Lt. Cmdr Dudley W. Morton would metaphorically turn over in his grave.

Perish the thought!

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Sunday, July 20, 2025 - 08:13 pm: Edit

Other than the current naming convention, using States, I also find Wahoo a more historical and fitting name for the new sub....

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Sunday, July 20, 2025 - 10:33 pm: Edit

The Navy has a bunch of new submarines being named after historic WW2 submarines.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Sunday, July 20, 2025 - 10:37 pm: Edit

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that Submarines had been named after fish (and I believe other ocean animals) until the Los Angeles class. Those were named after cities as part of an effort to get representatives from those cities to back the funding for those subs.

(IIRC, when the subject was being debated, Admiral Rickover was quoted as saying, "Fish don't vote!")

Could this be a return to that tradition?

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Sunday, July 20, 2025 - 11:10 pm: Edit

Partly a return to tradition and also to honor famous WW2 subs.

The 4 boats are Barb, Tang, Wahoo, and Silversides.

The Virginias have also taken on state names/battleships:

Utah, Oklahoma, Arizona are future ships.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Monday, July 21, 2025 - 02:44 am: Edit

In Sweden the capital ships are named after provinces. That used to be Destroyers in the past, but is the Submarines now. I figured there was similar system for the USN.
A pity, the names "Sea Serpent", "Dragon", "The Shark", "Sea-lion" are much more fitting for subs.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, July 21, 2025 - 09:16 am: Edit

Back to China, Fox News interviewed Gordon Chiang, (a regular Fox News contributor.)

The interesting part of the interview was a discussion on Chinese Nationals buying homes in the U.S. (largest concentrations seem to be aCA, NY, GA.)

Average price of Homes is $719,000 USD.

The thing is, the Chinese National Government has set a limit of $50,000.00. USD$ per year.

It appears that these transfer of cash is in direct violation of Chinese law.

This is not the first time wealth transfers surged out of China, but it has been years since the previous event.

Just another sign that not all is well in the Communist nation.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Monday, July 21, 2025 - 11:46 am: Edit

A Bangladeshi Chengdu F-7BGI crashed into a college campus today; at least 19 are dead and over a hundred injured. The jet was on a training mission but developed unspecified mechanical difficulties.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, July 21, 2025 - 12:07 pm: Edit

FYI, the F-7BGI was/is a Chinese copy of the Russian MIG-21, which dates back 1966 (depending on which variant of MIG-21 you are looking at.)

As far as I can recall, production of that model Chinese copy F-7BGI ended with the last unit of that order, which was years ago.

China had serious problems with reliability rates on aircraft and in particular, Chinese copies of Russian jet engines.

This is not the first crash Of a China copy of a foreign aircraft Design.

By Eddie E Crutchfield (Librarian101) on Monday, July 21, 2025 - 06:25 pm: Edit

The whole thing with naming Subs changed when the first Polaris subs came out and were named after great Americans, SSNs at time were still named after fish. Then then confusion began, carriers were no longer named after famous ships, but not so in some cases famous Americans, Battle ships went away so we needed to name something after the states, the boomers. Cruisers went away, kinda, So briefly nuclear cruisers were states(Arkansas), but since carriers were not named after battles or ships the new cruisers, Ticonderoga class were named after battles and only God knows what comes next, but he cant stop laughing long enough to let us know.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, July 21, 2025 - 06:31 pm: Edit

I think we need a Nuclear Amphibian Battleship named... "TREVOR".

That's a Get Smart reference (the Nuclear Amphibian Battleship, not its name), for those of you unfamiliar with 60s spy spoof sitcoms.

By Michael F Guntly (Ares) on Monday, July 21, 2025 - 08:02 pm: Edit

Well, would you believe this?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, July 21, 2025 - 08:21 pm: Edit

Ukraine hit Moscow with 21 drones, causing multiple fires and greatly embarrassing Putin.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Monday, July 21, 2025 - 09:17 pm: Edit

Respectfully, Alan, I've (frequently) been told that if I have to explain a joke, it (and I quote) "Missed by THAT much..."

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Tuesday, July 22, 2025 - 09:21 am: Edit

"“Have you ever seen a drone drop a GRENADE?” a now-deleted post earlier today from the official U.S. Army account on X read. “Watch Soldiers from @7thATC [7th Army Training Command], the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine [JMTG-U] and @173rdAbnBde [the 173rd Airborne Brigade] execute the Army’s first live-grenade drop from an unmanned aircraft system in Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany.”

Source: The WAR ZONE

Yes, we have seen it before. It's news to me but apparently already by the ISIS in Iraq 2016. (I would have guessed the Ukrainians were first.)
I can only speculate but I think few understood the implications of the improvised weapons used by terrorists for conventional warfare, and thus reacted slowly. Still, someone clearly had no clue and posted the embarrassing tweet. Weird, in these days.

