USA China War Who Would Win? GHOST FLEET (PW Singer)

USA China War Who Would Win? Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War.
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Reviewer: Douglas J Martoccia
Illuminating
I was told by a colleague that Ghost Fleet would help me understand his concerns regarding Supply Chain vulnerabilities. Although some technical aspects of this book were far fetched, the general concepts illuminate the difficulties of conducting warfare in the 21st century where you cannot necessarily trust that systems will operate when you need them. I do think that the publisher could have done better job of closing up loose threads in the storyline and rounding out a more complete ending to the book, which is why it gets 4 stars, not 5.

Reviewer: Mick Levin
The title isn't even accurate
This is not a book about the next world war. It's a more limited conflict between China and the US with the Eussians supporting the Chinese and the US basically on it's own since the hypothetical dissolution of NATO and Japan bowing out.
Dialogue is not the authors' strong suit. Neither is telling one cohesive story. It's more like the authors wanted to write a non-fiction book about modern warfare and added in a story to support their hypothetical model. The result is a disjointed, hard to believe, story of a limited conflict with the Chinese in the Pacific. The only really interesting story out of all the many characters' POVs was that of the Black Widow whose origin was just as under-developed and her ambiguous end.
It was a mix of Red Dawn, Red Storm Rising, and any number of cyber warfare magazine articles hypothesizing on how a new unlimited objective war would be fought over the internet. Tired, overdone, unoriginal. Take a pass.

Reviewer: Kevin
Where is Tom Clancy when we need him?
I've seen this book compared to Clancy's "Red Storm Rising". Nothing could be further from the truth. Red Storm Rising was, to me, a masterpiece. Characters with depth, detailed & intricate plot, thoughtful strategic rationale and artful use of people being unexpectedly creative or making mistakes.
Ghost Fleet seemed to be a channel for everything going on in the world today that scares or concerns the author. The US military is thoroughly incompetent. The Navy has been reduced to a shallow shell of its formal self populated with clueless, arrogant, irreverant youngsters. Meanwhile the Chinese are geniuses. Masters of strategy and emerging technology. That is right up until the US is geniuses and the Chinese are arrogant clods. Ultimately the world can only be saved by grizzled old veterans. The characters are wooden and in many cases ridiculous. There were some characters and scenes that, for the life of me, I still can't figure out why they were in the story.
I finished Ghost Fleet only because I'm tenacious. You should avoid it. It barely rises to the level of a good beach read.

Reviewer: Davy Krieger
Utterly plausible near-future tech war
After taking a while to get into it, I recommend Ghost Fleet. What makes it different from your typical military sci-fi is an utterly plausible near future setting. This war novel is as much, or even more, about hackers, compromised micro-chips, autonomous drones, weaponized social networks - as it is about people shooting people. It pre-supposes that China and Russia agree to attack America, and get the drop on the U.S. by exploiting hacks they've spent decades getting in place.
What follows is partly a story about getting back to solid-state technology with old guys doing the work, and partly about technological innovation in the 21st Century. The authors, P.W. Singer and August Cole really understand the doctrine of all the armed forces, the procurement process, and the modern battlefield. They also understand insurgencies, occupation of a hostile populations (in this case American partisans) and the horrors of power-point driven military leadership.
I had a hard time getting into it, because sometimes it reads like a textbook about tech and the military and how they combine. It has basically forgettable, generic characters. But the tech lore is deep, the action is good, and he paints a pretty progressive picture of future war. Gay soldiers? Women in combat? Not even wroth a special mention, it's just the way things are.
This is some top notch research into doctrine, technology, and projecting how things could really go down in a next-decade conflict. Drones! Co-opted networks! Space battles! Space battles that are way more boring than you'd hope, but seem very plausible! Old guys bringing mothballed ships up to fighting trim! American preppers having their worst fantasies come true! Female marines having little use for doomsday preppers because they can't follow orders and have no discipline! Chinese generals quoting Sun-Tzu a lot! Sardonic, world-weary Russians! This book has it all. Ok, no, it doesn't have it all, but it has those things. Read it.

Reviewer: PBJ
Good Read, But Caution.
Great story, BUT: When I hit 50% on my Kindle, the story quickly ended, followed by a teaser for the sequel and two unrelated novellas. I feel like I was ripped off and will probably not buy the sequel on principle. As a former resident (thank you Katrina) of New Orleans I found the flood premise very logical and the ship breakers a great way to tell a story. The plot reminded me of a Delderfield novel. If you can get over the 50% issue, enjoy the ride.

Reviewer: Kindle Customer
Good start, predictable ending.
The first part of the story is very interesting with some plausible suggestions of how our high tech military could be defeated. The plot is good enough that the brass at the Pentagon should be required to read it. The second part of the book is a rather disappointing story of how after the shocking defeat of our military that occurs in the first part of the book our forces prevail by using old low-tech ships. That plot is not very likely but people expect the good guys to win in the end so that is how the story is written.

Reviewer: lew1950
Our Technological Sword of Damocles
Singer and Cole imagine a future conflict where the U.S. falls victim to decades of technological and economic appeasement with China, a world power no longer "Red" in the future, but ruled by the Directorate, an apparently militaristic and non-democratic new order. Extraordinarily well researched, the plausibility of the plot is supported by hundreds of footnotes and does not rely on great and unproven technological extrapolations (which begs the question of what further threats might still be developed). The authors' impeccable credentials as intelligence and strategic analysts adds to the credibility of the plot.
Briefly, the U.S. has become vulnerable to a heretofore friendly adversary who has infiltrated our military capabilities by being a critical supplier of technology over many years. Their infiltrations become an unrecognized Sword of Damocles to U.S. security. Motivated by the precepts of Sun Tsu, and inspired by the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Chinese military and political leadership move to establish Pacific dominance and to render ineffective previously dominant U.S. military capability. The Ghost Fleet refers to lower tech assets mothballed over the years by the U.S. in the interest of advanced capability.
The only weakness of this gripping tale is the substantial absence of political and intelligence perspectives of the Chinese surprise attack. This is purely a military story, but a compelling one. It ought to be read by all those who have 2016 aspirations. I recommend it to you too.

