Shrike
8hr ago
Ha! I would not say that there's not a qualitative difference but I think being spouses is much easier if you are also friends.
Shrike
12hr ago
Congratulations!
The advice that I always give people is that most of marriage is actually "roommate stuff." Be a good roommate, help with the dishes or laundry or whatever, keep your spouse informed of what your plans are and a lot of the other stuff will go smoothly.
I guess the other thing I would say is don't hedge, go all-in - be honest, invite honesty, be a good listener and understand that sometimes you will do best not to take things personally. And don't underestimate the value of physical intimacy as something that will keep a marriage sustained. Genuinely put the other party first, not because you are a doormat (and you may need to hold them accountable because you are seeking their good) but because you love them and want what is best for them.
I've been married for about a decade and I've been very happy. My wife and I have stuck to the above and neither of us have "felt" any sort of post-honeymoon come down. If anything we've grown and gotten better as a team. And I think you can do the same.
God bless!
Shrike
12hr ago
Good point! Have we tried AI-powered blockchain oil bonds? I don't think the Iranian ballistic missiles will be any match for that.
Shrike
16hr ago
The actual play here instead of building air defenses is to put the pipeline inside of another, larger, armored pipeline. This larger pipeline is then disguised as one of those big HVAC hoses, making it much harder for Iran to figure out where to aim their ballistic missiles.
But that's actually just a decoy pipeline: the real pipeline doesn't exist because you've replaced the outdated concept of "selling oil" with the new, information-age technology. Now you can simply sell bonds assuring the buyer that they own the oil, which is safely in the ground in Saudi Arabia.
As an added bonus, this is tremendous for the environment.
Shrike
1d ago
Yes, it's absolutely true that Japan versus China wouldn't be much of a contest.
But note that part of the Chinese situation is that they are locked "behind the first island chain" which creates chokepoints. Japan doesn't have the same weakness because their back is to the Pacific.
Shrike
1d ago
Japan could probably mine the SCS pretty easily with their fleet of submarines, which might close it to international traffic based on the risk profiles we've seen.
They have a pretty large submarine fleet incidentally, nearly as many AIP submarines as China does, and a competitive production rate.
Shrike
1d ago
The NSA probably, from time to time, has discussions with the devs of the relevant software on the subject of when to patch unknown-to-the-public vulnerabilities.
Of course, to your point about their work with the DOW, it's quite likely that Anthropic is well aware of this because they are one of the relevant organizations.
But if not, the thought of them turning loose MYTHOS and it immediately turning around and blowing up the NSA's zero-day horde is extremely funny. And since apparently this was automated and allegedly submitted a large number of such patches, it seems pretty plausible this in fact occurred.
Shrike
1d ago
Shrike
1d ago
the whole military industrial complex rot that infests the US military doesn't really exist over tere.
I don't think this is quite true.
It does not follow, of course, that just because the China MIC has serious corruption issues that their stuff doesn't work. But I think imagining the Chinese as blessedly serious and entirely above all the petty squabbles in the US of A is grass-is-greener thinking.
Shrike
1d ago
I have not seen any evidence at all that American bombers can operate over Iran without resorting to standoff ammunition (or well, getting shut down).
Shrike
1d ago
There’s the video of a helicopter crashing down
The only video I have seen shows a helicopter trailing smoke. Please link to a video of a helicopter crashing.
the propellers in one photo are bent as if they crashed while in use
My understanding is that the propellers in question are composite blades, which would have snapped in a crash. They melted due to fire.
Iranian news showed a skull in the wreckage
This was likely the wreckage of a car and Fars pulled the image and said they were going to investigate its authenticity.
The US government can certainly cover things up (although it's hard to cover up the deaths of servicemembers) but your post is not a good reason to believe they are doing so in this case.
Shrike
2d ago
therefore a single mission with US planes in Iranian airspace resulting in the downing over 5+ manned aircraft demonstrates "localized air superiority"?
This is all incorrect, or at least very sloppy. It was a single operation but it was not a single mission in the sense that it was not a single CSAR mission; there were at least three (one to recover the pilot, one to recover the WSO, one to recover the team that went to recover the WSO) and each one of those single missions involved multiple airframes.
