How bout the bays opening?
Project 22160 patrol boat
Henry Jones
Juan King
Is there even a future for surface vessels? It looks like all their jobs can be taken over by submarines at lower risk of getting missiled.
Luke Hernandez
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Isaiah Campbell
A sub can generally not see what's going on on the surface (tiny horizon) or in air. There need to be ships on the surface that can serve as small interfaces between submarine-air-surface domains.
Nathaniel Wood
I wouldn't put it beyond the Chinese to use a small fleet of commercial ships as missile bait/ablative armour around their carrier groups. Memes aside that layer of cargo ships should eat a few million dollars worth of missile (at least) and buy the carrier group enough time to be worthwhile. America would need to authorise nuclear strikes on naval targets to counter that, and I can't see that happening.
Fair point, but with a decent enough satellite or airborne recon you could direct the subs and their missiles from their data.
Joseph Perry
Only if they're close enough to the surface to be visible with a recon aircraft. Microwaves don't play well with deep water.
William Russell
With what?
US nukes come in two flavors, ICBMs, antique AGM-86B and "dumb" bombs.
ICBM poses the risk a full retaliation of Russia and China because that's what happen when you fire them unannounced, AGM-86B W80 warhead on max setting 150kt means it has to come within 2km which put it well within Chinese AA range (AGM-86B is a fatter, bigger and slower missile than a Tomahawk no modern Chinese/Russian AA has any trouble shooting down, in a non saturation attack).
Well B-61 it is then, a wave of F-18 suicide bombers.
Easton Garcia
So, what are the chances that a Sino-American war begins with Chinese troops bursting forth from hundreds of offloading container ships and capturing every Pacific port in a matter of minutes?
Leo Lee
Given that Yellowstone was looking a lot more yellow than normal last time I went, I'd say they've done that already; they're sleeper troops that are one Sky Net message away from swarming the ports and beating opposition to death with massed selfie sticks.
Ayden Long