Comment by red-iron-pine

> The US, on the other hand, does have such capabilities thanks to modern stealth bombers, and using that capability is no more escalatory than sending 1,000,000 attack drones at the enemy.

Stealth bombers exist to deploy nukes, and were created to match the number of Soviet cities that the US Airforce planned on hitting if/when WW3 happened.

No amount of modern stealth bombers, even the F-35, could seriously crush a national-level industrial production regime. Esp. not China's which is massive.

The US would have better luck setting off nukes underwater near the coast and letting the tsunami wash away most large Chinese urban areas.

In an actual shooting war most surface vessels are going to last about 10 seconds, so it's the subs and their munitions that are going to carry the war, combined with air power.