This is John Batchler, conversation with Captain James Finnell, United States Navy, retired intelligence,

comparing the PLA Navy, building, building, building, to the U.S. Navy that is right now disappointed with the adding of ships to the fleet.

But compare and contrast, Jim does us the favor of speaking of the carriers, the frigates,

the size of the Navy, and the operational skills.

Much more to learn about the PLA Navy, but right now, Captain Finnell regards it as not ready

for the scale that we witness at the U.S. Navy right now.

More tonight.

There's no way right now today, even with their fourth carrier being imaged with potentially nuclear reactors,

it won't be operational for several more years.

But with the first three that they have right now, they could not sustain a bombing campaign like we have with our three carriers that are in the Iranian theater of operations right now.

So they just cannot get the volume of sorties off or the heavy ordinance.

So that's the first thing that they can't do.

In terms of being able to keep the straight open, it's possible that they could do something like

that because they have a large number of destroyers and frigates, but they haven't done anything

like that, and they're kind of risk adverse in some of these areas. But to be fair, they've maintained a counter piracy task force in the Gulf of Aden since December of 2008.

Every day, they've had three ships on station in the Gulf of Aden since 2008 and even till today.