US will blockade China in a war between them anyways, so making containerships legitimate target is not that big a deal.
Containerized suicide drones can be placed on a number of containerships as part of naval task forces attacking American bases in the Ryukyu Islands and Guam. Their effectiveness depends on their number which is needed to overwhelm the American air defenses.
I have no issues with the pursuit of lower cost suicide drones, but they would have to meet PLA requirements for mobility, preparation to launch time, manpower demands, and sustainment.
I would have agreed with you before this week without a second thought, but mugin 5 managed to evade Russian air defense. An air defense where Ukrainian no longer are willing to deploy tb2 or even mq1c against. I wouldn't exactly call that poorly defended. In fact, I don't see Okinawa better defended than that after an initial success attack on it. You can also get more loitering over an area with a slow moving piston powered uav vs something like harpy.
I am probably over thinking this, but it would be interesting to see what kind of lessons pla draw from drone usage in this conflict.
The fact that Ukraine is "no longer willing to deploy TB-2 or even MQ-1C against" does not mean Russia's air defense is good, it just demonstrates the very well known fact that MALE drones operating in isolation are non-survivable even against less-than-modern air defenses like what Russia has.
A MALE drone like TB-2 or MQ-1C is a much much much easier target to destroy than something like a Mugin 5 sized drone that Ukraine used in its flight profile for this mission. The TB and MQ-1C has a much larger RCS, and more importantly they fly at much higher altitudes than the flight profile that the Mugin 5 wouldl've done for this mission (which makes MALE UAVs able to be detected at much longer distances, whereas a lower flight profile like Mugin 5 on that suicide strike mission means radar horizon comes into play especially for a SAM's ground based radars).
Thus, a TB-2 or MQ-1C is thus not only a much bigger target than a Mugin 5 to detect, track and destroy -- but it can also be much more easily detected and detected at longer range than a Mugin 5 drone because of the altitude that the TB-2 or MQ-1C flies at for their missions.
The bulk of Russia's air defenses are late cold war at best -- hardly modern or capable. But they are still able to swat TB-2 or MQ-1C out of the sky, because MALE drones like those operating in isolation are absolutely unsurvivable even against obsolete air defenses like those.
On the other hand, the Mugin 5 drone has a much smaller RCS, and for this mission would have flown at a low altitude profile, and taking advantage of ground clutter -- it is basically a small prop driven cruise missile. Think about how difficult it is to defend against cruise missiles, and the sort of modern radars, weapons and networking you need to achieve early warning, tracking, and vectoring weapons towards a cruise missile, and one begin to recognizes the magnitudes of difference in difficulty in defending something like Mugin 5 versus taking out something like TB-2 or MQ-1C.
If we want to take a lesson away from the Mugin 5 drone strike, it should be "low flying, small RCS targets require substantial networked and modern capabilities to defend against"... something we've known about for a long time.
