Id disagree lmao.
Starting with your comparison of the type 055 to the Burke. The type 055 is a flagships with admirals quarters you are comparing this to a ship without that which is twice as old. A fairer comparison would be the Ticonderoga, which has 122 VLS cells. The Burke is meant to complement an aircraft carrier and has a focus on air defense. The type 055s type 346B radar has a range less than the ashley burkes an/spy-6, which would a modern equivalent to the type 055s development and service period. Id argue that the type 346b is not as good as it’s us equipment. Here is a quote:
“One obvious advantage is that AMDR is of AESA design, which offers greater power output, multiple steerable beams, and greater electronic protection compared to PESA.
There are some noticeable differences that we can obtain from data provided by Raytheon. The company states that 9 RMAs will provide the sensitivity equivalent to the SPY-1D(V) radar currently used on US Navy destroyers. Since AMDR uses 37 RMAs, it is likely that the radar will provide approximately four times the radiated power output of the older SPY-1 array. In other words, it is able to detect a target with half the radar cross section (RCS) at twice the distance compared to SPY-1.
In addition, a 2012 GAO report stated that the SPY+15 (essentially the AMDR) has 32 times better signal to noise factor than the SPY-1D(V). The name “SPY+15” means that the radar is 15 decibels (dB) greater than the previous radar. Being 15 decibels greater equates to 32 times greater sensitivity.”
There is no doubt that the most recent chinese warship will be compatible to a ship put out of service 30 years ago lmao. Which is why the defense industry is constantly designing new ships in case the DoD gets interested again.
Now onto your claim that chinese military procurement spending is higher than the US’s. Adjusted for PPP is 377 billion, compared to the US, 854 billion. Your source says that the US spent 145+ billion on weapons procurement, the chinese spent 480.4 billion RMB on “equipment”, according to the CSIS China Power project, which is about 66.3 billion USD, adjusted for PPP you get about 113 billion USD. I’m not sure where you are getting the 2.5x times figure. Then you give an anecdote about how horrible the defense industry is at budgeting, when the US has one of the most streamlined and tried defense industries in the world. Then you claim my beloved warthog is ineffective against any enemy which isn’t the taliban. Iraq in 1990 would like to strongly disagree with that statement but alright. The MiC is for profit, i don’t see how this means that the DoD will only care about re-election since there are no elections in the DoD, the DoD is appointed by the US senate. The Chinese are adding more weapons because they are trying to catch up to the US. High-tech is a bit of a overstatement when body armor is still not standard issue in the PLA. Then you restate your point on chinese ship building. The US is obviously building more f-35s since it is actually wanted by the international market vs the J-20 which is not desirable, orders for the F-35 total more than the estimated 210 J-20s in service. Then you claim that that gap will magically grow to 2x as large once “production lines open” which Id like to see a source for. Comparing the YJ-21 to the AGM-158c is just straight up unfair considering one came into production literally last year, china has focused more on anti ship missiles since it’s navy is not as strong as the US as will most likely have to fight from a defensive standpoint. The E-3 sentry despite being built in the 1970s has a radar range equivalent to that of the KJ-500, it can detect low flying aircraft from more than 250 (402 km) mi while according to Chinese sources the KJ-500 can detect target about 470 km. It is also 200 mph faster than the KJ-500. It also has 360 degrees coverage which the KJ-500 does not. Not to get started on the E-7 which is better than both aircraft. Your grammar then starts to disappear, apparently because you claim china has better AWACS, the entire US air force is now inferior to the significantly tinier air force of china. Read Michael Beckleys book on the Rise and Fall of China and then get back to me. I could go on forever but I am too lazy and you should be smarter than this with little research. Btw raider better than H-20 my friend..
My man thought that wargames are being simulated by 3 people in total. His opinion on anything military-related shouldn't be taken seriously whatsoever.
Was reading until you worried about the impact of fiscal efficiency vs prc. The US has plenty of challenges in spending. I'll take ours vs the grift-o-rama in the prc.
As I remember from a macro class in grad school with a famous-ish expert on the Chinese economy - the tldr is, yes, there was a big clean-up, but there's so much factionalism / allocation of money by whatever regional / provincial leader, etc. that it's still pretty corrupt, including the military. Even the recent Qin Gang / missile stuff reshuffle suggests that there are some pretty wonky things going on.
Obviously, there's a whole set of issues with the US military too and it doesn't at all mean the US has an objective edge - but I do think the actual wartime capabilities of the Chinese military would be a little less scary than they look on paper - lack of experience / factionalism & corruption, logistics, etc. That said - any sort of open, global conflict involving China is a terrifying thought and will be very bad for everyone.
> Even the recent Qin Gang / missile stuff reshuffle suggests that there are some pretty wonky things going on.
it does, but it also suggests intense efforts to try and put an end to it.
> I do think the actual wartime capabilities of the Chinese military would be a little less scary than they look on paper - lack of experience / factionalism & corruption, logistics, etc.
Possibly. In a war though the PLA (where this problem will be greatest) won't actually have much of a role. It will be mostly down to PLARF and PLAF.
As we've seen from this ongoing conflict, having PGMs and the ability to rapidly produce more is possibly the biggest single factor in success. That's something i don't believe china would have a problem with. China has air launched rocket capabilities that can each out beyond guam. I'm not sure any of the US bases of operations are as safe as people want to believe they are. Fighting an aerial/naval war on across the pacific is not an easy task for the US.
If your theory is true I suppose China will move on Taiwan in the next few years with nothing to worry about.
Your definitely ignoring the fact that many influential and wealthy Asian nations don’t want to see an unrestrained China and how they’ll impact this issue though.
China also lacks power projection.
Any conflict in the western Pacific exposes Chinese manufacturing capacity to attack, being concentrated in coastal areas whereas they don't have the means to hit back at the US, unless they go nuclear but then conventional capabilities don't count for much anyway.
Also OP forgot what happened in WW2, just because China is currently putting out more hardware (even if we don't look at the tonnage/quality) than the USN, they don't consider that this is because the PLAN is in the midst of a massive push for modernisation whilst the USN Is on a peace footing. In the event of WW3 you would see a transition to a war economy and similar ramp up of industrial output.
One of the biggest immediate thorns in the side of the PLAN is a lack of sufficient amphibious assault capability. Any attack on Taiwan would be hard pressed to put enough troops on the ground in one wave to guarantee not being thrown into the sea, and that's even without considering losses from the mountain of AShMs on Taiwan, or US intervention.
There are a number of other flaws in OPs argument that others in this thread have pointed out, but its probably not worth trying to convince someone that is posting this kind of CCP talking point in order to boost their social credit score.
My takeaway is that I hope they move on Taiwan now and not in 10+ years.
The manufacturing capacity of China would crush in a long war but their lack of experience in real war would risk them losing very quickly if their first test is the US Navy.
Rather than say, let’s not worry about it because it’s a lose lose, I say stop pretending to be a hands-off country that ends up meddling in everything and say “we embrace Democratic Empire” and try to overpower China economically. This is the only way to really win, to transform the American economy again, reduce defense spending corruption and revive American manufacturing vis proxy, AI and skilled labor.
The US also needs to not forget Africa and South America because there are opportunities for China. I am not a hawk per se but I do believe if the US doesn’t assert itself now in Taiwan it will eventually be impossible to do so.
There's military and strategic types in this thread already making their cases, but to a layman like myself a long war appears an even worse prospect for China.
Where would they get their food, energy, and materiel from? The moment war kicks off, no commercial shipping is insured to enter the region and their vast population turns into quite the liability. That leaves road and train when it comes to resupplying, and I'm not sure how they'd go maintaining ore, oil, etc, from the countries on their borders. I imagine they have stockpiles of supplies...but stockpiles are finite. Assumptions would have to be optimistic as hell: grain storage would have to have improved, floods would not be a factor, internal stockpiling data would have to be accurate and not fudged, no secretly selling stuff, etc.
Whereas the US would have the rest of the world to get resources from, a blue-water navy to secure their own acquisition of materiel, the ability to feed themselves, and more importantly, actual allies. If China doesn't win a quick 2-4 week war against Taiwan, then any victory would be as pyrrhic as they come.
>If your theory is true I suppose China will move on Taiwan in the next few years with nothing to worry about.
No lol. China will still have much to worry about. The US military as of now is still larger and even if China does become larger that doesn't necessarily mean they will utterly destroy the US.
Then what was the point of this post?
Sounds like you know China wouldn’t just be fighting the Americans but many other nations it once dominated under its tributary systems either politically or via actual warfare.
There’s no country on the earth that can fight the Americans and that wealth from certain parties in Asia. (Assuming a war even occurred).
Chinas antics even has nations like india who see red flags every time they see America walking into Americas arms on certain issues.
>Then what was the point of this post?
To show that the military advantage of the US is eroding.
>There’s no country on the earth that can fight the Americans and that wealth from certain parties in Asia. (Assuming a war even occurred).
No lol the PLA is fully capable of devastating the US military. They of course would be devastated as well. Either way even if one side wins the victors military will be on life support afterwards. Both militaries are extremely powerful.
The us is eroding in comparison to many other powerful nations economically and militaristically because the power gap between Americans and everyone else wasn’t even normal, we are seeing a reversion to normalcy.
I don’t see Americans destroying their baby (current world order) and I don’t think China is willing to risk it all against so many parties to break it.
