Keyboard Warriors wrote:United Marxist Nations wrote:It was originally built in 1986 (not much older than the US carriers, maybe newer, I don't know), and it was modernized starting in 2008.
It's practically useless as an aircraft carrier until China acquires an escort fleet to sail with it, by which time it will be out of date.
Carriers have a fifty year lifetime. Or longer.
Fifty years is an estimate between reactor replacements, a long and expensive process that gives you the opportunity to modernise the rest of the vessel.
Liaoning was bought as a hulk. It's a shell. It's a new build, 21st century carrier.
Shnercropolis wrote:Greater Skyrim wrote:with our F22 Raptor stealth superiority fighters, SR71 Blackbird survelliance jets, and B22 stealth bombers.
And then you treated the F22 as if it were actually anything but a waste of money. Sure, it has some fancy features, but really the F22 doesn't have much to offer that the F16 don't already, and the cost of building one is far higher than just upgrading some old F-16s. The only reasion why F-22s were produced in the first place was because senators wanted to make a few thousand more jobs in their home states, kind of like the Ospreys(except slightly more useful). SR-71s are totally outdated and replaced by satellites. B22s are also outdated and replaced by drone strikes.
Not much if any of this is really correct. The F-22 is a low-observable "stealth" aircraft designed primarily for long range BVR combat and interception. The F-16 can do BVR and interception, but isn't low-observable. It's also about thirty years older. As well as limited what kit you can shoehorn into it for modernisation purposes, it also means that the airframes are short on about thirty years of their lives. They will be more expensive to operate than shaken-out new-build F-22s.
The Osprey offers an enormous capability advantage to the USMC. It offers about twice the payload capacity of the Sea Knight, and greatly increased speed and range. This graphic explains it well enough.
The SR-71 is so outdated by satellites that they're actually bringing it back. Or, more accurately, developing the cringily-named successor aircraft, the SR-72. Satellites have disadvantages for observation purposes. Limited windows. Predictable orbit patterns. Capability vulnerability to weather patterns. Physically vulnerable to ASAT operations.
The "B-22" doesn't exist. I assume the pair of you are talking about the B-2. Which is not replaced by drones and never will be. Drones are slow and carry a very small payload. They're excellent for what we use them for now - observation and limited combat capability against ground targets. The B-2 is a large, stealth, strategic, nuclear-capable strike bomber.
Chalk and cheese.
They built several thousand F-16s and two hundred F-22s.
Go figure.
No, just no. 
