war game. While small and flimsy compared to a real flattop, the pontoon vessel itself endured an intensive assault. "Iran struck the faux carrier with a barrage of anti-ship missiles, then swarmed it with small boats and then landed commandos on it," Rogoway reported.

Still, the fake flattop apparently remained afloat.

To even try to sink an American flattop, you first must hit it. That's not easy, either. No carrier sails without an air wing with as many as 50 fighter aircraft plus several escorting destroyers, cruisers and submarines. A virtual wall of defensive weaponry surrounds the flattop out to a distance of several hundred miles.

Still, China or another country could attempt to target the carriers with submarines, cruise missiles and ballistic rockets. 

"They will employ multiple systems in order to confuse and overwhelm U.S. defenses," naval historian Robert Farley wrote in 2017. "They will rely on the threat of attack to keep U.S. carrier battle groups as far as possible from the main theaters of operation."

"But the observation that the enemy has a missile or torpedo that can kill a carrier only begins a conversation about carrier vulnerability," Farley continued. "Shooting anything at an aircraft carrier is a costly, difficult operation."

The carrier's attackers could face withering counterfire from the vessel's defenders. "Beyond the monetary cost, launching an open attack against an American carrier strike group, with its own cruisers, destroyers and submarines, is almost certainly a suicide mission."

And if the United States' reaction to the 9/11 terror attacks is any indication, Washington surely would deploy all its remaining military might, including its surviving eight or nine carriers, against country behind the sinking.

"So there are two questions that remain for anyone who thinks they even have a shot at taking down one of these enormous steel behemoths," Farley explained. "Can you do it? And even if you can, is it worth it?"