Similarly, 1 manned aircraft was "downed" by Iranian air defenses during this operation. Three or four were abandoned on the ground and destroyed in US airstrikes.
Finally, I provided you with other evidence that US aircraft were over Iranian airspace in other options, dropping mines and JDAMs. I don't know that that is enough to establish that US aircraft are over Iranian soil "constantly" any more than pictures of Russian birds are but it does suggest that they are over parts of Iranian soil consistently.
You think this is a contradiction? Uh, okay. Well that's enough of that.
I mean – you wanted video footage, you got video footage? Either way, I think it demonstrates localized air superiority (if we grant that air superiority includes superiority over ground assets and not just the enemy air force; see my digression above!) that they were able to do it and succeed in their mission, yes.
I think it would be better to use the real definition of air superiority, but you've been avoiding that. I'd be happy to find another working definition we can agree on. Or for you to present a historical analogue (including in Ukraine) where air superiority has been achieved in a war with another comparable power that shows the present operations of the US in an unflattering light (you've mentioned the Russian war in Ukraine but the Russians lost aircraft constantly in the first month of the war and even Hostomel, which I honestly think was very impressive and almost worked, still resulted in more Russian manned aircraft losses to air defenses than this rescue operation).
Shrike
2d ago
Yeah I think this is a total, complete W for the US of A and probably demoralizing for the IRGC.
But I do find it kinda funny that we still had a C-130 snafu due to Iranian dirt.
Shrike
2d ago
It seems more parsimonious to assume the negotiations are going poorly. That also strikes me as more in-character for Trump (seems himself as a big negotiator, probably doesn't really care about the lost C-130s.)
But we did get a couple of birds stuck over there and had to blow them up, which I imagine being frustrated by in theory (particularly for the people who were really hoping we could avoid anything that remotely resembled Eagle Claw this time lol).
Shrike
2d ago
the moment evidence exists which proves they're entering Iranian territory
No, this already existed, both the cluster bomb evidence that I provided to you and pictures published by an Iranian news outlet showing a JDAM hitting the B1 bridge should pretty much have put an end to any doubt that the US was operating over Iran against targets well inland even before the F-15 got tagged.
This isn't what air superiority looks like. It's not even close.
Yes, it is. Remember the definition of air superiority?
Russian helicopters are regularly prowling Ukrainian territory and are photographed constantly. That's what something akin to air superiority looks like, not what the US is currently doing.
US helicopters (and transport aircraft) were in fact photographed prowling Iranian territory over the course of a couple of days to pull this op off, thus demonstrating by your own criteria localized US air superiority deep inside of Iranian airspace.
Of course, that's not the actual definition of air superiority used by actual war planners. (However it does suggest that I may have underestimated how leaky the supposed Iranian internet blackout was, heh.) Here's the actual definition:
"That degree of dominance in the air battle of one force over another which permits the conduct of operations by the former and its related land, sea and air forces at a given time and place without prohibitive interference by the opposing force"
The United States definitely had this over a portion of Iran (remember, in US doctrine air superiority can be created temporarily, it's not necessarily a persistent thing for any given geographic region/mission because both sides can shift or regenerate assets). If the United States had not had air superiority, they would not have been able to conduct air operations deep inside of Iranian soil successfully.
And in fact they did this operation with such an insane degree of success that it appears they lost more aircraft to the fiendish Iranian desert (at least three, two C-130s and at least one Little Bird) than they did to Iranian surface-to-air fire (two, the MQ-9 and an A-10, although it sounds to me like a Saudi drone may also have been shot down in the AO, several US aircraft were damaged by ground fire, and it seems plausible that at least one more Little Bird was also left behind and destroyed by US forces inside Iran, so I'd happily revise my statement to "Iranian ground fire was no more dangerous to this operation than planning mistakes by US SOCCOM intel officers desperately trying to get Eagle Claw right this time (Challenge level: impossible.)"
(Note: I think there was another A-10 that got shot down around the same time as the Strike Eagle - I'm not counting either of those aircraft as casualties in "Operation Top Gun 2 For Real," which is why the mud ties with Iran for this specific op.)
