EPTOn December 26 2025 18:30 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:
So the US is building 25 battleships and China is doing the exact opposite and building container based weapon modules with different types of missiles as well as container based support modules like radars and phalanx systems.
Essentially turning their massive fleet of container ships into prospective missile cruisers.
There are problems with arming civilian ships but it's mainly against smaller threats because they aren't built for taking damage. But against battleships and aircraft carriers it will be fine.
So the US is building 25 battleships and China is doing the exact opposite and building container based weapon modules with different types of missiles as well as container based support modules like radars and phalanx systems.
Essentially turning their massive fleet of container ships into prospective missile cruisers.
There are problems with arming civilian ships but it's mainly against smaller threats because they aren't built for taking damage. But against battleships and aircraft carriers it will be fine.
They're guided missile battleships. They're not WW2 gun broadside ships.
They will hopefully do better than a bunch of retrofitted container ships, but nobody can know that while it's all just wargames. Like nobody thought you could drive a truck with drones into Russia and just launch them. The US could increase shipbuilding to try to regain parity with Asia but that would require policies geared towards shipbuilding, and towards steel, especially steel production which is independent of your enemies for national security reasons, and most people don't have the stomach to go in depth on those.
The US has the capability, and technological advantage, but not sustained production of tonnage. That's why the massive peacetime fleet is necessary and why guided missile/multirole capital ships is a good slight hedge when the fleet now is now based around 2 things - supercarriers, and subs, and the latter mainly comes into play only once thermonuclear war has already begun. You could produce a lot of small ships instead of fewer bigger ships, but in no sense do container ships get an edge.
Is your point a container ship is so trivial as to be invulnerable to massive warships, or is your point since they're going to get blown up in 1 hit anyway it's immaterial?
