Trying to keep my reasoning succinct in order to avoid writing a wall of text:
The soviets were geographically blocked from this being an option
Similarly for Vietnam for different reasons
Cuba doesn’t have the option of dedicating the requisite amount resources(and has the misfortune of being an island next to the most powerful current naval power)
China has the geography to become a great naval power. Sure, it doesn’t have both coasts. It has land connections that led to the Silk Road being a thing on the other, possibly a greater advantage.
They are building up militarily, and seem to be advancing commercial maritime pursuits on this well.
Thoughts?
everything you said was well put, thanks for the thoughtful response
I would like to add that China does as part of its naval defense strategy includes land-sea missiles and anti ship missiles from various sources, which are supposed to have the capabilities to destroy US ships who are within missile firing range of them and might also deny air craft carriers plenty of places to be. However they are expensive (not as expensive as bigger naval units) and lack active capabilities.
They have different ranges, but 1500-2000km with super sonic sounds are common:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YJ-21 or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21#DF-21D
Here is a map to visualize the ranges: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/PLA_ballistic_missiles_range.jpg
The US tried to develop counter measures, but the counter measures are remaining a bit experimental.
forgive my ignorance, but how would they target ones like the JL-2 and above?
aircraft carriers and the like are big, but that is a hell of a distance to fire at something around the size of a football pitch that can also moveI think that's just a chart of different ballistic missile ranges. The anti-ship missiles are the innermost red line, and the longer range ones would be ICBMs. Looking it up to confirm, the JL-2 is a sub-launched nuclear ICBM.
stalin took naval power seriously, krushchev was the one who presided the shift to submarine-based power. there was a very concerted effort from the late 40s-early 50s to build a blue-water navy that could contest the USN. there was also a lot of effort before the Great Patriotic War placed towards building capital ships, theres a reasonably long list of abandoned projects and ships caused by the barbarossa.
That’s tragic tbh. Yet another krushchev L. I had no clue.
Kruschev was 100% correct here. Submarines are the future of conventional naval combat. Aircraft carriers had their hayday in WWII but are now giant cruise missile/tactical nuke targets. They're still good for bullying nations without a missile defense system which is why the USN has so many of them.
CVs were only the undisputed premier capital ships in WW2 from 1943 at best. I know this position doesn't make a lot of sense given the historiographical weight Taranto, Midway Pearl Harbour etc. hold, and I'm about to go to bed so I'm not going to elaborate much but consider a few points:
- CVs were useless in inclement weather and night operations
- The majority of BB losses to naval aviation were on the Japanese side who had infamously useless AAA systems. Famous examples had confounding factors - Taranto was against stationary targets, Hiei had her rudder jammed, Bismarck and Force Z had malfunctioning AAA systems. The only BB losses that came solely to naval aviation were Yamato and Musashi, both of which, well you can read the order of battle for both and just realise that the odds were so stacked it wasn't anything that actually says anything about naval aviation's virtues.
- The fact of naval combat at the time is that decisive battles between ships were rare because combat ranges had grown much faster than fire control was able to keep up. This implies therefore that CVs had value for being a more reliable way of sinking tonnage (BBs aren't shooting anything half the time!), but as established before CVs weren't sinking major surface assets by themselves with any regularity, certainly not much greater than BBs were doing.
(Scharnhorst, Bismarck, Kirishima, Fusou to BBs, Yamato, Musashi to CVs, assuming the criteria of a loss attributable solely to either surface warfare or naval aviation. Plenty of BBs were lost to naval aviation in port from CV strikes, but there were only two cases of CVs sinking underway, combat-ready BBs by themselves.)
Even in WW2, which we consider to be the heyday of CVs, the work they were actually doing was largely sinking lighter ships, providing intelligence and air cover or sinking other CVs. BBs remained something that naval aviation struggled with without support for most of the war. Why am I so focussed on the BB - CV relationship? Because the narrative around CV dominance is largely linked to this idea that they directly replaced BBs, which largely stems from a USN centric view of the war.
BB's and CV's are both floating coffins if any conventional naval warfare was to happen any time soon.
BBs are irrelevant to modern naval warfare, but yes I agree that neither are particularly valuable in the age of guided missiles.
Wasn't it some American navy guy who said something along the line of 'there are two types of ships: targets and subs'?
i dont mean it in the sense that krushchev didn't care about naval power it's just that in the stalin era there was the idea that they could challenge the usn through conventional naval power of their own 1. there's a krushchev quote where he said that 'we don't need aircraft carriers, only the americans needed that type of ship'. kuznetsov for example got sacked by krushchev mostly because he was such a great advocate of a substantial soviet surface fleet.
1though the assumption was always that they would be operating along with land-based air coverage.
Not going to lie, the context you added (which I am thankful for) makes it even more damning.short sighted as fuck
The USSR could never compete with the combined NATO surface fleets. (USN+RN alone was massive) Simply not enough resources could be possibly dedicated to it, the Atlantic powers had been building ships for centuries. Submarines were the right call for the USSR, there it was possible to achieve an asymmetric advantage.
This is what Khrushchev (who I admit was usually a hare-brained oaf, but he made sense here) said about it: "The Americans had a mighty carrier fleet - no one could deny that. I'll admit I felt the nagging desire to have some in our own navy, but we couldn't afford to build them. They were simply beyond our means. Besides, with a strong submarine force, we felt able to sink the American carriers if it came to war"
from a purely nerd perspective khrushchev cancelling all those projects was a tragedy but the reality was that most of the projected stalin era surface fleet was a pipe dream. that said, the modern surface ships the soviet navy actually completed right after the war were all very solid designs that were more or less on par with their peers.
