HTK =
hard target kill - the enhanced ability of a warhead to explode in very close proximity to a hardened military target.
That's critical if you are carrying out a first strike - and before you say they wouldn't do it - note the US has refused to adopt an NFU policy.
In a recent public statement, which I will try and find, a USN officer alluded to an OPLAN that allowed 15 minutes to eliminate all significant fixed assets the Chinese have built up in the South China Sea.
Does that involve a massive conventional strike using cruise missiles and other weapons, or nuclear weapons?
It wasn't clarified, but you can read between the lines.
The USN might have shrunk - but is modern naval warfare purely a function of numbers of vessels?
Think longer range anti-ship cruise missiles, torpedos, drones - and further in the future - directed energy weapons and rail-guns.
I can understand the pessimism of some American posters here about declining US military strength - but I'd argue that right now, in an air-sea battle, on it's own the US Navy could still utterly decimate the PLAN and PLAF should it so choose.
I think there's a pervasive popular media narrative that `Rome is in decline' - the US is losing it's military dominance dangerously fast.
It just doesn't stand up when you look at the facts - the decrease in numbers is offset by an almost exponential increase in lethality.
And the Chinese know that - it's why they are adopting a salami-slicing strategy - no open confrontation.
Just boil the frog, little by little.
EDIT:
Here's the statement I was referring to - from 2016 - Dennis C. Blair, ret US CinC USPACOM and former US DNI (I think he would know what he's talking about, no?)
http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/1...tes-former.htm
Specifically:
Blair is confident the U.S. will quickly and easily defeat China in any conflict.
His optimism might be anchored on the realities the U.S. Navy can bring to bear enormous firepower against any fleet of the three fleets of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), which operates no combat-capable carrier. PLAN has classified its only carrier, the Liaoning, a training carrier unsuitable for combat.
China's much advertised DF-21 anti ship ballistic missile is also under development and its immature kill chain might prevent it from even acquiring fast moving U.S. Navy carrier strike groups hundreds of kilometers distant. Chinese submarines, while a threat, aren't a serious enough threat to curtail operations of U.S. Navy ships.
But if a conflict were to occur, this will likely be triggered by China.
If there should be war, Blair is confident the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force are capable of rapidly "neutralizing" China's outposts in the South China Sea, which are practically defenseless from a determined attack being isolated and strung out over hundreds of kilometers of sea.
These offensive operations by the Navy and Air Force will only take "probably 10 or 15 minutes' worth of worth of work for U.S. forces."