Satellite images from today capture China PLAN CV17 type-002 aircraft carrier leaving her home port

Satellite images from today capture #China PLAN #CV17 type-002 aircraft carrier leaving her home port pic.twitter.com/tq2S8jFNWn

— d-atis☠️ (@detresfa_) May 25, 2020

Just plain wow.  All this is open source.  Can you imagine what our intel guys are seeing?

But back on task.

The Chinese are moving forward smartly.  Effectively.  Efficiently.

My readers are telling me that their catapult version is nearing completion too.  If we drop down to 9 big deck carriers then the Chinese will rival us sooner rather than later.

The answer to our problem is simple and was put out by a CNO years ago.

Payloads over platforms.

Our Navy and Air Force have become platform centric.  That's wrong.  We need to become payload centric.  The nuts and bolts of the fight at sea is what we should concentrate on.

If we have to attrit their forces that means our platforms must maintain distance while whittling away their numbers.  We need to focus on increasing our stockpile (and modernizing rapidly) of munitions.  We need missiles that can reach out and tag their ships and airplanes.  We need the ability to reload/rearm our vessels at sea (quickly!!!!) and have them zoom out to punch them again.

The idea that any forward base (whether mobile or static) will be neutralized because they will be methodical in their attack.

Rogue fire?  Glad its unmanned because it will fire its payload and will probably be destroyed before we can recover it (why are we going with JLTVs for this purpose instead of using refurbished HUMVEES instead?).

Instead of focusing on Cyber Operators on the battlefield we should push that function over to the Navy to utilize aboard their ships and the Marine Corps should focus on Electronic Warfare/Attack Operators operating at the MEU and above level.

Just a few thoughts but rest assured.

The Chinese aren't resting.  They're training while we're sleeping.