REMINDER THAT YOU HAVE NOT WON A WAR IN 400 YEARS
REMINDER THAT YOUR NAVY IS COMMISSIONING NEW SHIP CLASSES THAT WESTERN NAVIES HAVE CONSIDERED OBSOLETE FOR DECADES
For those of you still terrified of Big Bad China coming for the US, even if they make everything in their military plan, they still won’t commission more warship tonnage than the USN from now to 2025.
US warships to be commissioned by 2025:
3x Ford class, 300,000t
3x America class, 134,913t
3x Zumwalt class, 45,000t
14x Burke class, 137,200t
10x Freedom and 10x Independence class, 66,040t
16x Virginia class, 126,400t
3x San Antonio class, 75,900t
And those are just the commissioned major combatants, not including the MSC or support hulls. A total of 885,453 tons of commissioned warship by 2025, all of which are either currently under construction or currently on order. For reference, this is roughly 3/4 of the entire current PLAN commissioned displacement.
PLAN new build ships by 2025:
1x Type 001A, 67,500t
1x Type 002, (no confirmed tonnage; ~80,000
12x 055, ~156,000t
23x 052D, 172,500t
1x 054A, 4,053t
24x 054B, 97,272t
2x 071, 50,000t
4x 072, 160,000t
For a grand total of about 787,325t, and that’s only if they are wildly successful and there are no issues with building the first in class ships of at least 5 brand new first-build designs in the next 9 years. Still almost 100,000t less than the rate at which the USN has been building and commissioning warships for years now. The USN has more supercarrier tonnage (1.1 million tons) commissioned and operational than the tonnage of the entire PLAN. As of May 2015:
Total commissioned tonnage for the USN: over 3,000,000 tons.
Total commissioned tonnage for the PLAN: 992,363 tons.
Carriers number/tonnage
USN: 10x, 1.1 million tons, Nimitz class
PLAN: 1x 67,500 tons, Liaoning
LPA/LHD/LSD numbers/tonnage
USN: 9x, 369,693 tons, 1 America and 8 Wasps
PLAN: 0x, 0 tons, nada
LPD/LSD numbers/tonnage
USN: 22x, 448,214 tons, 8 Whidbey Island, 4 Harpers Ferry, 1 Austin, 9 San Antonio
PLAN: 3x, 60,000 tons, Type 071 (Yuzhao)
LST number/tonnage
USN: 0x, 0 tons, nada
PLAN: 60x, 209,360 tons, various types from 800-7,000 tons
Since the decommissioning of the last Newport-class in 2002, the USN has not used LSTs. It still operates 32 LCUs (381t apiece) as well as the 35 US Army operated LCUs (1,102t apiece), but because the USN has so many LHAs, LHDs, LPDs, and LSDs, LSTs are no longer needed to ferry LCUs to the combat area. Notice that this class of vessel, which the USN considers obsolete in modern amphibious warfare, comprises over 20% of the PLAN fleet. So, no. Even if they’re wildly successful (spoiler: they’re commies, so they won’t be), the Chinese are not even going to be gaining ground with the 2025 plan.