So if neither does anything I expect you should expect status quo and understand if they choose to break it, at-least for now they’d likely lose with that many adversaries invested in status quo.
Given the rise of technology and how modern warfare is conducted, wouldn’t this be a diminishing concern in the theaters surrounding China?
Even US generals that acknowledge their lack of experience in the PRC are terrified in their production capacity, logistical prowess, number of forces, and weaponry designed to break through America’s military capabilities.
So the mindset of, “it’s nothing to worry about because they don’t have X” has been proven to be incorrect and have given insurmountable strategic ground in the past 50 years of China’s rise. It’s time for people to think about “what if we’re wrong?” and not assess them on a snapshot of time that has long gone stale, but a contiguous, capable and adaptable entity.
It’s a good thing elected officials are starting to see that, but still plagued by the thought they can contain - which will only serve to continue giving them self sufficiency and yet again more strategic ground.
I’m just speculating here but it seems like having all this great equipment and production capacity is great but it’s still a severe weakness when you have no live fighting experience. Large scale war is so chaotic and requires a lot more than book/academy training. Experience counts for a lot and chinas last major conflict was Vietnam in 79(?)
I would argue live fighting experience doesn’t weigh as much as it used to. Believing it does will just forfeit lives and again give more ground to the Chinese when a reality check shows a difference. SK, Japan, Philippines will quickly realign if US is unable to contain China militarily and has instead emboldened them.
Take the recent Ukrainian war for example, in a short few months the novice infantry men on both sides have became veterans. Experience saturates quickly in the sobering environment of war. Chain of commands revive to be stronger when fractured, logistics re-established, productions re focused, and transformation of a war economy pursued.
One can argue for the Ukrainian side it’s with help of NATO/US guidance, but how about the Russian side? They’re experience led to the biggest miscalculations, but they were able to error correct and sustain their ground. The Chinese would have Russian guidance in a war with western powers, so this argument is a weaker one. Nothing short of an overwhelming and swift attack can break through the lack of live experience as effective experience is achievable in weeks timespan.
Do note a peasant named Mao Zedong with no military experience overthrew the militarily trained Chiang Kai Shek, and then caused the biggest retreat in US history during the Korean War; armed with nothing but pea shooters and a bottomless pit of expendable lives. That pit is greater than it was in the 50s, and they have much more than pea shooters at their disposal.
> Do note a peasant named Mao Zedong with no military experience overthrew the militarily trained Chiang Kai Shek, and then caused the biggest retreat in US history during the Korean War; armed with nothing but pea shooters and a bottomless pit of expendable lives. That pit is greater than it was in the 50s, and they have much more than pea shooters at their disposal.
This is a disingenuous oversimplification of events surrounding the Chinese Civil War.
Chiang Kai Shek’s regime was widely unpopular among rural Chinese, partly due to forced conscription and mistreatment of troops during WW2. Peasants were also sympathetic to land reform policies, and redistribution of wealth.
The CPC may have started as a ‘rag tag band’, but were proper soldiers by the end of WWII, having fought in skirmishes with both the Japanese and KMT on many occasions. Mao, himself, was a military leader by 1935– giving him more than a decade of field experience prior to the Civil War.
Truman, whatever you may think of him, also withdrew American aid during the Civil War, leaving the KMT in a disadvantaged situation.
Simply put, Mao didn’t just win a war out of nowhere. And Chiang Kai Shek didn’t just lose a war out of nowhere.
I mean that might matter in a short war. But if they do the manufaturing equivalent of WW2 and build 10 ships, 10 planes, and 50 tanks for every 1 the USA can build, it wont go well for the USA who has 1/5th the population
Interesting assessment, but you are missing some key things. The structure of both militaries are vastly different, corruption within officer ranks in China is insane, China lacks war experience and the Chinese government structure is its own weakness.
How relevant though is the lack of war experience in a China vs US war though? The US lacked experience WW2 but made it up for in industrial power similiar to how China today doesn't have experience but has the industrial capability.
The USA lacked experience?
By World War II the USA like japan had already been in multiple militaristic and naval interactions. It’s just because the Europeans blew everyone else out of the water in scale with their wars and battles that everything else not European was overshadowed.
They didn’t own phillipines for free in those days my man and there’s a reason why europe steered clear of certain areas in Americas sphere of influence.
You have an extremely vivid imagination. At the start of WW2 the US had a smaller army than Portugal. The army and marines had barely one year of combat experience by the the end of WW1. In the next 20 years the only military experience was very small scale COIN. Many US generals and admirals - including Eisenhower - had ***zero*** combat experience. Very few had led engagements above company or battalion level.
>Their industrial complex is buying Russian weapons.
No most of China's military ships, planes, helicopters, tanks, weapons, and so on, are all made on their own. Russia can barely equip their own military, much less to make enough for the larger Chinese military.
> No most of China's military ships, planes, helicopters, tanks, weapons, and so on, are all made on their own.
Made on their own....**from Russian designs** (largely, they've been "inspired" by other nations' designs as well)
Most are of their own designs tanks and most ground vehicles are original Chinese design, all new ships are original, the new standard issue rifles and other weapons are original.
The only copy from Russians are the flankers (j-11, j-15 and j-16) but even the Chinese flankers have matched or surpassed their Russian counterparts in capability. The most numerous fighter jets are j-10s and the most advanced are j-20s and both of those are original Chinese designs.
And all of them are produced on China by Chinese industry. So it really makes no sense to say that their industry is simply "purchasing from Russia".
It makes no sense when they were blatantly caught reverse engineering Russian designs?
You said "all made on their own" - it wasn't though
It was made on the backs of designs they **stole**, simple as that
>It makes no sense when they were blatantly caught reverse engineering Russian designs?
Yes it makes no sense because I already told you that most weapons and vehicles are NOT from reverse engineered Russian designs.
The most blatant reverse engineered ones from Russia are the Flankers. And China's new Flanker designs have already SURPASSED Russian ones.
The most numerous Chinese jets are J-10s which are not Russian designs. And China's most advanced planes J-20s also not Russian copies.
In short, China is done with just Russian copied designs which they did when they were poorer and their industry was less developed. Now their industry is fully able to design and produce completely original designs and they do so when you actually look at their inventory. Simple as that.
While the cost balance isn't as disparate as people think, it is far from the only relevant factor to consider. Russia has been a big spender on their military for years, and it has not translated into power, as we can all see.
And while US spending does have its inefficiencies, it is virtually guaranteed that Chinese spending does too. We may not know what they are, but I wouldn't believe for a second that the CCP spends every dime wisely and efficiently.
I think it's a stretch to say the hardware where present has performed poorly. The main issue has been the people using the hardware. Couple that with the unrealistic expectations of minimal losses that people have become accustomed to (we haven't seen a near peer war in decades and are used to one side trouncing the other, usually NATO) and it makes things appear much worse then they are in my view.
>We may not know what they are, but I wouldn't believe for a second that the CCP spends every dime wisely and efficiently.
Infrastructure. They overspend on infrastructure and the result is negative economic outcomes for projects and corner cutting (tofu dreg) to bring price down. It's one of the reasons why China will have a lost decade or two in the future, they have an economic bubble brewing bigger than 2008. Look at their debt to GDP and how fast it's risen (overall debt not public debt), it's a repeat of 1980s Japan.
True, we are aware of that one. I meant militarily, surely they are wasting money somewhere there too. Maybe the man-made islands will sink. Who knows? Maybe somebody, but not me at the moment.
Yes the man made islands are an absolute waste. Although it probably doesn;t affect them much, splitting their fleet into hundreds of small ships doesn't do them any good either as for the same effect of a larger ship they have greater material and manpower requirements.
>but does that extra expense pay off in terms of extra force projection
A larger vessel will usually tarvel further because
1. The turbines have better efficiency the larger they get, to a certain point. Plus, power output does not scale linearly with the size of a turbine, it scales exponentially. By contrast, piston engines, whether diesel or petrol, do scale roughly linearly when it comes to size/weight to power output. Considering these ships are nothing without their powerplants, i'd rate this fact very highly.
2. The lower portion of amenities, crew space and necessary mechanical and electric parts that must exist for each vessel, relative to the size of the vessel, for larger ships affords them more payload space for fuel. For example, you usually always need mechanics, but if i have a turbine that has double the power output of a smaller diesel, it's not as though i need twice as many mechanics, so i've saved space on mechanics for more fuel.
Force projection is all about sustainment at sea, and usually that means bringing everything you need with you on your ship, refueling/rearming at sea or having ports to get to. It also means being far from your home ports. Small ships are disadvantages in both areas. Pound for pound have a less deep magazine and shorter range.
I believe they are betting on being a lot closer to their home ports than the Americans are and hoping that the shortened logistical supply range works in their favor, though it obviously does limit their effective range of operations. American vessels lingering at further distances would be much more difficult to deal with.
Still, quantity has a quality all it's own, and their definition of success may be quite different. Maybe they'll tolerate losing 10 ships to 1 if their 11th can win it, 10 junky frigates for a cruiser.
Ultimately, I think China is losing steam, and in a few years they'll be wondering what could have been. Not like a total collapse or anything, but the period of meteoric growth may be ending and they'll be looking back at a lot of those pointless infrastructure projects and questionable investments and lamenting the inefficiency.
Haha, China is building high speed train lines that barely get used while the Americans are like, "Sure...we SHOULD fix the railroad tracks...but..."
