Guess what is the second most powerful navy in the world (and is a very close ally of the most powerful navy in the world?). Japan's "maritime self defense force".
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Worlds most powerful navy VS hundreds of Chinese fishing boats harassing you over multiple years
Your move hegemony.
Key word is "harassing". Like gnats or mosquitos. A nuisance, not a threat.
Plus starting a shooting war with China isn't in our best interest, yet. If we ever get there the fishing boats will make exactly zero difference in the outcome.
I wasn’t making a serious comparison. But it is a critical problem for modern geopolitics for which Navy’s play a major role in.
Paramilitia Fishing boats are like the local insurgents in Afghani/Iraqi cities. They are still there when big expensive American boats leave the other 99% of the year. They don’t provide real military prowess but they blend in with the locals (meaning hard to permanently bully out of neighbourhoods) and constantly apply pressure tactics and surveillance resources that benefit the parent resistance org.
It also critical keeps their flags waving 24/7.
South Korea still makes all of the heaviest commercial vessels in the world, does it not? They're next door neighbors. I don't think China really wants anyone switching from commercial to military production.
Not sure the US is eager to get into a kinetic conflict with China, which actually has a larger navy, and more importantly, is in their own front yard rather than 10,000km from home.
The US has a large naval presence in the area, not least the ships based in Japan.
No-one wants a shooting war, but the US is eager to keep China contained, and enforcing the EEZ rules serves that interest.
> China, which actually has a larger navy
The US has a far more advanced navy (a large proportion of Chinese ships are patrol ships without much tactical significance) and many more aircraft carriers. Aircraft are extremely important in naval conflicts.
China doesn't need aircraft carriers though. They aren't trying to fight wars 10,000km from home. They have hundreds of air bases in China.
The US literally can't fight a war 10,000 km from "home" (a friendly country with military bases) because we have an enormous number of bases.
Most importantly, we have tons of bases in Japan and South Korea[1].
1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-mili...
One task force out of Japan is probably insufficient against the entire PLAN
> (a large proportion of Chinese ships are patrol ships without much tactical significance)
If each one is armed with a few anti-ship missiles, a swarm attack from many different directions might be a real threat to a carrier group. You either waste a ton of ordinance taking them all out, or some portion are able to launch against you.
There was a genuine video put up in the last three months and then pulled of a Chinese demonstration of a "swarm navy" deployable from an AI drone unmanned carrier mother craft.
It's a serious threat as everything is low low cost and big on bang.
The US would be looking at defending itself from 100+ unmanned cigar boats each packed with enough explosives to make a serious dent at water level and all interoperating like a flock of birds, some drawing fire while others push through.
As Churchill once said very wisely about war and optimism over certain tactics. "all things are always in motion simultaneously". In other words, we can't really know at all whether China's naval techniques, technologies or tactics will work well against U.S. naval power, or whether the opposite will happen, until the two actually fight for real on a major scale.
With that said, nothing prevents the U.S from imitating any tactics (including swarming by tiny boats and ships) that the Chinese use effectively against the U.S and its allies in a real naval war.
To name a very current example of my first point above in action 24/7, just look at the Ukraine/Russia war today. It has evolved in ways that very few people could have predicted just before or right after it started, with surprises on both sides.
To highlight how the same worked at the beginning of the second world war, partially prompting Churchill's own later phrase: the air defenses of the UK were thought adequate against enemies in 1939, until they were proven to not at all be so, and only improved through very deadly trial and error by 1943. France in 1940 was thought by nearly all powers to be more than a match against a German invasion (and indeed materially it was, on paper and stationary on the ground), until it was proven to not at all work as expected in just 6 weeks. All things always shift simultaneously in ways that can confound any expectation, particularly in situations as ferociously dynamic as large wars.
We need swarm defenses stat. Being able to overwhelm air defenses with a swarm attack seriously defangs air defenses.
Yawn.
China itself is the larger aircraft carrier. They also have advanced rocketry, which may render the other ones obsolete.
It’d come down to tech. The us probably has a leg up today. China being able to field new tech faster would pull ahead in a protracted conflict or one that starts in five or ten years.
US Navy is stationed closer than the Chinese navy. The US’s seventh fleet is permanently based out of Yokosuka Japan. Only US fleet not based out of somewhere in the US.
The fifth fleet is based out of Bahrain.
Not true.
Besides 7th in Japan, there's 6th fleet is in Italy and 5th in Bahrain.
So really half the US Navy is always stationed overseas with the first fleet being inactive.
Most of the ships aren’t ocean going vessels. They’re coastal ships.
PRC has more proper blue water surface and subsurface combatants than USN currently and has for years. Many of which more modern. Last years count of "ocean going" / blue water capable is like ~350 PLAN vs ~300 USN. PRC also has a fuckload of "coastal" ships, but at this point even Chinese coast guard has sizable blue water fleet (retired PLAN ships go there).
US still has more displacement via super carriers, better subsurface and larger replenishment fleet to enable more persistent blue water ops. Incidentally PLA is rapidly building up replenishment capabilities, but ultimately most of fleet will stick around PRC shores, with some moving into IndoPac for SLOC security or Africa for anti piracy. But currenly PLAN has MORE "ocean going" vessels than USN, and gap is expected to widen to PLAN 400+ wheras USN ship building lucky to maintain 300 by end of decade.
If you build hundreds/thousands of boats with little to no effectiveness to prop up your numbers for the domestic public then it's easy to claim large navy sizes.
My previous comment was with respect to actual effectiveness. China has no significant blue water navy.
> little to no effectiveness to prop up your numbers for the domestic public
Citation needed. This is borderline beyond "useful idiot" hot take because even DoD propaganda/analysis or defense wonks do not allege this, and they allege a lot of dumb shit with respect to PRC modernization. Western assesment of PLAN in last few years, with respect to blue water surface combatants, being commissioned at tremendous rates, is one branch where recent DoD writings / analysis has no substantial tech/hardware criticisms, relegating to, their hardware good but maybe software (training/jointness) lacking.
Also to repeat "Many of which more modern". PLAN's blue water surface combatants built since 2010s are considered on par, if not superior with equivalent USN platforms in terms of systems and armaments, including latest flights. Certainly more than the significant portion of USN's aging hulls, many of which are not modernized to latest tech and are held together by duct tape / soon to retire. Like USN isn't going to have anything comparable to a type 55 for another 10+ years in DDG(X). It's hard to overstake the amount of USN program/procurement fuckups in the past decades and ongoing state of US ship building that enabled PRC to catch up in both quality and quantity. Majority of which concentrated in PRC backyard, on new hulls with better maintenance and readiness rates, that widens regional blue water naval power gap even further.