Apparently the grenade dropping drone cost 15,000$
to booth.

The only consolation for the US army is that the chinese may THINK they are ahead, but they too, like all big armies, are not very nimble in peace time.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, July 22, 2025 - 12:47 pm: Edit

For more than a hundred years, the Chinese military has not inspired much respect or confidence, exception the troops personally trained by U.S. Army General “”Vinegar Joe” Stilwell.

(See CHina, Burma, India theater official History, United States Army in World War 2)

In 1979, China invaded Vietnam. Got their butts kicked before they ignominiously retreated hoping the Vietnamese army wouldn’t follow them home to Peking.

It is very well documented that much of the high technology the Chinese claim to have, was stolen from western nations (including the United States.)

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Tuesday, July 22, 2025 - 01:14 pm: Edit

I know I'm just a dumb civvie who doesn't know much of anything about the military, but there is one aspect of the PRC's PLA that has me very concerned; the sheer manpower the CCP leadership may throw at a target.

IIRC, there was a famous general who said, "Quantity has a quality all its own."

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Tuesday, July 22, 2025 - 01:35 pm: Edit

You can't human wave across 110 miles of ocean.

If the USNavy can be driven from the area, then the Republic of China (AKA Taiwan) might be vulnerable to invasion, but the strength on the beaches will still be logistics/transport limited, and Taiwan has an army and landing boats are vulnerable.

Ukraine would make me very reluctant to try my luck with Chinese equipment vs. western equipment on anything like an even field.

If I were the CCCP leadership and seriously considering trying Taiwan, I'd either go much hotter with India or invade Vietnam again first as a test run to check that my military is actually any good. Vietnam has the "advantage" that you can practice amphibious operatins along the coast and get some naval action in too, so I'd probably go with that as the test run (US probably won't go hot to defend Vietnam, and you can practice most of the things you'll need to do for Taiwan against someone who'll accept a truce if/when you offer it whereas India might actually try to grab some territory if they were winning a border war).

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Tuesday, July 22, 2025 - 02:22 pm: Edit

China has been buying, then getting production rights to Russian equipment for decades....
As bad as Russian Jet engines have been, China still hasn't been able to reverse engineer and upgrade them to the point they feel they are close to western ones.....

Jeff Wile,
The troops Stilwell trained were a fairly small group, not under Communist control/command...
Those are the ones that fielded the military when the Nationalist got to Taiwan....

By Randy Green (Hollywood750) on Tuesday, July 22, 2025 - 03:47 pm: Edit

China's naval capacity and shipbuilding capacity is very much my chief concern against them. Chinese shipbuilders now collectively produce over 50% of the merchant tonnage produced GLOBALLY, and is more than 230 times the capacity that we can currently produce. Doubtless, (and plan to) they can convert that capacity to military tonnage quickly.

Of course, their shipbuilding capacity is heavily subsidized by the state. No need to worry about profit, when the state dictates.

The quickest way to defeat, is to underestimate your enemy.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, July 22, 2025 - 08:04 pm: Edit

Randy Green:

Not all is well with China or the military preparations they have undertaken.

Over a year ago, the Chinese government announced that they had cancelled the next scheduled aircraft carrier.

Given the published reports concerning an inability to correct a slight tendency of the EMALs system intended to assist aircraft launches to destroy any aircraft that uses said EMALs… the only reason to cancel a carrier that was already laid down and partially completed would be because they couldn’t fix the EMALs.

The fact that they haven’t announced a new design may mean that they haven’t figured out what went wrong yet.

Also, it should be noted that the Chinese economy is in terrible condition, and unless they can settle on a solution to the tariff thing, major cuts to government subsidies may be instore.

On another issue, there are now sporadic reports that The various “Ghost Cities” of China are now seeing demolition of buildings built over the last ten years, and never finished.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Tuesday, July 22, 2025 - 10:43 pm: Edit

Leaving out the technical failures of Carriers and the A/C on them....
It's doubtful, China has the experience/capability to operate sustained carrier operations ....
Have to wonder, how far from the coast would they actually allow a battlegroup to sail....

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Wednesday, July 23, 2025 - 06:32 am: Edit

Not sure how relevant carriers are in major power conflict in the drone era. They would seem to be floating ducks.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Wednesday, July 23, 2025 - 08:29 am: Edit

Liaoning's group steamed out to a point roughly a thousand miles northeast of Guam last month while conducting exercises, Bolo, so they seem to be gaining confidence in longer cruises. Like Randy said, we'd do well not to underestimate them.

By Jack Bohn (Jackbohn) on Wednesday, July 23, 2025 - 08:30 am: Edit

Hasn't the use of a carrier always depended on putting it where the enemy planes, later, missiles, now, drones, ain't? Then have the carrier group screen it from ships, planes, missiles, and drones that may happen to be there?