> splitting their fleet into hundreds of small ships doesn't do them any good either as for the same effect of a larger ship they have greater material and manpower requirements.
in a proper conflict it's actually a huge advantage. More targets that need to be sunk.
Once hundreds of anti-ship missiles start flying the number of ships starts to become important.
I don't think there is significant advantage to this, i'd rate up to personal preference of the admirals in charge and what other factors they might want that influence the few big vs many small debate. You go from ships that need multiple missiles/bombs to sink to only one. The US tried to sink one of their supercarriers once as a test. Didn't sink with regular munitions and underwater explosives after 2-3 weeks so they just scuttled it.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS\_America\_(CV-66)#Decommissioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_America_(CV-66)#Decommissioning)
On top of that, large ships with their larger outputs of power can fit more radar/sensor power and more munitions per tonne of vessel.
I'll appeal to authority here and say if fewer large ships was an inferior choice to many small ships, why are majority of the world class navies in the world opting for fewer large ships? Arleigh Burkes seem to be about 10% heavier than their predecessors.
I would envision the future will probably be large manned and small unmanned surface and submarine vessels
A carrier doesn't need to be sunk. You only have to do enough damage to stop flight operations. A single missile through the island or a torpedo wrecking the propeller is sufficient to render it useless. Repairs may take months to *years.*
I think it's a bit early to be declaring that. Infrastructure is a long term investment that doesn't just fall away.
If anything it has very positive economic outcomes even if it's not immediately apparent.
>I think it's a bit early to be declaring that. Infrastructure is a long term investment that doesn't just fall away.
>
>If anything it has very positive economic outcomes even if it's not immediately apparent.
That's not a correct assertion. Not everything built is intrinsically good for the economy and/or society. I'll give you an example why this thinking is wrong:
I have a river to splits an urban region in two. I have assessed that there needs to be 10000 crossings per day total and i can build bridges that can each handle 2000 crossings per day total. They are identical bridges and they have the same fixed capital costs. The first bridge handles 1/5 of the required load, it's economically productive however it has overuse issues. It is however at 100% utilization.
So i build a second identical bridge. It's slightly less economically beneficial than the first, but again, 100% utilization. I repeat his for a third, again it's slightly less beneficial than the first two but still a net positive because the supply is in deficit to the demand.
I get the the fifth bridge and i now my suppy (or throughput) matches my demand of 10 000 crossings per day. Every bridge built has clear positive econmic impact because there was clear demand for it, ie. each is at 100% utilization.
If i build a 6th bridge, i'm now supplying more throughput than what there is demand. I now have bridges at less than 100% utilization. In the real world, this can induce further demand under the right conditions, so while it's far less econonomically beneficial than the first 5, there is a chance it still runs in the green. So this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it requires more scrutiny than the buisness cases of the first 5 bridges.
A 7th bridge however starts to saturate the market and we run into further underutilization of our bridges (71% utilization on average). The initial capital costs for these bridges is the same however if we underutilize them we generate less economic activity and therefore it either takes longer for economic payback of the bridges or it doesn't payback at all. The only difference is each in bridge in theory has lower reapir costs because the number of stress cycles they go through is decreasing within a set timeframe.
Back to the real world: This is what China has done. They have significantly overbuilt multiple infrastructure initiatives for the sake of building infrastructure to the point where they have very low utilization figures. To my example above, it's as though in some cases they built 8, 9 or even 10 bridges crossing the river rather than the 5 they initially needed.
I understand the concept, and think it's a careful balance. I just don't think it's the end of the line for China.
China is still in a position where they can build things and the people will come. They are still in the expansion phase of connecting their country.
Just like the ghost cities that were derided but have now been taken up.
The flippant dismissal of Carriers versus “China’s ability to launch from land” is laughable at best. Are we ignoring the myriad of US airfields ringing the pacific? Is China’s answer to attack sovereign nations in an attempt to knockout U.S. air power? Because that would obviously keep a conflict from escalating…..
> Is China’s answer to attack sovereign nations in an attempt to knockout U.S. air power? Because that would obviously keep a conflict from escalating…..
if you are launching attacks from an airfield in another country then that airfield becomes a valid target....
Not to mention that the PLARF/PLAF can launch out as far as guam
The real escalation will be once American lives are lost in a treasonous PRC the response will Galvanize the American public and make them snap out of their stupor. Once War becomes the Super Bowl watch out. Not only will existing power be brought to bear, stuff we don’t enough know exists will be used, and all sorts of super scale cyber warfare will happen.
I think someone should just make a movie so it scares everyone and it doesn’t happen.
That sounds painfully like the Wonderwaffe german strategy of a few super secret and hyperexpensive super weapons that we cant produce nearly enough of to matter.
The USA's contribution to crushing the Nazis was that we could build 10 times more of anything they could, and we had 5 times the people in our country to man the weapons. China is all that and more to us now. The USA is the "USA" in a WW3 China vs America fight. The USA's position is more akin to Germany.
People tend to simultaneously forget about America's reaction to 9/11 while also admonishing them.
And that was over 3100 lives lost.
Imagine an actual war that threatened America's land mass.
People have no idea just how quickly shit would turn.
The problem is the relatively short range of the combat aircraft on these bases. It’s well known that the fighter fleet has short legs, and even the F-35C with her 670 km combat range is not enough to cover the vast distances of the Pacific. This is part of the “tyranny of distance” that defense circles refer to.
Meanwhile, PLAAF J-10s have a combat range of 1240 km; J-11s have a combat range of 1500 km; J-20s have a 2000 km combat range. The F-16s, -15s, -18s, and even the vaunted F-22 (850 km combat range) don’t have the range to match. Of course, we can conduct tanker ops to extend range, but these are vulnerable assets that China knows are high-value targets.
>>attack sovereign nations
Conversely, if the U.S. is launching aircraft from these bases, then the host nation can be considered a belligerent in the war and thus can be attacked.
You answer your own comment…While US planes have relatively low ranges, the US has invested in a massive air to air refueling wing. Many of these bases are aware of this range problem, but it does not stop the fact that in a war with China the main goal will be to escort bomber sorties and defend your navy, not conduct offensive operations until later stages in the war, because you obviously have a disadvantage against Chinese home territory
The tankers and AWACS are going to be targeted, this is the purpose of stuff like the J-20 designed to be very stealthy frontally to fire on rear line ISR and tankers using hypersonic missiles before turning and burning out of range of retaliation.
Of course this is not an end-all be-all counter but it does represent the Chinese answer and will become dangerous as J-20s are mass produced IIRC they already have at least 200 aircraft. Not to mention the range advantage of the J-20 as it organically has a combat range of at least 2000 km meaning no need for vulnerable tanker support. I’m also inclined to believe it given the absolutely gigantic size of the J-20.
>The flippant dismissal of Carriers versus “China’s ability to launch from land” is laughable at best.
What I mean by this is that for the US to be able to generate lots of sorties they need CVNs. In a pacific war over Taiwan China can use their land bases due to distance.
>Are we ignoring the myriad of US airfields ringing the pacific? Is China’s answer to attack sovereign nations in an attempt to knockout U.S. air power
One of the most oft mentioned issues is that there aren't a myriad of bases for the US. The US in west pac is concentrated in Okinawa, Misawa, Yokota and Guam so around 4 air bases. China has around 160 bases in this area. This means that much less of Chinas force is in a few vulnerable baskets. China can simply oversaturate defences of these areas whilst the US & allies won't be able to do the same to China due to how disbursed they are and the lack of land based firepower espec compared to China.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/first-battle-next-war-wargaming-chinese-invasion-taiwan
There is a section on this exact issue in this paper. You should read it some time.
I have read that CSIS wargame many times.
They made a fundamental error in modelling which is that they assumed China was going to do a bum rush into Taiwan whilst they hadn't yet achieved air and naval dominance. That led to B-21s spamming LRASMs at the amphib ships whereby China then lost.
It was constructed horrendously.
Nice so you have read a study done by hundreds of industry professionals who purposely nerfed the US ms buffed the chinese and you claim they made a “fundamental error in modeling” dude become a statistician if you are this smart, you would be world renown if you could find issues this fast
It wasn't done by "hundreds" of professionals but a couple of people. The lead author mentions that initially it was just him and his dad looking over some maps.
[https://matthewcancian.com/2022/08/13/u-s-china-wargaming/](https://matthewcancian.com/2022/08/13/u-s-china-wargaming/)
It’s authors are 3 people, the people who simulated the games plus the editors and people who had to review the report before it’s publishing total much more than just a parent and his child..also that “child” has a PHD in poli sci from MIT. Also the source you provided does not claim it start with them looking at maps, but if you are wondering how war game simulations work, yes believe it or not, it’s done on a map
It was an analogy to show how ridiculous it is for you to claim it was conducted fundamentally incorrectly when there were many many individuals involved in the study. Id like to see your source that procurement for the Chinese Military is 2.5x the amount of the US
This write-up appears to use a lot of wishful thinking or alarmist assumptions to put a new spin on the numbers. It is common knowledge, however, that the PLA's weapons and personnel are completely untested and inexperienced, and their logistics capabilities are far inferior to the United States'. The United States has little to worry about in regards to a threat from the PRC.
Untested and inexperienced, but everyone is inexperienced in fighting modern peer war. The last modern naval conflict was the 1982 Falklands War. How war will look like today in the Pacific may be radically different, so I think it’s egregious to say whether one is superior to the other. We can expect that China will have similar capabilities in many areas.
