Your premise is comical. Any war that involves destroying a US carrier and killing thousands of soldiers in doing so, will move to a nuclear stand-off almost immediately thereafter. China and Russia have always understood that. For China, the ability to sink a US carrier only matters in instances of absolute war, where hundreds of millions of people will die. Being able to sink a carrier if you're a major military competitor to the US, is low on your list of actual concerns in the end (the threat is worth drastically more than the actual ability; if you use the ability and succeed, it's WW3). Carriers are for force projection, some intimidation, and fighting nations not named China or Russia.
Since we happen to be talking about sinking carriers and the possibility of nuclear war, I thought I'd mention a video that brings this scenario to life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VZ3LGfSMhA
It's a fictional BBC news segment covering a "serious incident" between NATO and Russian forces.
"Tensions between NATO and Russia have been growing over the past few years, and the continuing military build-up in the Baltic region is increasing concerns that a serious conflict might be a real possibility. This dramatization depicts one possible scenario. We hope that it shows how fragile our world is, and how quickly it can be changed by military and political decision-makers who do not speak for the tens of millions of people whose lives they may well destroy."
It's only tangentially related to the conversation, but it's such an excellent work of art that I can't help plugging it. The authors appear to be anonymous, which is interesting. If you were affected by the movie Threads or any other nuclear fiction, you might find this video similarly powerful.
I read through those, including some of the referenced articles. My opinion is that the DF-21 is overhyped, as is the vulnerability of CVBGs to satellite detection. I'm on my phone right now, so I'll circle back to details later.
The best toys are not really widely known or battle tested. However, consider people have had a long time to prepare for aircraft carriers without a direct conflict between major powers and aircraft carriers are easily tracked in real time by satellites. Further, they might as well be sitting still in terms of a high mach (AKA 10+) missiles.
PS: Remember, we where doing optical recognition for missiles twenty years ago. So, reasonably close is going to be a hit most of the time.
> The best toys are not really widely known or battle tested.
I know, I worked on some of them.
> However, consider people have had a long time to prepare for aircraft carriers without a direct conflict between major powers and aircraft carriers are easily tracked in real time by satellites.
As I mentioned in another reply, it isn't as easy as some people seem to think to find and track a CVBG by satellite. As I also mentioned, I'll go into more detail when I'm not on my phone.
> Further, they might as well be sitting still in terms of a high mach (AKA 10+) missiles.
I'm not aware of any hypersonic cruise missiles in that range, and those that approach it have relatively short ranges. I would need to look at this further.
> PS: Remember, we where doing optical recognition for missiles twenty years ago. So, reasonably close is going to be a hit most of the time.
Longer, I believe. Image recognition for terminal guidance is not foolproof, though. Plus, as with any weapons system the countermeasures groups have not been sitting still.
In terms of satellite tracking, even 10 meter resolution is enough to vastly reduce the search space. This can then be further refined though various means. Further, the search space is generally limited to how far they can travel from the last known location and they are not that fast.
But the real problem is more basic. They are very high value targets an can be taken out for vastly less money than they cost to produce.
If your tactical analysis involves nuclear weapons, there's no point in doing a tactical analysis, because most everything dies. Everyone knows this, which is why everyone is still building conventional weapons.
Why would China be working on conventional ship-to-ship missiles if they expected a nuclear war? They'd just use ICBMs / long-range missiles.
China likely fields the largest and most powerful military industrial complex in the world, or at least one of the largest. It makes sense to use China as a yardstick against which to measure the value of potential military expenditure.
I'm sure that when China does the same, they're not imagining the cost of war against, say, Australia or Mexico. they invoke the bogeyman of American military hegemony.
