01-26-2017, 10:11 PM
Quote:China's artificial islands are only a couple miles long. A reasonable size nuke would disperse most of the sand back into the waves.
Would it? All of it? To what depth? Disperse it where, into the atmosphere saturated with radiation? I don't think you've thought this through.
Quote:A US supercarrier won't sink from a single conventional hit - even some WWII carriers took multiple kamikaze hits and survived - plus it has an entire task force and air wing to protect it. In a conventional sea battle, the Chinese navy wouldn't get close.
Claim not borne by wargames run by the Navy under all but the most restrictive (read: unrealistic) circumstances. Nor by experience during WWII. It's not like the Chinese Navy would have to close in and fire broadsides, it's all about missiles (launched from subs, small attack craft, destroyers, planes, and land-based launchers, etc.) these days, and subject to the salvo combat model derivation of Lanchester's Square Law.
This is not to say that the Chinese are invincible either, just that one has to consider the reality of modern weapons, industrial capacity, and local geography (Chinese are unlikely to fight out in the open Pacific vs staying largely within the first island chain where they can rely on mainland-based air and missile assets) when talking about gaming out naval conflict.
Nothing is invincible. A single Exocet missile sunk a British destroyer during the Falklands, an aircraft carrier is made of the same things on a larger scale, and missiles are much cheaper than aircraft carriers, you can afford to waste many to sink one.
That's why the US Military doesn't talk about sending carriers INTO the Taiwan Strait like they did back in '96 in the event of a crisis. And the carrier wing doesn't have the range it used to, either.
Quote:The laws of supply and demand apply to currency exchange rates along with everything else. If China dumps a massive supply of dollars onto the market by selling them, they become cheaper relative to other currencies and relative to goods. That means everything else becomes more expensive in terms of dollars - inflation.
Depends on buyers as well as sellers, dude. The Chinese have been offloading Treasuries for a couple of years now, their holdings are down to $1.12 trillion, less than half that of the Federal Reserve. They're not even the largest FOREIGN holder of US debt now, the Japanese are.