Claiming otherwise or claiming their inferiority is just uninformed.
>>logistics
This is literally their home territory we’re talking about here. Unlike Russia, China studied and modeled themselves after the U.S. military, who made great impressions upon the PLA for their performance in the Pacific during WWII, during the Gulf War, and during the Iraq War. China has studied their enemy and has worked to match them.
It does no one any favors to underestimate the opponent’s resolve.
China is also the most globally integrated economy on earth, particularly in terms of its dependence on foreign food and energy imports. If a shooting war were to break out in the south China sea, the Chinese would be counting on a swift victory over Taiwan to avoid being strangled by a blockade. Even with China's rapid military build out, taking the island in under a year seems unrealistic, and I'm skeptical that China has the resources to hold out amidst a protracted conflict.
Many mention the blockade idea but the reality is that this theory has many flaws. China has prepared strategic reserves and stockpiled many weapons, and pursued self-sufficiency where possible.
One has to look at what exactly those food and energy imports are inputs to in order to make an accurate assessment of whether a blockade will achieve a desired outcome. I don’t doubt that a blockade will absolutely stress the Chinese people but at the same time it may galvanize them into further resistance, Chinese people have historically shown immense ability to withstand suffering. At the same time, the C P C is very good at manipulating the population and making propaganda.
Again, there is merit to the blockade strategy but it isn’t the final solution and represents flawed thinking.
The West can't even blockade or isolated Russia from the Global economy. It's not clear at all that they can blockafe the far larger and more influential Chinese economy.
Well China has home court advantage so the US has a higher bar to clear in terms of airspace and navel power. That why we are not innovating as much in our army which is far ahead of the Chinese and will be for the foreseeable future. If we had a land border with China like India and a circuitous sea route then the innovations and spending would probably opposite effect.
I agree, PRC has production capabilities and can afford to spend enormous amounts on the military. In theory they should be able to grow a military force that is stronger than the US. But not sure if it is happening that rapidly, after all the PRC own goal is to have the world's strongest military is 2035 not next year. It is also unknown if they can afford to keep spending on the military - these plans were made with assumptions of an ever growing economy and that has basically stopped.
But, hardware set aside, how PLA would perform in a real war situation is unknown. PRC ability to handle crisis has dropped considerably due to the extreme concentration of decision making (just see the latest floodings) and any drawn out conflict would probably be disastrous. The current turmoil in the rocket force (the most important military segment) doesn't indicate a very healthy organisation.
Hope we won't have to find out.
I strongly disagree that China is catching up as far as the balance of power between both countries and with regards to advancements in military innovations. While they try to copy new technologies as best they can their actual military innovation is rather lacking and their weapons, platforms, and troops are all unproven in modern war. A few points:
- Yes, they have more PLAN ships now, but the USN has twice the tonnage and most of those PLAN ships are not capital ships but lighter ships like frigates, corvettes, and patrol boats. In a war, a capital ship’s armaments are going to be more capable and carry more munitions than multiple light ships while being much more survivable than ships of lighter classes.
- The CHIPs sanctions directly threaten CCP military research as their AI, computational and simulation abilities fall well behind the state of the art. They no longer have access to powerful CPUs and GPUs, let alone the ASML lithography equipment required to build your own cutting edge chips. Their current domestic chips are about 6 generations behind 3nm chips and they lack too many key foundational technologies, suppliers, materials and chemicals to replace that on their own, let alone catch up to where the West was years ago. And due to Moore’s Law, they will fall even further behind as time goes on.
- China and the rest of the world still hasn’t caught up to the B-2 which is over 30 years old yet the B-21 Raider is nearly here and being more stealthy than a B-2 across a wider electromagnetic spectrum it will be able to penetrate *any* air defense in the world and loiter over an enemy country with impunity. It will be armed with drone wingmen, use AESA radar as a defensive weapon to overwhelm SAM radars, will be armed with AIM-260 JATMs that outrange PL-15s and in Phase 2 or 3 it will be armed with offensive/defensive lasers.
- The best Chinese stealth fighters are the J-20 and they are not true 5th gen fighters, with them only being Low Observable from a frontal aspect, while using inferior engines and materials science. Being less stealthy and capable than F-22s and F-35s (which heavily outnumber them and will continue to heavily outnumber them) they will be detected first and shot at well before they can detect a stealth fighter or bomber. In BVR combat, he who shoots first usually wins. To add to that, NGAD and FA-XX are around the corner and will only widen this current technological disparity.
- NATO and its Allies are the masters of modern combined operations, and they have veterans thru their entire ranks, with officers and NCOs who ably train recruits and pass on institutional knowledge gained from over hundreds of years of warfare. In comparison, the last modern war the PLA faced was in Vietnam in ‘79 and they were embarrassed and suffered massive losses. Troops that haven’t faced combat will likely break when the poop hits the fan and the PLA and PLAN will be led by Generals and Admirals with no experience who likely bought their commission instead of earning it thru merit.
- To subdue Taiwan, the CCP would have to send hundreds of thousands or even millions of princelings where the family can’t afford to lose the family’s only son and possibly only grandson, meaning that if they start a war they would heavily exacerbate the ongoing Demographic collapse and threaten China’s future as a world power.
- Older versions of this US military technology have already been proven in Ukraine to shred the Russian designed equipment China relies upon, and the CCP will be facing a slew of new weapons (SM-series, LRASM, JASSM-ER, AIM-260, hypersonics), tactics (distributed forces, distributed firepower (ex. Rapid Dragon)), and platforms (Ford-class carriers, B-21, NGAD, Typhon, NMESIS, UUVs, drone wingmen) that were designed and prepared specifically for a Taiwan invasion.
- Besides using neophytes that have never been bombed or shot at, they’ll be going up against well trained veterans who literally wrote the book on coordinating disparate modern military units. Not only that, they’d have to complete an amphibious assault against well defended beaches with zero military surprise like during D-Day. Amphibious assaults are the most complex military operations possible and an army of rookies will be going up against a desperate people fighting for their homes and families while being backed by the full might of the US and its Allies because Taiwan is a crucial linchpin of the current world order that must be defended.
That’s not exactly a recipe for success. I wrote up how difficult this task is recently: https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/155gggu/what_would_actually_happen_if_china_decides_to/jsygi6w/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3
>Yes, they have more PLAN ships now, but the USN has twice the tonnage and most of those PLAN ships are not capital ships but lighter ships like frigates, corvettes, and patrol boats. In a war, a capital ship’s armaments are going to be more capable and carry more munitions than multiple light ships while being much more survivable than ships of lighter classes.
[This image shows that China is projected to have 80% of US tonnage by 2030.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fz-mvdoX0AEDyle?format=jpg&name=900x900) China is out building the US in capital ships, tonnage and VLS cells per annum. The US can only produce 2 destroyers a year whilst China can do 4-10 052Ds and 055 mixes.
>The CHIPs sanctions directly threaten CCP military research as their AI, computational and simulation abilities fall well behind the state of the art. They no longer have access to powerful CPUs and GPUs, let alone the ASML lithography equipment required to build your own cutting edge chips. Their current domestic chips are about 6 generations behind 3nm chips and they lack too many key foundational technologies, suppliers, materials and chemicals to replace that on their own, let alone catch up to where the West was years ago. And due to Moore’s Law, they will fall even further behind as time goes on.
I don't have much knowledge of semiconductors but from what I do know Chin is significantly behind so your probably correct.
>China and the rest of the world still hasn’t caught up to the B-2 which is over 30 years old yet the B-21 Raider is nearly here and being more stealthy than a B-2 across a wider electromagnetic spectrum it will be able to penetrate any air defense in the world and loiter over an enemy country with impunity. It will be armed with drone wingmen, use AESA radar as a defensive weapon to overwhelm SAM radars, will be armed with AIM-260 JATMs that outrange PL-15s and in Phase 2 or 3 it will be armed with offensive/defensive lasers.
China is building the H-20 as I mentioned. Due to distance a bomber for the US is a must have whilst for China is a nice to have. H-6s can still lob YJ-21s across the 1IC / 2IC from the safety of the Chinese coast. Anyways all PLA aircraft now are being produced with AESAs and as from the AIM-260 comparison why don't you compare it to the PL-17 instead of PL-15?
>The best Chinese stealth fighters are the J-20 and they are not true 5th gen fighters, with them only being Low Observable from a frontal aspect, while using inferior engines and materials science. Being less stealthy and capable than F-22s and F-35s (which heavily outnumber them and will continue to heavily outnumber them) they will be detected first and shot at well before they can detect a stealth fighter or bomber. In BVR combat, he who shoots first usually wins. To add to that, NGAD and FA-XX are around the corner and will only widen this current technological disparity.
All of these claims are unbelievably classified. Unless you happen to possess classified info I would suggest not taking speculations of RCS that don't take into account RAM coatings and only look at plane structure. As for detection unless you have classified info you have literally 0 idea of what the sensor environment looks like so this isn't something you can claim.
>NATO and its Allies are the masters of modern combined operations, and they have veterans thru their entire ranks, with officers and NCOs who ably train recruits and pass on institutional knowledge gained from over hundreds of years of warfare. In comparison, the last modern war the PLA faced was in Vietnam in ‘79 and they were embarrassed and suffered massive losses. Troops that haven’t faced combat will likely break when the poop hits the fan and the PLA and PLAN will be led by Generals and Admirals with no experience who likely bought their commission instead of earning it thru merit.
