re: Within the next decade china will have a larger military than the US

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Can someone layout how the US is so far ahead, or are people just saying this out of arrogance?

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Technologically we are still pretty far ahead of the Chinese. Our planes are much better. The Chinese have always had problems with aviation engine production but they are certainly closing the gap on that everyday. Their still technology is still pretty far beyond ours as well but at least they have it. Only 3 countries have even attempted to build a stealth aircraft and China is one of them. Their navy is still behind us as well but that gap is closing fast. Very fast. China’s Navy will be America’s equal or better within 15 years.

China does have a lot of advantages though that offset these technological disadvantages. For one, it’s their home turf. They don’t need to deploy their forces to the other side of the world because presumably the war with China will be a Naval and Air war for the East and South China Seas. For that purpose their large fleet of diesel electric subs will be more than adequate. Their air defenses are top notch as well. Probably better than ours. We already know their cyber warfare capabilities are top notch as well. Their long range anti-ship missiles pretty much nullify our carriers. I’m just not sure we’d be willing to risk them by bringing them close enough for their air wings to be effective.

The US Navy just isn’t structured to fight a war against China at this point. Our navy is built around the carrier battle group. Probably half our fleet or more is dedicated solely to protecting the carriers instead of fighting battles with a near peer foe.

IMO the US should forego further construction of super carriers and focus on building submarines and anti-submarine capabilities. I’ll say it again, if aircraft carriers are an absolute necessity then we should be building smaller ones. And more of them. Enough that losing one wouldn’t be a crippling loss. And their mission should be focused on fighting naval battles as opposed to striking targets inland.