But at this point counting all total, yes, the Iranian air defenses have destroyed more coalition aircraft than either the Iranian soil or our Kuwaiti allies. They are still well behind were Iraq was at this point in Desert Storm, which was considered a successful air campaign. They are also, from what I can tell, well behind the Ukrainian air defenses at an equivalent point in this time of the war.
If you want to argue that the US has not achieved "risk free operations over Iran" I would agree with you. If you are arguing that we do not have permanent air superiority over all of Iran, you might be right. But if you're citing a successful mission as evidence that the US does not have the ability to carry out missions without prohibitive interference from the Iranians, then...I don't think that makes sense.
We can also look at conflicts where the air war went well for the US and see that losses continued to occur, even when the US was able to conduct a bombing campaign essentially at will. I already mentioned Iraq as a comparative, but note that the US lost aircraft over Kosovo (traditionally seen as a successful use of air power, although I think that might be overblown), and even over Japan after dropping the first atomic bomb, for instance). And if it's true that the Mudhen was tagged by a MANPADS, then consider any definition of air superiority that is "remove all risk of getting hit by a MANPADS" is ~an impossible bar, it's practically impossible to completely sanitize an operating theater of the risk of shoulder-fired missiles.
in all honesty, do you seriously think a B-52 is in Iranian airspace even now let alone 5 days ago?
What I would say is that I think it is more probable than not that B-52s have performed operations with gravity bombs against Iranian targets during this operation.
and I highly doubt many, if any, of the majority of the people here arguing otherwise will ever admit they were just wrong about it and clean their information space so they're no so easily duped... again... in yet another war
I don't disagree with this...
Shrike
4d ago
I went and eyeballed it a while back, and the Chinese are definitely producing more annually, but theirs are smaller. The new Virginias being constructed now are over 10,000 tons displacement, whereas the conventional 039, of which they've build a bit more than 1/year for 20 years, is about 3,600 tons, and even the nuclear 093 (built at less than half the rate) is only twice that, whereas the historical production rate of Virginias is about 1.5 since 2008, although until Block V they were only 7,900 tons.
Even the 095 that your article flags is only going to be about the same size as a Block V.
I don't think that displacement is everything with ships (for instance it can be better to have three conventional submarines instead of one nuclear submarine, because you could rotate the diesels for a persistent presence and not the nuclear submarine!) and certainly being bigger doesn't give you more HP, or something. But it does give you more payload, which is pretty relevant, particularly when you're slinging payloads of cruise missiles and going through lots of torpedoes. In a major war, that means that your ships can stay on station longer and do more damage.
Shrike
4d ago
Should @sarker, @Shakes and I all be scored together?
Shrike
4d ago
In the American tradition (going back to the "Revolution") governments are found on both sides of the rebellion, and any rebellion that meaningfully threatened the status quo of the regime (I don't use the term in a pejorative sense, mind you) would almost certainly involve a split government and likely a split armed forces.
However, overthrowing the government is not the only way to use violence to influence policy (Declaration-poasting or no). While a ground-up rebellion in the United States would not overthrow the government, it might gain concessions. Just look at how appealing the idea that we should get rid of drug laws to stop incidental violence is to the general public and extrapolate from there to Troubles-like situations.
Shrike
4d ago
This says something important about the state of the US MIC.
I agree that this is the case.
OK... So how is US ABM production supposed to outscale Chinese missile production?
How are TNT shortages supposed to negatively impact the PAC-3, THAAD, or SM-3? They don't have warheads at all. TNT is important for shells, the US military has trouble making shells.
We should not be surprised if US ABM production could conceivably outscale Chinese IRBM production, specifically, because an IRBM is at least as complex, if not moreso, while being much larger. Just look at the TELs: the US can fit eight THAADs into a footprint smaller than a single DF-26.
China doesn't have these problems.
Do you agree that China has its own set of problems, which have led to similar problems with delayed arms contracts and slower weapons deliveries?
If the US can intensify their efforts, why can't China?
Perhaps they will!