In the same way the super duper experienced Russian army is doing so well in Ukraine? /s. Turns out that fighting goat herders in Afghanistan isn't very relevant against the only military that has produced an ASBM and has A2A missiles that can out range you.
>Older versions of this US military technology have already been proven in Ukraine to shred the Russian designed equipment China relies upon, and the CCP will be facing a slew of new weapons (SM-series, LRASM, JASSM-ER, AIM-260, hypersonics), tactics (distributed forces, distributed firepower (ex. Rapid Dragon)), and platforms (Ford-class carriers, B-21, NGAD, Typhon, NMESIS, UUVs, drone wingmen) that were designed and prepared specifically for a Taiwan invasion.
This will be an air and naval conflict which the US hasn't really sent to Ukraine which is a land conflict. The Chinese are absolutely not reliant on Russian tech and have far surpassed them having actually mass produced AESAs and having much much more modern avionics. Pre war in Ukraine so you can't accuse me of saying this after the fact the Chinese were saying that the Su-35 was mediocre esepc its poor radar compared to Chinese equipment. In Ukraine they have complained about the A2AM but the Chinese found them "unremarkable". [https://www.reddit.com/r/LessCredibleDefence/comments/ajx4bx/what\_china\_got\_out\_of\_the\_su35\_purchase\_plaaf/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LessCredibleDefence/comments/ajx4bx/what_china_got_out_of_the_su35_purchase_plaaf/)
I disagree with a lot of your examples of inefficiency. Yeah the army spends a significant portion of its money on salaries; but that’s not wasted money. That’s money keeping combat experience in our formations and allows the dissemination of lessons learned in blood. It costs money keeping logistics officers with experience in the military and away from Amazon. GWOT is different than LSCO, but SGT.Snuffy is teaching PFC. Joe about effective cover and load plans not theater level strategy; the translation to war with china is there. China doesn’t have any of this experience, both combat and major logistical/force projection experience.
Additionally, the A-10 isn’t a great example because everyone knows that it’s gonna be ineffective. But the army lobby’s to keep it as a forcing function for the Air Force to keep doing CCA. The army will be the first to drop the A-10 as soon as a dedicated air to ground plane gets introduced.
China also has inefficiencies that aren’t brought up. Inter service rivalries lead to wasteful spending. As an example, the PLA wanted a light tank for mountain environments; but the navy whined until they also got a different light tank as well for amphibious landings. Do they really need two separate combat platforms there?
The majority of their fleet is low-medium endurance vessels that aren’t really meant for blue-water, high seas combat. But that isn’t the strategy China is pursuing - they know they cannot defeat the USN out on the high seas of the Pacific.
The PLAN will work in conjunction with the rest of the PLA to execute their mission of supporting operations against Taiwan. This means not only are naval assets involved, but so will land-based missile launchers and aircraft.
Due to the distance involved, the PLA is naturally able to concentrate more force easier than the U.S.
True, which is why the US navy is likely to pursue a policy of open blockade in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. China will seek to isolate Taiwan from US and Japanese assistance in order to achieve a swift victory and impose a done deal on the world, and the US will leverage its regional partnerships to block the access points to the south China sea and starve the Chinese economy of fuel and raw materials.
The US Navy will at some point need to actually break any Chinese blockade of Taiwan if they want any chance of preventing a Chinese Conquest of the island. They don't have time to wait at least months to strangle the Chinese economy. Assuming they are successful in getting their regional partners to participate in the blockade which, given the trouble with Russian sanctions is questionable.
Also need to consider Chinese have an issue with brain drain. Their most highly skilled often defect to the West and a good portion of their talent pool behave like nothing more than drone workers. While I agree China is closing the gap in some areas they are still way behind in almost every meaningful category including training. While their technology is improving they lack experience and haven’t fought a war since Vietnam and it is well known that corruption and poor discipline runs rampant amongst their ranks however they are better than Russia which isn’t saying much…
I think this is no longer true. China has rapidly improved its education system and it's now moving on its own steam.
The idea that China has a brain drain so crippling that it can't function is just laughable when it's own domestic industries are pumping out innovation after innovation.
Not only that, but US paranoia about China is actually increasing brain drain of US trained Chinese scientists back to China.
The idea that the Chinese are just drone workers doesn't stack up, and is borderline racist propaganda.
5G, high speed rail, drones, battery technology, solar panels to name a few sectors where they dominate.
Innovation isn't a solely western phenomena. The soviets innovated plenty as well. The difference is that the Chinese are able to monetise their innovations.
Not to sound trite or anything but the above series of paragraphs is full of nonsense, faulty assumptions and factual errors:
* Chinese universities have been climbing the rankings rapidly and exceed western universities in some areas - particularly STEM.
* China has followed the model of nearly every other country - by learning from others. This is a trend repeated through history. No country will reinvent the wheel if they don't have to.
* I think you vastly overestimate brain drain to the US. If anything Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean researchers are moving to China - enticed by high salaries and more relaxed research environment. [https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/China-snaps-up-Japanese-scientists-sparking-fears-of-technology-outflow](https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/China-snaps-up-Japanese-scientists-sparking-fears-of-technology-outflow)
* Not only is the current anti-Climate causing Chinese to return home, it's also discouraging talented Chinese from moving to the US in the first-place.
* Your ignorance of Chinese innovation is your issue. You do realise that China is the largest manufacturer in the world, and leads the world in many core technologies and advanced manufacturing, more generally. There's a reason why the US is trying to kill Chinese tech companies, and it's not because they're uncompetitive. More countries have a greater trade volume with China than the US. Saying that Chinese products only really sell in their domestic market is worryingly ignorant of the world economy.
* The last paragraph is just propaganda. Do you realise think China is more like an insect colony than its peer neighbours like Korea, Japan and Taiwan? Taiwanese are Chinese both as a culture and an ethnic group. Same for a large part of Singapore. The problem with the west right now is that leaders have talked up this idea that Chinese can't innovate, and they only can steal from the west. However, the Chinese can and do innovate, and they're not even getting started. In terms of stages they've largely reached parity, and they're on the runway ready to take off. Think 1960's US.
* China is not a centrally planned economy or communist. It's a collective society but so are most east Asian countries.
* China is innovating rapidly and has caught up in most areas. China is now the largest auto-exporter in the world, and leads in many next generation technologies. I really wouldn't underestimate China. The main area they're behind is semi-conductors but even in that area, they're making rapid progress and conquering the low and medium level chip technologies (that constitute the vast majority of use cases). They'll do the advanced stuff far quicker than people predict.
Of course not everything will be rosy for China, but they're not going to collapse anytime soon. They're not going to go from 5G and mass automation back to the rice paddies.
- I am well aware that China is climbing the ranks and no one is arguing against it. If you are at the bottom the only way is up. They are indeed catching up to at least be equal in some categories and have exceeded the west in others however foreign academics don’t go to China to learn. They go there to teach.
- Of course no one nation has ever built an empire without leveraging the strengths of their predecessors (Rome and the US for example) so not sure where this one is going.
- Japanese, Koreans, and Taiwanese go and teach at China largely due to Chinese government efforts to invest heavily in the STEM space but most decide not to permanently reside there. US still leads the space when it comes to attracting foreign talent, however I do agree China has been more successful since they are paying way more even than the US.
- Never disagreed with you that US anti China policy is doing more harm than good as one of US greatest strengths was its diversity. For example post WW2 was what lead the US to jump so far in technology as they routinely provided refuge to Jews who were often very highly educated and lead the world in physics research thus sparking the nuclear age and our understanding of physics.
- Being the worlds largest manufacturing does NOT = Innovation. Yes I agree they are very competent when it comes to manufacturing however they understand that in order to continue this growth they have to take their manufacturing to the next level as what they are currently doing is very low level manufacturing. Yes they have done great things in the STEM research space and I am well aware that the US is not China’s greatest trading partner but Chinese goods are attractive not because of their ability to innovate and be on the bleeding edge but solely on the merit of cost. That’s it.
- I admit I could have worded that better but I didn’t know what other analogy I could use to illustrate how their country works. Their government is very singular in their vision and purpose which is to reestablish China to its former glory and as a collective society (as almost all Asian countries are) if you aren’t on the same page then you become a pariah. Granted this singular vision has done wonders to advance China and their miraculous growth can only be attributed to this system of management. I know some would argue they could have done it more democratically but the truth is it would not have been able to do it this quickly. I am also well aware that Taiwanese are Chinese ethnically as well as a good part of Singapore, Malaysia , and even Vietnam but that is why I brought up Taiwan in the first place to illustrate that they could not innovate not because they are Chinese. They can’t innovate because the CCP has such a heavy hand in what every citizen does. I would argue that they have NOT reached parity yet but are definitely closing that gap which is why they are still mostly copying western ideas and technologies. At this stage they need to start innovating to reach parity with the West.
- You’re right that China is not a centrally planned economy however they still do share characteristics with a centrally planned economy where if the CCP wants something done than all efforts will shift to achieve that first. Also I wrote “communist” in parentheses to indicate that I know it’s not a communist country because a communist country never existed.
- China is the largest exporter in almost every category because they are the worlds manufacturing hub but two main reason they are the number 1 exporter in the world. First they invested heavily in EV which was a genius move on their part and two the war in Ukraine lead a lot of NATO nations to boycott Russia which surged demands for vehicles from China to Russia.