Reviewer: John P. Mercier
Red Dawn at sea.
Far fetched, highly stretched, and over footnoted. The basic assumption that two of three major world powers could agree to and implement a war plan so audacious and complex in complete secrecy is as ludicrious as economically recoverable gas deposits in the Mariana trench. The reader's credibility is over stretched by the casual assertion that mothballed ships from San Diego and planes from Davis Montham could be returned to service and manned in short order. And finally, the plethora of footnotes that are apparently designed to lend credence do nothing but point out that the ideas are far removed from the reality the author presents. On the other hand, I did read the whole thing on the second try.

Reviewer: Terence Little
The next world crisis in a sci-fi fantasy.
The principle of a US-China standoff and its universal effects has enormous political ramifications. How, when and why are the big questions with which the authors grapple. Certainly their technical knowledge of satellite communications and undersea navigation is without peer from a layman's viewpoint but extending it into a James Bondish adventure somewhat detracts from the plot. basically, The Chinese capture a huge undersea resource near the Americas and need to take out Hawaii to isolate the mainland from retaliation. Shades of Pearl Harbour. This requires strategic crippling of all communication technologies. In true American spirit the innovative Americans recruit their antiquated naval vessels and re-equip them in best Boy Scout tradition, aided by a very generous entrepreneur with a space obsession and a rapidly organized, brutal local resistance movement, headed predictably, by a femme fatale. The rest of the world does not get a look in.
From a technophilia point of view, however, the intimate description of the new cyberworld is fascinating and indubitably well researched. It can only come from '"the inside" and as such is a sobering reminder of how fragile the world remains in this age of super computers and hostile big brothers. Spy vs spy.
In summary, it does explore many facets of cyber warfare and the susceptibility of even well prepared nations to a clever enemy but somehow loses a tad of suspense when it gets down to the improbable heroics of the bods on the ground and the old rejuvenated sailors in the "Ghost Fleet".

Reviewer: DaddyMc
Tip-toe over the footnotes.
This book is what you get when you let nerds worried about world security loose as novelists. I kinda get the concept of all the cross-referencing to the real world to show there is a sound basis in reality in this cautionary tale, but really??? I suspect that many a sci-fi or thriller writer could equally annotate their work if they chose to drive people nuts with the footnotes (and in the Kindle version it really stuffs with your synching mechanism because those notes are at the end, and your device thinks that's where you have read to. Grrr). Guys, we all have Google if we want to check whether the tech is credible.
Anyway, I kept getting the feel that these guys wanted to write a serious dissertation (or they did, but not enough people paid attention) on how it could all go to crap for America because they don't manufacture enough at home and are reliant on external manufacture of their weapons technology. Because Singer and Cole either lacked enough evidence or audience for their thesis, they turned it into a novel. The result is a book so dedicated to the message that the characters are wafer thin and pretty much pawns on a chess board, so it is hard to connect emotionally unless you just like big guns, hi-tech and conspiracies.

Reviewer: Openbar
Really worth reading despite its "first novel" problems.
Beach reads this year were this story and Mayday: The Decline of American Naval Supremacy, with the second book read first. What a combination! The theme of this book--China overtaking America's sea dominance--really got my attention. The first part, leading up to and including the Chinese attacks is strong. The rest, not as much so. The author struggles some in narrating futuristic warfare and strategy, and advanced weapons are largely described as being in the hands only of one side or the other, with counters a work in process for both sides. Confounding this problem are the overly many character arcs in play and the author jumps the reader, too often in a jarring way in very short segments, among, for instance, the captain's home life, small team heroics on the ground, espionage intrigues in Shanghai, and a murder mystery in Honolulu. I'm not sure if the book needs a hundred more pages or three less developed characters. A greater focus on continuity (as opposed to merely ensuring closure of the character arcs) and some technical editing should make his next book more readable. I'm happy to see a new writer in this genre; I will buy his next one.

Reviewer: Hibberd Kline
A good read and an important one.
Recommended for professional reading by The Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Robert Neller, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War by P. W. Singer and August Cole is an excellently researched, realistically presented scenario for near-future conflict pitting China and Russia against the United States. Its highly probable plot is a very realistic projection from today’s headlines. The technology is extensively documented in the Endnotes, which put to rest any quibbling about the feasibility of the equipment from robots to railguns. The book is very reminiscent of Sir John Hackett’s The Third World War August 1985, which my generation of Marines read as mental preparation for conflict with the Soviet Union in the 1980’s. While the characters could use a bit more development, the action is fast, the situations all too believable, and the disasters in combat of cost cutting myopia, such as relying on China for computer chips, absolutely terrifying. For one who was concerned with communications disruptions as the electronic threat, the ramifications of cyberwarfare described and documented in this book are mindboggling. It is both a good read and an important one.

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About the Author
P. W. SINGER is an expert on twenty-first-century warfare. His award-winning nonfiction books include the New York Times bestseller Wired for War.

AUGUST COLE is a writer and analyst specializing in national security issues, and a former defense industry reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

Product details:
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition edition (June 30, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0544142845
ISBN-13: 978-0544142848
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.4 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds

BUY your copy here: https://amzn.to/2TlqbTs

GHOST FLEET - A Novel Of The Next World War.
BUY your copy here: https://amzn.to/2TlqbTs

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