THAAD right now has been tested and found wanting against Iranian missile and drone attacks
I don't particularly believe this. For starters, I would be surprised to learn that THAAD has ever been launched against an Iranian drone. THAAD is a dedicated ABM missile. And secondly, I think THAAD has been relatively effective against Iranian ballistic missiles, particularly the less sophisticated ones.
It would be bizarre for a mid-size country, under severe sanctions, with 1/10th the engineers and 1/100th the money of China to outperform China quantitatively or qualitatively.
By this sort of logic, China has better chipmaking than Taiwan, right?
But of course nobody should be surprised that Iran can make more short range ballistic missiles than China can make intermediate-range ballistic missiles with hypersonic glide vehicles with capability to strike moving vessels. Particularly given that China has pursued a very balanced approach to their arms procurement. They are building large amounts of modern aircraft, ships, submarines and building out a nuclear arsenal with ICBMs. Iran fairly famously has negligible capability to build any of those things.
I also wonder if inter-service rivalries play a role here. Remember, it's not necessarily in the interest of China to dramatically underplay their capabilities - that ruins their ability to deter their enemies. But I've heard it suggested that the real target of the Chinese anti-ship ABM program was their own carriers - and obviously, that failed. PLAN beating PLARF in the bureaucratic game might be one reason why PLARF procurement is more modest, and that would imply nothing about China's production capability.
judging by anti-ship missile history it's always been harder to defend than attack.
What do we mean by this? Anti-ship missile history (at least to the degree that I am familiar with it) suggests that most anti-ship missiles do not hit their intended targets. It might still be correct to say that it's harder to defend than attack, but I think we need to be clear, when we think about this and say this, what we mean by it. The problem with missile defense is that there's very little room for error. Which goes to your point about the uphill battle that it is.
Now, I do think this is much truer of ships - if China gets a few strays in on Guam, it won't cripple the airbase. It's harder to hit a carrier than Guam, but a single hit will probably put a carrier down for the count.
which requires somehow securing long shipping lanes of food, fertilizer and LNG to a small island off the coast of China.
I'm not sure this is as true as you might think. Taiwan made the very foolish decision to pin so much of their energy intake on oil/LNG. Despite this, they still likely have enough domestic energy to maintain comms and power for an extended crisis. The same I think is likely true of food, although it is not clear to me that China would actually strike food shipments.
From a military perspective, the problem of stopping incoming shipments is also not exactly trivial, either.
And finally, a perfectly respectable win condition for the United States is that it puts enough political and economic pressure on China to get it to abandon its aspirations. Which suggests that China has to defend their supply chains, too.
The US has been attempting ballistic missile defence since the 1950s and at no point has it been cost-efficient against a strong power. It isn't cost-efficient today against Iran and I can't see why it would be against China.
We were talking about production quantities, not cost-effectiveness! And while there are inherent reasons why BMD is harder than building ballistic missiles, most of those do not apply once you start trying to hit ships with ballistic missiles. I don't know to what degree China is pursuing this capability - we know they have tested it: are they trying to ensure that every single one of their IRBMs has this capability? that's less clear. But it's not a technically trivial capability.
Shrike
5d ago
A country that produces vastly more steel, chemicals, cars, electronics and drones than the US can logically also produce far more ballistic missiles than the US can produce missile interceptors.
Well sure. I could produce more ballistic "missiles" than the US can produce missile interceptors. A ballistic missile is just a rocket that goes up and comes down again. But I think the Chinese have higher standards for their ballistic missiles than that.
considering that missile defence is inherently more complicated than missile offence.
This depends on what you are trying to hit. The kill chain for an interceptor is much simpler than the kill chain for an anti-ship ballistic missile of the kind that China has invested in.
Ballistic missiles aren't easily countable, they're concealed in depots deep underground.
There are a number of ways to keep an eye on these sorts of things if you really want to. For instance, you can likely estimate the number of missiles and launchers from the volume of the excavation, which you can observe from orbit. You can count the launchers deployed in snap drills, or estimate the number of launchers from the size of Chinese units, which you can determine with some degree of precision by sneaking a look at their housing allocations or catering or cell phone mapping or boot procurement or the number of porta-potties they use.