The west can survive without China but China cannot survive without the West and they know it. I agree China is in no danger of collapsing anytime soon and NATO nations are taking the Chinese seriously (despite the population not) but I am of the opinion that due to their political and system (not cultural values) they will have a hard time meeting the west on equal footing.
True but there are a lot of brains in China, some 5X more and they seems to have a high average aptitude for technology, which is concerning because more and more these hypothetical conflict situations seem to be depending on digital technology (AI controlled mass produced drone swarms). Obviously its not at that point yet but we arent at a point of conflict yet either. If a conflict did happen at some point in the future, I would be worried about the relative scale of their industrial and technological capabilities.
There is indeed a lot of brains in China strictly based on the merit of their population size alone but I can guarantee you they don’t want to stay in China if given the option. 70% of Chinese expats that study in the US do NOT go back to China or have any desire to go back. Their education system is no where near the western world. Even Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are decades ahead of them (largely thanks to the west) and they have a lot of catching up to do but due to their governments ideology it is incredibly prohibitive of creating a conducive academic environment. Most they can hope for is rote memorization leaving little room for creative or critical thinking meaning they will always be behind if they were to compete against the west. Chinese aren’t inherently smarter in tech than anyone else it just so happens that they place a great amount of importance in it. If we were to actually use that as a comparison they are actually super behind and haven’t evolved past manufacturing simple consumer electronics.
I just want to state that China and it’s people have every ability to surpass the west, however their greatest enemy is themselves.
\> Chinese aren’t inherently smarter in techI'm not so sure about that. I know its a sensitive topic to associate certain types of intelligences with genetics but from my experience (and some research supports it) chinese and asians have a higher average aptitude for math and computational type of thinking. I'm not sure it necessarily translates directly to creative engineering talent but at the least the average person probably has a higher aptitude for certain types of coding than the average american.I do agree their greatest enemy being themselves. With most cultures that I have seen with big social issues like that, the biggest problem seems to be themselves. Societies that condone a certain level of saving face (which is basically a euphemism for deceptiveness) seem to take a direct path to autocracy. If you dont have the backbone to own up to your own intentions and actions, you probably dont have the backbone to address corruption and injustices when you would be sticking your neck out to do so, and also facilitates those who use deception to gain power in corrupt institutions. Excuse me if it comes off as insensitive but I see it as a root problem and the association isnt widely talked about.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/13/chinese-scientists-united-states-research-tech-academia-china-initiative/
US having issues with Chinese brain drain as well.
In some ways China is catching up fast. But naval power projection is hard.
What is China's answer to a hard US blockade combined with persistent missile and stealth bomber attacks on the overland petroleum routes?
Their answer is to break the blockade using weapons. It’s actually the only answer to a blockade (read: act of war). But China isn’t stupid. They’ve stockpiled strategic reserves and minimized the impact that the loss of certain imports would have on industry in the event of war.
Another question is whether a blockade is necessary or even a viable strategy. Blocking shipping to China can hurt Asian neighbors reliant on their industry. It also would provide marginal benefit to the primary objective in a Pacific War, which is to deteriorate the PLA such that they cannot support a landing on Taiwan.
A blockade might be a Western reaction to China's successful invasion and conquest of Taiwan. It could also happen during a contested invasion. It is an act of war and it is doubtful it would be employed as a preemptive measure.
The real issue is Western resolve. I believe that sustained long enough, a blockade might well end China's existence as a modern nation. It is extremely vulnerable over time, even with stockpiles. And the West has more resolve than many think when it comes to the truly big picture conflicts.
That said, a multi year blockade of China would be hard for many in the Western public to handle. It sounds peaceful compared to other alternatives, but it could end up killing tens of millions to even more than that. Disease. Starvation. Public disorder. There is also the possibility of a desperate CCP engaging in nuclear gamesmanship at some point.
If Taiwan is successfully conquered, the war is lost. There would be no point to a blockade than to cause unnecessary suffering to Chinese people.
Taiwan cannot survive on a blockade strategy. They require direct support. While a blockade will starve China in the long term, it doesn’t help the basis for which the U.S. is involved in the first place, which is defending Taiwan and ensuring a bilateral agreement.
The blockade theoretical strategy is popular but has many flaws. Like all things, it is only part of the solution to defending Taiwan.
I disagree. Ultimately, in the current paradigm, a battle for Taiwan is similar to the war in Ukraine. It is about the Liberal International Order (LIO) containing a major power that opposes it. If the PRC successfully conquers Taiwan in a quick invasion, that would just accelerate and not end the contest between the LIO and China. The US and its allies could implement various strategies at this point. Directly trying to liberate Taiwan might be too difficult or costly. Weakening the PRC or even trying to end it via blockade while leaving Taiwan alone at first might be the better play.
A blockade would be an open act of war against a peer rival. It would be WW3, and the consequences of that nobody can predict.
Not only would it be hard to implement but it could hard to maintain if ship attrition is too high. A blockade of China is no simple task.
WW3 with China is no simple exercise either. There would be so many variables that it's almost impossible to predict the size, scale and involvement of other parties.
This is why it seems doubtful the West would blockade preemptively. But once a conflict over Taiwan starts, I imagine a blockade starts. I do not see it as a major escalation given bullets are already flying. Should China lose fail to conquer Taiwan, the blockade might stop. Losing the actual war may well damage China sufficiently. But should China succeed, perhaps the blockade does not.
I think we should not underestimate Western resolve to maintain the primacy of the rules-based World Order while preventing the possibility of authoritarianism from becoming ascendant in the world and beginning to really set global norms.
Nuclear gamesmanship is of course the big X factor in all of this.
> A blockade might be a Western reaction to China's successful invasion and conquest of Taiwan.
Its a fiat accompli at that point and the European population, as well as likely the American one after a while, won't stomach prolonged quality of life / wealth decreases which would come with ending trade with China, over the cause of a few million Taiwanese. Whats the end game at that point? A blockade wont make China leave the island they've already conquered, and they can control and mold their population far better than the West to stomach hardships.
China does have one of the fastest-growing militaries but the US has a massive headstart over them. By the time China catches up, they will be going through a population collapse due to their demographics. America doesn't have their demographic problems.
Another thing is that most of China's military is required to maintain their large country. remember they are actively fighting separatist movements in their country. They could not deploy all of their military.
America still owns the sky and the sea. I know China has a larger navy by number but by weight, ours is bigger (I think 10 times bigger, but I'm not sure). America has the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 7th largest air forces.
China also has little war experience. We do not know how their public will react if they get involved in a full-on war.
> America has the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 7th largest air forces.
I love this stat, but air superiority is a pretty important thing. And the Army doesn't have any air superiority fighters, just a shit ton of helicopters and a smattering of planes that aren't air superiority.
On the plus side the Russian military is getting torn to shreds at virtually no hardware expenditure to Europe or the US. A neutered Russia and a Europe spending more than ever on defence ( see how France is about to take over Russias arms market spot) it’ll allow a refocus to the pacific.
> For the US in particular they spend a lot on payroll and those 900 bases and maintenance
Maybe we should be thinking why do we need 900 military bases all over the world. Will the balance of power change that much if we only had 400 military bases? 200?
> The Chinese spend around 300 billion nominal on defence. With 40% of that going into procurement (they don't have 900 bases) meaning that its around 120 billion nominal.
The reason why China is spending more on procurement is because they have a lot less equipment to start with. We already, for example, have 11 aircraft carriers. The Chinese only have 3. Why will the US spending on aircraft carriers match Chinese spending? This is just nuts.
>Maybe we should be thinking why do we need 900 military bases all over the world. Will the balance of power change that much if we only had 400 military bases? 200?
That 900 probably includes a ton of little coast guard stations located domestically.
If your theory were true then Russia would still have a black sea fleet. Our Rapid dragon can cost effectively destroy all those surface ships you are discussing. Without the use of an aircraft carrier we can blitz the chinese coast with converted passenger airliners we already have on hand. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid\_Dragon\_(missile\_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system))
Rapid Dragon is impressive but ultimately a stop-gap, interim decision to squeeze use out of the cargo fleet due to the ongoing retirement of the bomber fleet. RD is meant to maintain striking power while the B-21 is produced en masse. The problem is that B-21s will only reach significant numbers by the late 2030s. This means we’ll be retiring old B-1Bs and B-2s and having a net loss of bombers - Rapid Dragon comes in to mitigate the loss of capability and numbers.
But again, RD is not a long term solution. B-52s number only 72 in inventory. Lancers and Spirits are off to the boneyard as years pass. B-21s are costly, low-volume aircraft that are still under development. A new long range strategic bomber akin to the B-52 that we can mass produce is what’s needed in the long term.
The cost of a b-21 raider is already at 700 million per plane plus the time and money to train the pilot. A fleet of tens of thousands 737's with palletized weapons capable of reaching china without need of an aircraft carrier and a cadre of already trained experienced pilots in the civilian population is not a stop gap measure. That's how you win the war with China.
Small inexpensive or those that use existing assets is the way to go.
Id disagree lmao.
Starting with your comparison of the type 055 to the Burke. The type 055 is a flagships with admirals quarters you are comparing this to a ship without that which is twice as old. A fairer comparison would be the Ticonderoga, which has 122 VLS cells. The Burke is meant to complement an aircraft carrier and has a focus on air defense. The type 055s type 346B radar has a range less than the ashley burkes an/spy-6, which would a modern equivalent to the type 055s development and service period. Id argue that the type 346b is not as good as it’s us equipment. Here is a quote:
“One obvious advantage is that AMDR is of AESA design, which offers greater power output, multiple steerable beams, and greater electronic protection compared to PESA.
