America calling out Britain is pretty rich if you ask me. Calling out the Aussies, the Canadians, the Dutch, the Danes and even the Estonians would be pretty rich as well. They are all carrying more than their load in Afghanistan. Question their kit if you must but do not question their collective commitment.

Canada has lost more soldiers per capita in the conflict than any NATO member. Canada has been doing much of the heavy lifting in Kandahar Province and has paid the price in blood and treasure So have the British and Dutch. Meanwhile the Germans are sitting pretty up in the north and the Italians in the northwest working on their tans.

If America has the gall to call out anybody it should be the European Nations who place so many caveats on their troop’s deployment to Afghanistan that it would be just as well that they are not there. How can the Germans for example look at themselves in the mirror when they loan Canada a squadron of Leopard 2A6’s to fight in Kandahar and refuse to send any of their own crews to do the job themselves. For shame!

Its funny you used the nuclear sub example. If you had taken my earlier advice and had a look at the rate at which the Chinese and turning out SSNs and SSBNs, then you might have formed a different opinion.

Nonsense. You act as if China has never built a ship before.

Ship design is one thing, but ship building is very standardized. Warships and civilian ships are designed differently, but when they are being built, most of the skills and equipment used for one is directly transferable to the other. Designers go to great lengths to ensure this to cut costs and construction times.

You say that you do not wish to belittle China, but that is pretty much what you are doing by not learning about the facts and applying outdated views and inaccurate models when trying to judge China’s capabilities. Because answer truthfully, how do you form an expectation of what China is capable of? Did you look at what the Chinese have achieved in the relevant field before and extrapolating that to this project, or did you merely take a look at what western nations have managed in the past and decide that China would be lucky to match that let alone surpass it?

Wit all all due respect you are taking personal offense when none is being offered. You very well may be right that China can pull this off, and good luck to them. But the argument against China pulling this off as you argue it is not comparing Chinese capabilities or abilities to the West. It is simply facts based on fact and experience. You seem to discount the experience angle at every turn. I think that is frankly coming off as a little arrogant. Yes China has made and continues to make great strides. But to believe with so much conviction that China can pull off what no other nation has been able to pull off since the end of World War II smacks of cultural arrogance on YOUR PART, not on ours.

Take a moment to look up the word humility in the dictionary and learn what it means.

… However, the time it takes others is no indication on how fast China might be able to build carriers. After all, would you take the average European build time and cost of tankers or whatnot as a estimate of how long it will take Chinese yards to turn out similar vessels? …

No I would not take the European yards experience as any benchmark either. There is only one place and one yard that has been continiously building Carriers (the most advanced, large and complex by the way) and that is Newport News. No one else can say that they have had a carrier on the slip for every day since World War II. They can.

They are able to build a Nimitz Class in about 6-7 years. That has been earned by building the same design for about 30 years now and also by continious process effeciencies that come with experience.

I cast no aspersions against anyone here, including, China, Italy, Spain, France the UK and Russia. But none of these nations have had the same kind of continious experience as the Americans and their less complex and smaller ships have taken at least as long or longer than any Nimitz class takes to be built.

The first time out a decade is about right to build one of these things considering all of the lessons that can only be learned by doing.

There is a lot of blame to go around here and I agree with the “…violence begets violence…” theses of other posts in this thread. Way too many of us here, and for that matter throughout the world, spend too much time trying to apportion historical blame and use moral relativism to try and justify the killing of one side at the expense of the other.

This does not work. Rockets lobbed into Israel will see an israeli response. LGB strikes can never be neat and tidy, they create more hatred and the cycle continues. Innocents will also die even if the Israelis are the most accurate they can be.

Furthermore I hope the West sees the hypocricy of slagging Hamas at every turn and how that angers the Arab world. The West supports dictators like Mubarak in Egypt, who repress their populace and hold power through illegitimate means and then choose to not acknowledge in any form a democratically elected government when that is the very thing the West demands.

And where are the Egyptians in this? They condemn the violence yet do nothing to curb it. They have the power to open their borders and alleviate the human suffering going on in Gaza…they do nothing. They can offer their services as a mediator to try and bring this senseless conflict to an end, and again they do nothing.

And for those that do not remember, Israel pulled out of the Gaza completely in 2005, it is not being occupied.

I will believe this when I see metal being cut and fabricated.

However where there is smoke there is fire. Su-33 orders and extensive work on Varyag tell me that carriers are part of the long term plan for the Chinese Navy.

I think a decade is a more realistic time frame to see this kind of platform enter service. Not only is this a huge untertaking from a shipbuilding point of view there will be a multitude of training and equipment issues that will be needed to be straightened out before they go to sea in a meaningful way.

I think Varyag will enter some sort of service and she will be underway under her own power. Satellite shots can’t look through a steel deck and we only have speculation as to what is happening below decks. I have a feeling that in a couple of years she will be at sea in some form.

I wonder how many of you will call for restraint when terrorism comes home calling ? Like it does regularly in India ?

I really think my country will not restrain itself and is willing to pay the price of a final war with Pakistan in case of further attacks.

Yes indeed India has suffered huge losses to terrorism over the past years and a lot of that terrorism has roots in Pakistan. Pakistan has also suffered at the hands of terrorists as well. But a “final war” as you say would only inflame the situation further and provide no real protection to Indian citizens in the long run.

No two nuclear armed states have ever fought a direct conflict…..ever! Now is not the time to start. India would be better served in trying to help Pakistan develop a stable set of democratic institutions that could help it reign in the rogue elements of their military and ISI that are responsible for large part of the problem. A general war will not solve the issue. it will only put tens of millions of innocents in harms way.

There was no better oppurtunity than after November 26th.

With all due respect, this cavalier attitude to the possibility of a conflict between two nuclear armed states with questionable early warning systems along with relatively poor command and control capabilities is a little flippant.

Any sane individual will not wish that these two states ever come to blows again. The possibility of an escalation into a nighmare scenario is way too scary to contemplate if you ask me. Both sides have competent professional military institutions and any conflict will be bloody in the extreme.