Why China Is Obsessed with America's Aircraft Carriers

I think the Carrier to the PLAN is more of a status symbol. They have global ambitions and a superpower cannot be a superpower without a carrier. China has been focusing on anti-access area denial or A2AD. This is why the various disputed islands are so crucial to the PRC's long-term strategic goals of controlling all access to the South China Sea. Along with the missile batteries sprinkled all along the Chinese coast, the PRC has been reclaiming land on disputed islands and building up a defensive military presence. They saw how important Hawaii is to the US ability to project power, so they've started to create their own Hawaiis.

They tried testing the waters a few years ago by claiming the entire SCS as their Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and required all vessels and aircraft to request access to navigate through. The US immediately flew a couple bombers to assert the US claims of free navigation and to attempt to delegitimize those claims. Nearly a decade ago, the US Navy and USAF partnered together to come up with a counter strategy to China's A2AD, but that effort was halted a few years ago, presumably because there was no real way to get the military power needed to defend Taiwan in position without real risk of loss of life. I imagine at this point that any effort to defend Taiwan, which we are treaty-bound to do, would likely rely on long-range fighters and missiles launched from US submarines.

Aircraft carriers are a couple acres of movable sovereign territory.

There is immense influence to be had using one to shape behaviour of adversaries in times of less than war.

Historically, every time a foreign nation has allegedly managed to get a submarine inside a carrier battle group’s defensive bubble has made the news.

Personally, I think the future of warfare will see a shift away from a carrier “hub and spoke” model to a decentralised/distributed model.

But it will require a new platform that can match or exceed the force projection capability of a carrier in terms of:

Radius of weapons/sensor delivery away from platform Throw weight of weapons delivery Repeatability/persistence of weapons/sensor delivery

Perhaps the future is more amphibious assault ships like USS America carrying a dozen F35s(fewer eggs, more baskets).

Perhaps the future is arsenal ships loaded with missiles and drone ships loaded with recoverable drones.

Perhaps the future is C17s , C5s , C130s acting as airborne drone carriers.

But I suspect the age of the aircraft carrier is approaching it’s end, but we will only know for sure if a short sharp large scale conventional war occurs between peers and near peers or if a major lasting economic disaster compelled them to be mothballed.

Seems like a stretch of a conclusion to draw. Carriers had way more direct, consequential impact in the outcome of the Korean War on the (proxy) PLA itself. Is the author suggestion that the Chinese leadership just thought "meh, let's pretend those carriers don't exist and get cause by our lack of capabilities by surprise again next time"?

China has announced plans to expand their territory across the pacific ocean. That's where their interest in aircraft carriers stems from.

Spending the trillions needed to build and support carriers is stupid.

If we ever have another war with china, low cost drones will take out carriers, not other carriers.

China will spend millions on drone warfare while the US spends billions.

I'm sure the author of this article knows more than I do but I don't think this is a well supported thesis.