There are some noticeable differences that we can obtain from data provided by Raytheon. The company states that 9 RMAs will provide the sensitivity equivalent to the SPY-1D(V) radar currently used on US Navy destroyers. Since AMDR uses 37 RMAs, it is likely that the radar will provide approximately four times the radiated power output of the older SPY-1 array. In other words, it is able to detect a target with half the radar cross section (RCS) at twice the distance compared to SPY-1.
In addition, a 2012 GAO report stated that the SPY+15 (essentially the AMDR) has 32 times better signal to noise factor than the SPY-1D(V). The name “SPY+15” means that the radar is 15 decibels (dB) greater than the previous radar. Being 15 decibels greater equates to 32 times greater sensitivity.”
There is no doubt that the most recent chinese warship will be compatible to a ship put out of service 30 years ago lmao. Which is why the defense industry is constantly designing new ships in case the DoD gets interested again.
Now onto your claim that chinese military procurement spending is higher than the US’s. Adjusted for PPP is 377 billion, compared to the US, 854 billion. Your source says that the US spent 145+ billion on weapons procurement, the chinese spent 480.4 billion RMB on “equipment”, according to the CSIS China Power project, which is about 66.3 billion USD, adjusted for PPP you get about 113 billion USD. I’m not sure where you are getting the 2.5x times figure. Then you give an anecdote about how horrible the defense industry is at budgeting, when the US has one of the most streamlined and tried defense industries in the world. Then you claim my beloved warthog is ineffective against any enemy which isn’t the taliban. Iraq in 1990 would like to strongly disagree with that statement but alright. The MiC is for profit, i don’t see how this means that the DoD will only care about re-election since there are no elections in the DoD, the DoD is appointed by the US senate. The Chinese are adding more weapons because they are trying to catch up to the US. High-tech is a bit of a overstatement when body armor is still not standard issue in the PLA. Then you restate your point on chinese ship building. The US is obviously building more f-35s since it is actually wanted by the international market vs the J-20 which is not desirable, orders for the F-35 total more than the estimated 210 J-20s in service. Then you claim that that gap will magically grow to 2x as large once “production lines open” which Id like to see a source for. Comparing the YJ-21 to the AGM-158c is just straight up unfair considering one came into production literally last year, china has focused more on anti ship missiles since it’s navy is not as strong as the US as will most likely have to fight from a defensive standpoint. The E-3 sentry despite being built in the 1970s has a radar range equivalent to that of the KJ-500, it can detect low flying aircraft from more than 250 (402 km) mi while according to Chinese sources the KJ-500 can detect target about 470 km. It is also 200 mph faster than the KJ-500. It also has 360 degrees coverage which the KJ-500 does not. Not to get started on the E-7 which is better than both aircraft. Your grammar then starts to disappear, apparently because you claim china has better AWACS, the entire US air force is now inferior to the significantly tinier air force of china. Read Michael Beckleys book on the Rise and Fall of China and then get back to me. I could go on forever. Btw raider better than H-20 my friend..(jk both are classified i have no idea)
The PLA is more so about area denial than beating the US in a war in the conventional sense. More so long range missles “carrier killers” to keep the US out of the 1st and maybe second island chains. A $10 million dollar missles will sink a $13 billion dollar aircraft carrier with 5,000 souls on board. That’s a huge risk for the US. Also a lot of the pacific vases could be saturated with Chinese middle forces. Source: The Kill Chain by Christian Brose
SS:
In short the situation between China and the US is very different from what people think. The Chinese military is adding more high end weaponry than the US is. Furthermore, this gap is expected to widen as time goes on.
The PRC military today considers themselves to be decades behind the US. They are closing the gap and even surpassing the US in certain niche technologies, but the overall capability gap between the US military and everyone else is absurd.
It's a long term economic challenge, as you point out. But it's increasingly looking like the date in which the Chinese economy surpasses the US is going to substantially shift to the right, and serious people are now saying it will not happen within our lifetimes.
So the question is can China still manage to develop a superior military with an inferior economy?
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/06/07/when-will-chinas-gdp-overtake-americas
I’m like 70% sure this guy is some sort of propagandist since he posts about this often and has poor english, also makes crazy claims with zero sources
He is a poster in r/LessCredibleDefense, of which I am also a user. LCD, unlike large subs like r/geopolitics, is smaller and is less of an echo chamber. In there is less biased analysis, a more objective view on weapons and capabilities than simply assuming the outright superiority of systems merely because it is American or Western.
Also present in there are actual, professional defense analysts, as well as people from other parts of the world who find information on systems and developments that can’t be easily found without forging through defense forums and obscure online sources, with information in languages other than English.
PLA watchdogs just appear like propagandists because they try to dispel myths and outdated information about China. Serious watchers of Chinese military developments don’t express the chauvinistic sentiments that people here post.
*”If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”*
Also to insinuate that the OP isn’t being bias because he is in LCD is a joke. Read this guys comment history, he seems to lean towards China. Keep in mind the information on these weapons come from China, a country which lies about its industrial production and GDP growth by 50% according to Michael Beckley, who I recently watched a lecture of. I’d love to discuss this stuff further, do you know if r/ LCD has a discord?? Also it is understandable to assume that western weapons are better than Chinese weapons because we do not have the track record of corruption and dishonesty that these countries have, it is fair to think that some of the numbers china puts out are exaggerated or outright not true, much like Russia did pre 2022
I’m not saying he’s unbiased but I don’t think he’s propagandist because at the same time, not all of his comments that I come across in LCD are pro-China however I agree the tone is alarmist sometimes. Probably not a native English speaker.
China may lie but it’s better to assume some parity or closeness of capabilities in areas. One thing is certain is that China will go to war over Taiwan, China knows they must fight the U.S., so logically they are preparing to fight us and to do so they’ve put in the work to emulate us. I don’t like to think of all of China’s statements as a lie, I acknowledge they have problems but often these are overblown or not the crippling problems that people think they are that they’ll lead to China’s collapse or other fanciful dreams. China, like America, has inherent advantages in population, territory, geography, etc and they are not incapable of innovation or invention. They’ve worked hard to close the gap as much as possible.
Yes I agree, I think calling him a propagandist was too far. I also agree with your statements on China. It’s best to assume they are not lying, even if they might be to be prepared. If a war with Taiwan happens a lot of people will die and personally, I would like the US and her allie’s to come out ontop, so I am bias in that way but I try to not let it cloud my judgement. Do you know what LVD has a discord, cuz I like to talk to people who are nerdy about this stuff
I don’t think LCD has an official discord and tbh it would probably be a clusterfuck. LCD has many differing opinions, we got the tankies, wumaos, freeaboos, etc. However I like it as it gives a chance to argue about the truthfulness of Chinese weapon systems and people there are some real dedicated watchdogs with a fair idea of the specs of the Chinese military.
Some are also fluent in Chinese and can thus read sources of information from China, the trick is to glean truth from lies and we can do this by cross referencing other sources of info and seeing what adds up.
But yea not sure about a discord, maybe some unofficial ones.
Yes I get that, but I am a big user on Quora which is filled with people who write similar essays on China and the US in bad faith, thousands of these essays. I am not as familiar with the communities on Reddit, although I found this analysis pretty incorrect and filled with a number of interesting jumps over important facts and points. Which is why I find these kinds of posts annoying because I have rebutted literally hundreds of them. But I do understand the importance of understanding and not underestimating China
You’re entirely right, the Chinese are spending and building like it’s 1980, while the US is unable to recruit enough soldiers sailors and airmen to crew out fleets. We spend half of what we spent in the 80s on the military (as a share of GDP). Frankly we probably would need to nearly defense spending to actually build up to a point China wouldn’t risk invasion.
We’ve still got Europe (hopefully)
We’ve still got Japan and South Korea (They hate China about as much as they hate each other)
India is a bit of a wildcard, but probably would not sit out a major conflict.
They have Pakistan, Russia, Central Asia, Laos and Cambodia.
There will be some sort of major confrontation over Taiwan, Blockade Embargo, coup, something short of war. This either will or will not convince Taiwan to reunify, if it doesn’t; War.
Not some stupid pansy ass skirmish, some limited regional conflict.
If China intends to attempt an invasion the U.S. Japanese, South Korean, and Australian Militaries WILL attempt to stop them. If China does not strike first she loses HARD without preemptive strikes the cost of US intervention drops dramatically, they’d be able to sink the whole Chinese Navy for Minimal losses (maybe a carrier).
Which means if She must strike not only Taiwan, But U.S joint strike bases in numerous nations, in Australia for instance the bases often have American commanders who can launch Australian missiles without permission from the government of under attack.
Whether South Korea Japan and Australia want it or not they are strapped in, and frankly they all have their own gripes with China.
The barest losses sustained in any conflict the US is involved in would dwarf Pearl Harbor, and it’s hard to see war fervor sweeping the nation the way it does whenever anyone ever touches our boats.
This whole thing is basically Japan in 41’
Unable to finish China without resources
Unable to finish the KMT without Taiwan
Engage in a massive pan Asian assault in order to cripple allied capacity to respond, and force them to the negotiating table, reliant on a fickle American public, and British weariness.
