While the article is well-written and certainly of interest, the speculation is very restrained. Any military anticipating engagement with China’s must both expect and muster the unexpected(Sun Tzu).

As a few commenters have suggested, when a hardware war with China becomes unavoidable, and our CVNs are positioned in harm’s way, how does the U.S. protect them from today’s straw man, the DF-21 ballistic missile?

Multiple choice answers are relatively few, and any hardware possibilities among them seem rather questionable. Let’s not bother to list the esoteric, however.

Given that flagships make the juiciest, floating targets visible to the naked eye, and given that the presence of admirals makes them more delectable, soft solutions may boil down to who can we make certain is also aboard that the PRC would not wish to make a collateral victim.

While it may be safe to rule out the Dalai Lama, China knows exactly who the best candidates are. Oil trading partners spring to mind.

On a slow news day they can still trot out the film about 8000 meals on a carrier.

How has the Navy babboozled the defense budget in the era of essentially no naval threats to continue to hog the budget. Its time to review the Key West agreement.

This whole system could be packaged in a container to help guide the merchant ships through the pirate infested regions and straights. The organizations that should be most interested in this advanced warning technology application are the shipping ‘Insurance’ companies. Fore warned is fore armed. A merchant vessel with adequate warning of an approaching small craft could send out a timely distress signal ‘RRR’ and turn out the crew to man the fire hoses. Any naval vessel from an International Patrol could launch their helicopter, manned or unmanned and close the gap.

The system of world trade is built on fewer large tanker and cargo vessels than were sunk in the Second World War. It is to the advantage of all international trading partners to have clear, safe, and open shipping lanes in order to move commerce. It is our problem that there are less American Flag vessels carrying the trade – if we can set up a secure defense of the American Flag vessels by use of blimp borne radar and satellite links to central monitoring stations, then we provide the technological leadership. For an International Flotilla, the primary advantage would be to actually doing some OJT while out showing their flag to the rim countries.

If an American Flag vessel is equipped with an airborne radar and high speed link the response forces in the area, other merchants may just want to sail nearby to be within the protective radar bubble. Other than that, an International Patrol is the Politically Correct solution. China would be more than happy to join in for really effective Naval training.

History indicates that China is mainly concerned about China and holding on to power in a land of billions as they develop economically to the Trading Tiger that they should have been for the last 50 years. To trot out the “fear factor” because they want to build up a Naval Force that would be appropriate for their coastal waters is the tactic of Eisenhower”s “Military Industrial Complex”. We can’t justify expansion of our Navy unless we can claim to have a well armed ‘enemy’.

Aircraft Carriers are easy to find and sink with cruise missile technology, submarines, long range stealth bombers, and good old naval mines laid clandestinely in a handful of select ports. As long as you have a High Value Target which you make the ‘lynch pin’ of your whole Naval Strategy, someone out there will be working on a method to penetrate the defensive screen and strike the HVT. The reason that Aircraft Carriers are a threat is that they can project power from the sea. The reason that they are easy to cripple is that they are full of AV fuel, munitions, aircraft, electronics, and power propulsion plants – i.e. they are really large targets just waiting for something to go wrong at the wrong place and wrong time.

It is time to stop thinking about 1940′s (20th century) Naval Victories with Aircraft Carriers (not unlike WWI Battleship fleets) and determine if we really want to project force into the China Seas, and why. If someone put a Carrier Battle group in the Gulf of Mexico, would we not consider that a threat to the security of the United States. China as every right to consider the South and East China Sea as part of their Homeland Defensive area.