| Submit your comments on this article | |
| China-Japan-Koreas | |
| China 'Has More Warships than U.S.' | |
| 2010-12-17 | |
| China overtakes the U.S. in the number of warships, a British weekly said, quoting a report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The Economist on Tuesday said the IISS "reckons China now has more warships than America, which long possessed the biggest fleet. As it can be hard to distinguish a warship from other boats, the IISS uses its own definition of what counts and what does not." According to the IISS, Russia had the largest fleet from 1971 to 1996, the U.S. from 1997 to 2006, and now China since 2008. "This striking trend is yet another manifestation of the rise of China," the weekly added. The Economist predicted the gap will widen further and added that there is a limit to the U.S. ability to increase the number of its warships, considering that production cost has soared due to the state-of-the-art technology needed.
| |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #6 not* something to ignore |
| Posted by: Uleatch Dribble8106 2010-12-17 16:04 |
| #5 The T-34-85 Model was the right balance of cheap and deadly and had great mobility. Quantity can be misleading but it's something to ignore. |
| Posted by: Uleatch Dribble8106 2010-12-17 16:04 |
| #4 If you check and if I recall correctly, even on December 7th, 1941, the US Navy had more tonnage and ships both sliding down the construction ramps and in production than the Japanese. A look at the Japanese carriers showed a lot of 'one of's rather than standardized models. Japanese industry was never geared for the long war while American war capacity had been prepped for since the '20s by the Navy and War Departments in a series of pre-war plans and programs. |
| Posted by: P2kontheroad 2010-12-17 12:39 |
| #3 I'm still a big advocate of quantity, as well as quality. We have about maxed out quality, much like the Germans did in WWII, their boffins even proposing a "tungsten cannon" as the best possible quality artillery weapon, though it would use all the known tungsten in the world right then just to make one gun. Instead, the US chose to make many of its warships "cheap and cheerful", cranking them out in such volumes that Japan's high quality navy was overwhelmed by sheer numbers of US ships. Though are ships were not bad, it was numbers that won the day. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-12-17 11:10 |
| #2 It's like the CIA counting tubes rather than capability in adjudging a military. Hugo can amass a large number of tanks and planes, but could he actually use them against anyone but his own people. The question is 'projection'. What size fleets can a country put beyond its territorial waters and sustain them. |
| Posted by: P2kontheroad 2010-12-17 09:26 |
| #1 True, but less, less, less isn't a great default policy decision either. |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2010-12-17 09:11 |