Whether or not the US actually bothers to do these things, I have no idea.
Major wars often take longer than expected, stockpiles are expended and what matters is the scaling of production.
This is true, although I would argue that naval-centric wars tend to be more decisive. But I could be wrong.
They aren't remotely near China in terms of production.
- Claim that the US is not remotely near China in terms of production.
- When presented with evidence that questions this claim, disbelieve it on the grounds that China is capable of producing more tenuously analogous but in fact entirely different items.
- QED the USA is not remotely near China in terms of production.
Do you know what is directly analogous to a ballistic missile? Space launch vehicles. And space launches are relatively hard to hide, so we can use that as a relatively objective measure of US/China prowess. As it turns out, the US had about twice as many space launches as China. Since we're now estimating stockpiles by analogous goods instead of intelligence estimates, and since orbital rocket launches are much more analogous to ballistic missiles than steel, chemicals, cars, electronics and drones, we can agree that the US has a considerable edge in manufacturing ballistic missiles over China. Right?
No, the actual truth is that China outproduces the US in production in a great many areas (such a ballistic missiles and surface ships) and that there are several areas (such as submarines and orbital launch capability) where the US is ahead of China (both in quality and in scale.) Keep in mind that US has been attempting ballistic missile defense for more than three decades; the first Chinese conventional IRBM, the DF-26, became operational about a decade ago. It's not surprising that the US might have an edge in producing ABMs relative to Chinese IRBMs, particularly if the Chinese are (intelligently, in my mind) iterating their weapons design before committing to mass production. An antiship ballistic missile with a maneuvering warhead and glide vehicle is a very exquisite weapon!
It's completely plausible for the Korean peninsula to see large ground battles requiring huge quantities of TNT. The South Koreans may be serious and proficient but there is only a certain amount that South Korea can do against a gigantic country like China.
Lucky South Korea is a major manufacturer of TNT. I would be surprised if China decided to escalate horizontally against South Korea instead of attempting to deter them, but what do I know.
Shrike
5d ago
It's interesting too because the DoD traditionally hypes up threat capabilities.
However I am not sure if the culture in the post-GWOT DoD is the same as during the Cold War.
Shrike
5d ago
it might be worthwhile to put asterisks next to those numbers.
I definitely agree with this.
but I also don't think an estimate that puts the PLARF's stockpile below the IRGC
Well keep in mind I wasn't counting Chinese SRBMs, of which they have quite a lot, or ICBMs, (since those will, at least partially, be used for nuclear deterrence). I imagine most of the 135 ballistic missiles launched for training were SRBMs. I also think it's worth noting that Iran has, from what I understand, really pursued ballistic missiles - they haven't been able to produce a capable, modern navy or air force. Whereas China has been walking while chewing gum - ballistic missiles are just one item in their toolkit.
Shrike
5d ago
I'll just go back to a source I used in an earlier discussion that cited IDF estimates at 2,500 ballistic missiles (so considerably higher than 1850 ballistic missiles), with other estimates being as high as 6,000. But I should note that the numbers I cited don't include SRBMs.
JINSA estimates about 1840 ballistic missiles launched by Iran since Epic Fury kicked off, which I think suggests that 2,500 is low, but that's because I suspect IDF and USAF tagged a quite a few launchers with missiles. It seems quite compatible with 6,000 to me.
Obviously it's quite possible actual PLA numbers are much higher, but at a certain point you have to go by public estimates, otherwise the entire discussion devolves into a "well but maybe the real numbers are much higher" for both sides. If you have a better source for any of these numbers I will happily take a look at it.
Shrike
6d ago
How much do purges hurt the PLA?
If the generals being purged are incompetent, the purges will help the PLA, at least over the medium-long term. If the generals being purged are competent, presumably it will hurt them. It is unclear to me which of the purged generals fall into which category. In the short term, because it does not appear that Xi has yet filled all of the purged positions, it will likely hurt simply because it is hard to execute in a major war without a clear chain of command. (China already has enough of a problem with the "clear chain of command" because they have a dual-track military authority.)
