Mistrals to China? Are the French trying to piss me off?

Thanks to Bryan for the link.

via Business Insider

The ongoing saga over France's potential sale of two Mistral-class helicopter carriers to Russia took a new turn Monday with Chinese media reporting that representatives from the French in Shanghai could propose a deal to sell the warships to China

Read it all here. 

Really?  Seriously?  Are the French trying to piss me off!  More importantly are they looking to screw an entire region beyond recognition?

If the Chinese get these ships then you can shave off at least two years on my estimate of them being ready for combat operations against the US and our allies.

The sad part?  These relatively compact ships fit projected Marine & Navy operating concepts perfectly.  If you're talking about independent amphibious ship operations then a squadron of these vessels would seem ideal.

If you follow the concept and the ships would come together for large operations then again, this is perfect.

I don't know the game being played here but it should be alarming to the Japanese, Australians, Singaporeans and even Koreans.  This is a bad idea.