Quote:
Originally Posted by RN7
... But if India and Thailand have carriers, and Japan, South Korea and Australia are building helicopter carrying assault ships then the Chinese probably feel they should have one as well.
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An interesting point - the big joke here however (and it's a joke on the West by the West), is that nations like Australia are building up their amphibious warfare abilities
not for a greater capacity to fight a conventional war, but to increase their capacities in the low level insurgency warfare they were fighting in Iraq and are still fighting in Afghanistan. Conflicts like the East Timor situation and Australian assistance to the Solomon Islands have reinforced the belief that they'll be involved only in low level conflict for the near future.
A recent article in the Australian publication "Defence Today" titled "COIN reorientation - too far or not far enough?" by Dr Carlo Kopp discusses the decisions of Western nations to neglect the maintenance/improvement of their conventional combat abilities (particularly air defence and
naval warfare) in favour of further increasing their counter-insurgency abilities. (Defence Today, Volume 9 Number 2, September 2011, pages 24 to 27 - minor preview
here - but only valid until the next issue is published)
If the Chinese do field a viable aircraft carrier/s, it might be enough to cause a rethink for Western militaries away from their obsession with insurgency warfare perhaps? (The West really does seem to believe that insurgency warfare is the only warfare they'll be dealing with for the future).