One area where I expect the US purges to be different than the Chinese ones is that I expect the Americans will have another ACOS quickly. The Chinese Central Military Commission still has not been re-staffed after Xi's purges – although perhaps Xi discovered that too many cooks were in the kitchen. There can be a certain virtue to keeping staffing lean.
Annual production of 400 THAAD interceptors in 7 years? The Chinese will burn through that in a week, probably on day 1.
THAAD, Patriot PAC-3 MSE (supposed to increase to 2000/year), SM-3 (set to increase to 100/year) SM-6 (set to increase to 500/year) and probably the AIM-174 are all anti-ballistic missile interceptors. The Taiwanese also have domestic production of the TK-3 ABM, and (if it becomes relevant) South Korea has their own domestic analogues to the Patriot and THAAD.
On a quick Google, DoD estimated last year that China has around 1,300 MRBMs and 300 launchers and only about 550 IRBMs and 300 IRBM launchers, adding 50 of each since 2024. China's more numerous SRBMs won't range Guam and most of Japan, and the MRBMs will only range Japan. So the US pre-ramp-up produces more ballistic missile interceptors with THAAD systems alone (nearly 100/year) than China produces ballistic missiles that could range Guam (if DoD estimates are even ballpark accurate). Maybe the question we should be asking is "How is China supposed to outrace the US in scaling munitions production?" And indeed, the Chinese are reportedly asking this themselves.
And ballistic missiles will be spread pretty thin in a war – for instance, there are probably around 80 airports in Japan along with airstrips relevant for tactical aviation that aircraft could in theory disperse to in an emergency. Even if the US and Japan had zero interceptors, China could easily spend 400 missiles just to crater each runway for...as little as 4 hours.
There is currently no TNT production in the US.
I don't think TNT is used for most of the high-end weapons systems – I think that would RDX (of which we have a domestic supply). I believe the Army wants TNT for arty shells, which will not be the most relevant in a Pacific conflict.
How is the US supposed to outrace China in scaling munitions production? The Chinese industrial base has cheaper components, cheaper energy, an ocean of engineers and machine tools frothing about.
As I've discussed in here before, for a Taiwan contingency the US needs to stop an amphibious invasion and/or a blockade, which is very different from fighting a set-piece battle on the open sea, or something.
How would China interdict traffic to their rear?
There are a few ways. Here's how I see it:
Ballistic missiles. Japan has a limited number of ASBMs and would need to guide them via satellite, unless they pushed back Japan's air defense coverage quite a ways and got radar aircraft operating over, say, the sea of Japan. Even then I am not sure if radar would be able to reliably ID ships versus, let's say, very large radar reflectors towed by small boats (not something you want to launch missiles at). Imaging satellites and SAR satellites are nice for this, as long as it doesn't rain or nobody lasers them/jams them to blind them or shoots them down (Japan has SM-3s). So basically, China using its limited stockpile of ballistic missiles on transiting cargo vessels would be possible but annoying, and Japan has hard-kill (Standards, to shoot down the missiles and/or targeting satellites) and plausibly soft-kill (radar jammers and decoys, lasers, cyber, etc.) to interfere with the kill chain. China would also plausibly run out of missiles before Japan ran out of ships.
Submarines. Chinese submarines would need to either take a long detour or pass through the (Japanese-controlled) island chain to break out into the ocean and intercept convoys. And Chinese submarines aren't supposed to be the quietest – I would still assume they are pretty troublesome, though. One issue with submarines, generally, though is that they are louder when they are faster. So lurking in chokepoints is ideal. But it's hard to lurk in chokepoints right next to enemy territory. Japan can rigorously patrol an area around their ports, and Japan has a lot of ports and Chinese submarines would not necessarily know which ones were slated to receive cargo. I think submarines could be effective once they got on station, but it's not risk-free.
(This is why it's very annoying to be e.g. China fighting a joint coalition of the US, Australia, Japan etc. – if the US decides to blockade Malacca, you've got to sail out there and fight them. Whereas if you want to blockade Japan or Taiwan, you've also got to sail out there and fight them.)
