russ_watters said:
Just out of curiosity, how many missiles do you think that is?
And what about CIWS and other defense systems?
Oh, I admit it's a hell of a lot. The US Navy builds their ships well, and they've been preparing for just such an assault for years. But as the components for guided missiles become cheaper and more common, they might no longer have the advantage.
For instance, the US Navy describes a typical carrier task force http://www.navy.mil/navydata/ships/carriers/powerhouse/cvbg.html They have little reason to lie on their own site, so we can take a Carrier Strike Group (CSG) as having one
Ticonderoga class cruiser, and a pair of
Arleigh Burke's as their main air-defense component. According to Global Security (who is usually accurate), the upgraded
Ticonderoga's carry a pair of Mk-41 Vertical Launch Arrays, with a total of 127 cells. A Flight IIA
Arleigh Burke carries a similar system, albiet one with only 96 launch cells. Assuming that all of them are carrying SM/2 Block IV Standards (instead of possibly being loaded with Vertical Launch ASROCs or Tomahawks), that's a formidable component of 319 missiles. The carrier itself has as many as four launchers for Sea Sparrow missiles. Now I assume a carrier can carry a great big heap of those things, so you can expect salvos at a regular interval, with an engagement range of slightly over thirty nautical miles. A Chinese missile, like the C-802 is reported to travel about Mach 0.9, so thirty nautical miles is about three minutes. If you fire a salvo every ten seconds (I have no idea how accurate that is), you add 72 more missiles to the bargain. So that's 391 missiles total that a CSG carries.
China's current aim seems to be to have 150 missile boats in service by about 2015 (once again from Global Security-although the accuracy is somewhat more in doubt). So far each of their missile boats carries four launchers. If this trend continues, that small fleet will be able to launch a saturation attack, if they get close enough. This is why they built the things, they have no legs, they're not very seaworthy, but they're cheap and they can built a hell of a lot of them, compared to how fast we build carriers. That's why there have been people arguing against carriers in recent years.
Of course, if they manage to arm their old J-7/J-8 aircraft with Air-to-Surface missiles, the count gets higher, as they have over a thousand of these old, expendable aircraft. They'd pay a high price, but they might consider it worth it (especially if nobody is sure how high a price they'd pay). China has a lot of military equipment though, and they can be expected to be very methodical about deploying it.
Of course if missile boats (and assorted patrol boats and destroyers I haven't bothered to count) do launch a 600 missile attack on a carrier task force, the result could be devastating. Even if the US scores 100% kills, 200 missiles zeroing in on a task force would be disasterous. Even the formidable CIWS, operating in pairs, could probably be saturated by as few as fifteen missiles approaching the carrier from multiple directions. Not to mention that they would probably run out of ammunition against a larger attack.
Now this is extremely unlikely, since the US has more carriers, and at this point the Chinese would pay a large price. But if an American carrier group gets careless, and the Chinese are feeling lucky, when war breaks out they might be able to launch a saturation attack of sorts.
Sorry to hijack the thread for this long and mostly meaningless discourse.
Edit: I should add that none of those missiles are known to have a nuclear payload. But at that concentration, none of them really need a nuclear payload.
How many nukes does he (Chirac) have? 
