U.S. Naval Institute Fleet Tracker
news.usni.org
news.usni.org
USCGC Polar Star (WAGB-10) began its journey to toward Antarctica in support
of its yearly trip to McMurdo Sound.
It’s quite cool to see the military utilized to support research purposes. Not that this is new, but it’s a pretty decent way to get extra value out of necessary exercise.
"The Coast Guard, which has been conducting operations around the world for centuries now, is a branch of the U.S. military and can support military operations if called upon to do so. However, it has a unique legal status that also allows it to conduct law enforcement activities and it is situated within the Department of Homeland Security, rather than the Department of Defense."
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40360/u-s-coast-guard-...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter
> Seabed warfare has been brought into sharp focus by Russia’s ongoing efforts to map undersea infrastructure. And by the September 2022 with the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic. There is no suggestion that the USS Jimmy Carter was involved in the Nord Stream incident (it wasn’t!). But the attack shows the relevance of these capabilities. Most seabed warfare however is closer to espionage than sabotage. And the American submarines excel.
* https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/04/u-s-navy-to-get...
ready to strike china if need be.
In the event of any Pacific war with the Americans you would be staring down 8-10 super-carrier groups, another 8 smaller carriers and a dozen or so islands each equivalent to a super-carrier’s power.
Most nations would struggle to defeat a single carrier group. Imagine fighting twenty.
More generally, I think that the US is preparing to fight the last big war that they’ve been involved in (meaning WW2), instead of preparing for the next one. Again, China won’t venture towards Midway or Hawaii, actually, I think that Imperial Japan might have had a better chance had it decided to focus on the land war (mostly in China) instead of risking it all at Midway.
Japan in 1941 had no chance to succeed long term by focusing on a land war in China because they were being cut off from access to crucial raw materials. To be clear I am not justifying their aggressive and genocidal military actions. Just pointing out that from that perspective their attacks on Midway and Hawaii made a certain amount of strategic sense and had at least a small chance of working.
They can get that via rail from Russia and Kazahstan with almost no issue, even from Belarus if Kazahstan says no. Yes, it will add some extra-costs but nothing that won't be financially manageable.
> fossil fuels
Basically just oil, which it will be very easy for them to replace in case of a war against the US by telling their (China's citizens) not to drive petrol cars anymore. Mission accomplished. It also helps that China is leading the EV industry and that it has a very extensive and intensive railway network in place, so if there is one big country that could make do without personal cars that would be China.
> iron ore
Russia to the rescue again, for example the largest world deposit of iron ore is located in Siberia [1]. Also, most probably the Chinese authorities will put all new civil construction on hold until the blockade/war would be over and they'll redirect all that iron ore to the military industry (for making artillery shells, tanks, stuff like that). Not to mention the fact that by that point Australia (a major US ally) would have already become close to broke (as their economy depends on selling to China lots of stuff taken from the ground).
> imports of food
I've read some piece in the Economist a couple of months ago where they were mentioning how come China has food reserves for at least 2 or 3 years, but, ignoring that, Russia will come to the rescue again (thanks to their chernozom).
As per Japan in WW2, they could have lived off the land (i.e. off China) had they really got in and conquer it all. They had been already doing a similar thing in Korea for three or four decades by that point, so they had practice. The imported oil was basically needed for their Navy, so with no new Navy big campaigns in the works that wouldn't have been necessary.
It's not so much the fertilizer itself that China needs to import, but rather the natural gas needed to manufacture fertilizer. Beyond natural gas, China is also a huge importer of coal for power, heating, and steelmaking. They have no realistic path to energy independence and will remain dependent on maritime imports for decades at least. Reducing petrol use won't allow them to keep their economy running or feed the populace.
In a crisis, China could perhaps find alternative sources of food imports at very high costs. But that is not a rational approach to long term national survival.
There was never any possibility for the Japanese empire in 1941 to live off the land in the territory they had conquered. They were already being cut off from crucial raw materials including oil and rubber. Without a secure supply of those their situation was simply untenable.
It is understandable to try to break the pacific ring but fighting a war on the sea … even if it won, can it be sustainable? Is there any material in Pacific Ocean easily obtainable?
For the M strait the pacific rim is really a different ball game. The whole strait is surrounded by countries which will not give up their coastline. The sea and land belt thing is mostly to bypass it?
The whole move is wrong. I have spoken.
I do have a realistic understanding of the situation, see for example this article from back in 1973, Le Transsibérien [1], published in the French Revue Défense Nationale. It's basically a French lieutenant-colonel who took the Trans-Siberian Railway and who came back with some lived experience and with some statistics. Back then the Trans-Siberian alone was responsible for 9% of the internal rail traffic from the entire world, I'm pretty sure that 50 years later and with a doubling of the rail connection between European Russian and the Far-East Russia the stats are pretty much the same, if not better.
Like I said, I know that rail is a little more expensive compared to sea transport, but nothing that can't be dealt with given the context of a world war.
> why not point upwards and get back Siberia
Not every big country on this planet has the same natural resources-focused imperialist views like the Western countries have.
Forgot to mention about the Trans-Siberian, supposedly the Soviets built the 2-lane railway bridges at some distance one from the other, meaning one lane from the other lane, so that an aerial bomb attack taking out one of those railway bridges wouldn't have taken out both lanes at the same time. It's small things like that demonstrate the strategic long-term thinking of some societies.
[1] https://www.defnat.com/e-RDN/vue-article.php?carticle=1454&c...
Later edit: Sorry, meant as a reply for the above poster, HN should implement a "Delete" option sooner rather than later...
They are there to posture and prop up USA's image as the sole superpower, and to keep the security competition from deflating. Without this military show, people in East Asia would wake up one day and ask, wait, why do we care so much about what distant Washington thinks? Because the economic & cultural game has already been lost.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-05/china-slo...