Surface ships/carrier aircraft. This has the same problem as the submarines except for instead of being sneaky and underwater you are not so sneaky and very much above the water. It would be nice if China could get a carrier battle group out in the Pacific to interdict trade (setting aside the diplomatic implications of course) but again you're either detouring around Taiwan or you are forcing your way through the island chain in the face of Japanese shore batteries, airstrikes, submarines etc. You would be wary of doing this for the same reason that the US is wary of parking a carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf right now. And this is all really annoying because, again, any path you take to get out into the Japanese rear with a carrier battle group passes under the nose of Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, etc. not to mention US spy satellites. In a world of perfect spheres where it's just Japan versus China this might not matter but in the real world with information-sharing (and Twitter posting) this might mean Japan screws up your entire day with a submarine. And even if they don't then you might still need to defeat their (large) navy, possibly supported by shore-based aviation, in a surface battle.
Airstrikes from shore. If this is Perfect Sphere World, the North Koreans and Russians aren't helping you out, which means their airspace is closed to you (this might also prevent you from using your SRBM arsenal against Japan without coming off as very rude as well, incidentally), so instead of fighting over the Sea of Japan you're basically flying out from Shanghai or Qingdao to try to interdict shipping in Tokyo or Sendai.
You will have trouble doing this with bombs from tactical aircraft. The J-16 is a big bird, the J-20, too, but Tokyo - Shanghai is about a 1000 miles and that's if you fly right over Japan and its associated air defenses. The J-16 probably has a combat radius of, like, 600nm miles (it will depend a bit on payload; anti-ship missiles are pretty heavy) - although in theory you could refuel it. Google suggests the J-20 has somewhere in the ballpark of twice that, so you might could fly a J-20 around and bomb ships in Tokyo harbor without flying right over the entirety of Japan, but you're still going to be right on top of Japanese air defenses and fighter/interceptors, who will be operating well within their operational range (whereas you will not be). That matters a lot since your aircraft will have much less time for combat engagements and will be putting in a lot more hours to fly fewer sorties, whereas the JASDF will be able to put up more, shorter sorties – in effect they will be fighting more efficiently. You asked about their air defense – they have more than 300 fighter aircraft (and two aircraft carriers) plus ground-based defenses and their own navy, which as we said might be running convoy duty. So actually carrying out attacks will not be trivial.
You also have your strategic bomber force. You can send bomber raids, escorting them with the J-20s and J-16s, and try to intercept the cargo convoys with antiship missiles – again, though, you have to find them, and that means either turning on the old radar (which can tell everyone that you are there and invite them to shoot you in the face) or find them with EO/IR sensors (which is fine but probably also means you're running the gauntlet of getting spotted by their EO/IR sensors). This is another pretty decent way of overcoming defended convoys as long as you're comfortable with the risk of operating under the threat of Japanese fighter coverage.
I think in Sphere World the Chinese can probably win this. Of course in Sphere World China could probably just nuke Japan, but setting that aside, we're just going to try to destroy as many Japanese fighters on the ground with ballistic missiles as we can and then throw every airplane we have into SEAD/DEAD/CAP until we grind them down and then we are going to do bomber raids out in the Pacific against their fleets until they are sunk and then we will just bomb every ship approaching Japan unopposed. We can combine this with amphibious attacks on the island chain and then, once we've punched a hole in that, send our CBG into the Pacific and screen for their submarines with a dozen frigates. A few ships might get through this but it would probably succeed in shutting down the bulk of trade in a relatively short time.
Now, if this plan seems familiar, it's because it would be similar to the US air campaign against Iran (complete with possibly invading islands and such), except that the US air force is better and larger than that of the Chinese, and the Japanese air force and air defenses navy are better and newer and more numerous than those of the Iranians. In non-sphere world, even if the US was for some reason not going to defend Japan, if China was trying to do it without facing unacceptably high losses you can see how they might actually choke on it. If The Big One happens I think China is going to be extremely busy with the naval target set and might not bother to launch a dedicated anti-shipping campaign (although the mere threat of one might be effective enough in many cases).
But possibly I am missing some obvious options here.
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