I'm missing something -- how is it short sighted? Aircraft carriers are great if you want to attack a limited opponent on the other side of the globe, but if you're not attacking (or if your opponent can reach your carriers with subs/nukes/missiles), what's the use?
Subs support your nuclear deterrent and let you attack shipping, which seems like plenty for national defense.
The Soviet Union took naval power seriously. It just had 4 major areas to defend which meant it was stretched thin.
Elsewhere you mention power projection. The SU wanted to project power to the Baltic, the Black Sea, The Far east, and the Arctic in more or less that order. In all cases distances are small and land basing aircraft generally better. Any projection to Cuba or other allies could be done via subs or a pocket flotilla.
Similarly, China wants to protect power in the South China sea and achieve sea dominance. That's longer ranges and a bigger ask, but China only has to do that and maintain self defence, so the costs are lower overall.
The NATO concept of US Carrier groups or Aus/UK style "We can land the equivalent of two upgunned Marine Expediditionary forces anywhere in the world in a month" is not generally what you want as a nation without hegemony.
Supporting:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1pvrlo/how_powerful_was_the_soviet_navy/
in modern history, imperialist forces have traditionally held naval superiority. all AES states have started from a position of weakness (NONE were even regional hegemons at the time of their founding). but after 70 years, the PLA Navy has twice as many deployable ships as the US Navy. the PLA ships are smaller, but imo the warfare of today favors smaller ships due to missile technology. China far outpaces amerika in most science/technology and DF missiles can sink any amerikan ship (even the “floating city” aircraft carriers); any missile defense system is useless against these bc true hypersonic missiles (like the ones produced by China and Russia) are highly maneuverable and so far have not been intercepted.
amerika still has superiority is in the air. but considering how unreliable, untested, and built-for-inferior-forces the f-35s and new f-18s are, it’s likely China’s air forces can stand up to amerika. also it seems unmanned air is the modern MO, and i have no idea how China compares to amerika in that regard.
in sum, navies are very difficult to build and maintain. but the PLA Navy has grown a lot in the past couple decades. and its likely there are advantages held by the PLAN that are unknown as the US Navy is always being deployed, thus observed by all, while the PLAN has not been observed on the global stage
im also typing this after drinking more alcohol than ive drank in like 2 years so i probably made some errors
drunk geopolposting is one of the most powerful types, thank you for your service o7
thoseare some cool points of context to keep in mind, thanks. Also very drunk lol.
It is probably important to keep in mind that they are twoi very different navies. China's navy is great for self-defense purposes, but also not good for power projection. Difference in priorities. I think a good sign of "if china ever decides to spread revolution" is to watch the navy.
good point! it appears their goal rn isnt to spread revolution (yet) but to be able to win a war of western aggression. their operations could feasibly extend to the outer edge of Oceania, giving them plenty of buffer when the west inevitably starts their final war. and China’s type 004 aircraft carrier currently in production is about the size of amerikan supercarriers but will potentially carry more aircrafts. ik i said smaller ships are better in modern war but this is the one exception. sure, carriers arent near as important as they were in ww2 but they are still necessary for a modern navy. imo aircraft carriers are the ww2 battleships of the 21st century— when ww2 started the great power militaries quickly discovered their battleships werent near as important as they were in ww1 due to advances in aviation. modern advances in drones, hypersonic missiles, and submarines could mean these carriers play a background/support role in ww3
i did consider this, but i decided to post that claim anyways. my line of thought was that japan had usurped hegemonic status for russia’s Asian sphere of influence. but ur right, they retained a high level of influence in their historical region
I think its the only one that has has the resourses to be able to, the USSR had a decent navy but it face the challenges of the old russian empire like not having a good warm water port and with the sino-sovet split and the iranian revolution it lost any change to have a good one with a land connection.
vietnam, north korea, cuba, angola, mozambique and others had the same challenge of being somewhat small and being to underdevelopt to be able to focus on the naval power they would have being able to proyect.
China historically was the biggest naval power during the ming dynasty, they have access to many good warm water ports and they have a large population,with the large investments of the Mao era in industry and the access to the world market with deng they were able to develop themselfs out of being a semifeudal nation.
Nowdays the chinese navy is the biggest one in the world but its mostly trading ships and not military ones, current military built up is probably a response to their big weakness they have in the malacca strait which is the most important shipping lane in the world and it under patrol of the US navy and if it were to close it would hit china really hard in the economic side hence why they puss the new silk road so much.
current china strategy seems to follow Mahan's naval power theory with the importance of sea power, but also the Heartland theory with the current big push for the new silk road
That’s a comprehensive and thought out answer. Thank you.
I was under the impression the USSR had a very respectable navy by the 80s. They just didn't have the time or resources to make a world class one in the 20s and 30s for WW2, whereas China will have a powerful navy in time for WW3.
edit: Also the Soviet Navy did have some interesting things that the US didn't have like nuclear powered missile cruisers and titanium submarines
In terms of submarines they probably(definitely did at certain points) lead the world. Knowing their missile technology they probably did have better missile cruisers by virtue of better missiles. The strength of a navy is its ability to project force, while subs and cruisers are critical to a peer on peer conflict they don’t project well.
The Soviet navy was more aimed at defense especially for their allies who were under threat of western invasion( They literally stopped the US from invading India because India was stopping genocide in east Pakistan). There was never too much point in building a navy comparable to marine powers like the US or the UK.
China didn't need a huge military fleet because tensions were not too high until a few years ago.
has been working towards minimising china's dependence on the west especially for military purposes so that's why they would probably aim to protect their own shipping lanes themselves.Nautically trolled by the Philippine Plate, having encircled the East China Sea and South China Sea with islands connected to archpelagos that distinct nations formed on.