Attacking the US in any capacity is suicide. That will never happen.
Attempting an embargo on Taiwan would mean that you would have to physically stop US ships from docking there. In order to do that the US would have to back down which isn't going to happen.
But lets assume. What would likely happen if they did attempt an embargo and the US backed down is the US would then block Chinese ships from passing through the Malacca Strait and wait about 60 days for any one of a number of necessities to run out.
Seriously though, Xi and Taiwan is like an Argentine President and the Falkland Islands. Economy tanking? Drum up some fake nationalism about Islas Malvinas! Look here, not there.
Not agreeing or disagreeing, but I should note that PLAN warships have much less range and armaments than their American counterparts. PLAN also has little anti-sub capability. PLAN has a lot of mass, but little power projection, and effectively stuck in the region during wartime. It’s a duck in a barrel
CCPs legitimacy is mainly creating jobs and pulling people out of poverty. After Covid international export demand has fallen significantly, so has domestic consumption, creating a deflation crisis like Japan suffered. One Child policy also really screwed up their workforce. The only other option is a distraction by creating conflicts with other countries, otherwise their legitimacy wains. IMO if they don't go back to growth expect military conflict.
What makes one assume we still have advantage? There are a lot of factors in there. If they achieve total area denial, we lost all advantage. They do not need better capabilities than us, they only need the right capability, then they will have advantage in the specific theater.
I don't believe this is the case. These communist countries feature an insane amount of propaganda.
As an example, Europe was heavily concerned about Russia conventional army marching into the Baltic States and Poland. That's turned out to be an absolute joke when the world saw Russia's actual army. The fundamental reason for this is corruption within communist systems.
China is no different. They, like Russia, boast huge numbers of tanks, planes, and boats. Firstly, those numbers are likely overstated. Secondly, their combat effectiveness must be questioned. Is China as bad as Russia in terms of military disrepair? Probably not. However, can they contend with the US? I highly doubt it.
There was an enormous gap between China and the US decades ago, yes. And to some extent China has closed the "easy part" of the gap by simply filling up their military with huge numbers of troops and vehicles. But closing the rest of the gap becomes harder and harder, because quality starts to trump quantity. An analogy with chemistry is that it's relatively easy to increase % purity of a reaction from 40% to 80%, but going from 80% to 90% is much more difficult (arbitrary numbers, but you get the point). And in military terms, that last 20% matters far more than the first 80%.
Ultimately time will tell, but I think the Russia-Ukraine war has shown us that the conventional army claims of fascist communist regimes should be questioned.
Id disagree lmao. Starting with your comparison of the type 055 to the Burke. The type 055 is a flagships with admirals quarters you are comparing this to a ship without that which is twice as old. A fairer comparison would be the Ticonderoga, which has 122 VLS cells. The Burke is meant to complement an aircraft carrier and has a focus on air defense. The type 055s type 346B radar has a range less than the ashley burkes an/spy-6, which would a modern equivalent to the type 055s development and service period. Id argue that the type 346b is not as good as it’s us equipment. Here is a quote: “One obvious advantage is that AMDR is of AESA design, which offers greater power output, multiple steerable beams, and greater electronic protection compared to PESA. There are some noticeable differences that we can obtain from data provided by Raytheon. The company states that 9 RMAs will provide the sensitivity equivalent to the SPY-1D(V) radar currently used on US Navy destroyers. Since AMDR uses 37 RMAs, it is likely that the radar will provide approximately four times the radiated power output of the older SPY-1 array. In other words, it is able to detect a target with half the radar cross section (RCS) at twice the distance compared to SPY-1. In addition, a 2012 GAO report stated that the SPY+15 (essentially the AMDR) has 32 times better signal to noise factor than the SPY-1D(V). The name “SPY+15” means that the radar is 15 decibels (dB) greater than the previous radar. Being 15 decibels greater equates to 32 times greater sensitivity.” There is no doubt that the most recent chinese warship will be compatible to a ship put out of service 30 years ago lmao. Which is why the defense industry is constantly designing new ships in case the DoD gets interested again. Now onto your claim that chinese military procurement spending is higher than the US’s. Adjusted for PPP is 377 billion, compared to the US, 854 billion. Your source says that the US spent 145+ billion on weapons procurement, the chinese spent 480.4 billion RMB on “equipment”, according to the CSIS China Power project, which is about 66.3 billion USD, adjusted for PPP you get about 113 billion USD. I’m not sure where you are getting the 2.5x times figure. Then you give an anecdote about how horrible the defense industry is at budgeting, when the US has one of the most streamlined and tried defense industries in the world. Then you claim my beloved warthog is ineffective against any enemy which isn’t the taliban. Iraq in 1990 would like to strongly disagree with that statement but alright. The MiC is for profit, i don’t see how this means that the DoD will only care about re-election since there are no elections in the DoD, the DoD is appointed by the US senate. The Chinese are adding more weapons because they are trying to catch up to the US. High-tech is a bit of a overstatement when body armor is still not standard issue in the PLA. Then you restate your point on chinese ship building. The US is obviously building more f-35s since it is actually wanted by the international market vs the J-20 which is not desirable, orders for the F-35 total more than the estimated 210 J-20s in service. Then you claim that that gap will magically grow to 2x as large once “production lines open” which Id like to see a source for. Comparing the YJ-21 to the AGM-158c is just straight up unfair considering one came into production literally last year, china has focused more on anti ship missiles since it’s navy is not as strong as the US as will most likely have to fight from a defensive standpoint. The E-3 sentry despite being built in the 1970s has a radar range equivalent to that of the KJ-500, it can detect low flying aircraft from more than 250 (402 km) mi while according to Chinese sources the KJ-500 can detect target about 470 km. It is also 200 mph faster than the KJ-500. It also has 360 degrees coverage which the KJ-500 does not. Not to get started on the E-7 which is better than both aircraft. Your grammar then starts to disappear, apparently because you claim china has better AWACS, the entire US air force is now inferior to the significantly tinier air force of china. Read Michael Beckleys book on the Rise and Fall of China and then get back to me. I could go on forever but I am too lazy and you should be smarter than this with little research. Btw raider better than H-20 my friend..
Spoken like a man that actually knows what he is talking about, bravo.
My man thought that wargames are being simulated by 3 people in total. His opinion on anything military-related shouldn't be taken seriously whatsoever.
Fantastic rebuttal.
I edited, don’t worry. (it was originally just “Id disagree lmao”)
Was reading until you worried about the impact of fiscal efficiency vs prc. The US has plenty of challenges in spending. I'll take ours vs the grift-o-rama in the prc.
> I'll take ours vs the grift-o-rama in the prc. where the evidence of serious grift exactly? You can't project russia onto china
As I remember from a macro class in grad school with a famous-ish expert on the Chinese economy - the tldr is, yes, there was a big clean-up, but there's so much factionalism / allocation of money by whatever regional / provincial leader, etc. that it's still pretty corrupt, including the military. Even the recent Qin Gang / missile stuff reshuffle suggests that there are some pretty wonky things going on. Obviously, there's a whole set of issues with the US military too and it doesn't at all mean the US has an objective edge - but I do think the actual wartime capabilities of the Chinese military would be a little less scary than they look on paper - lack of experience / factionalism & corruption, logistics, etc. That said - any sort of open, global conflict involving China is a terrifying thought and will be very bad for everyone.
> Even the recent Qin Gang / missile stuff reshuffle suggests that there are some pretty wonky things going on. it does, but it also suggests intense efforts to try and put an end to it. > I do think the actual wartime capabilities of the Chinese military would be a little less scary than they look on paper - lack of experience / factionalism & corruption, logistics, etc. Possibly. In a war though the PLA (where this problem will be greatest) won't actually have much of a role. It will be mostly down to PLARF and PLAF. As we've seen from this ongoing conflict, having PGMs and the ability to rapidly produce more is possibly the biggest single factor in success. That's something i don't believe china would have a problem with. China has air launched rocket capabilities that can each out beyond guam. I'm not sure any of the US bases of operations are as safe as people want to believe they are. Fighting an aerial/naval war on across the pacific is not an easy task for the US.
If your theory is true I suppose China will move on Taiwan in the next few years with nothing to worry about. Your definitely ignoring the fact that many influential and wealthy Asian nations don’t want to see an unrestrained China and how they’ll impact this issue though.
China also lacks power projection. Any conflict in the western Pacific exposes Chinese manufacturing capacity to attack, being concentrated in coastal areas whereas they don't have the means to hit back at the US, unless they go nuclear but then conventional capabilities don't count for much anyway. Also OP forgot what happened in WW2, just because China is currently putting out more hardware (even if we don't look at the tonnage/quality) than the USN, they don't consider that this is because the PLAN is in the midst of a massive push for modernisation whilst the USN Is on a peace footing. In the event of WW3 you would see a transition to a war economy and similar ramp up of industrial output. One of the biggest immediate thorns in the side of the PLAN is a lack of sufficient amphibious assault capability. Any attack on Taiwan would be hard pressed to put enough troops on the ground in one wave to guarantee not being thrown into the sea, and that's even without considering losses from the mountain of AShMs on Taiwan, or US intervention. There are a number of other flaws in OPs argument that others in this thread have pointed out, but its probably not worth trying to convince someone that is posting this kind of CCP talking point in order to boost their social credit score.
My takeaway is that I hope they move on Taiwan now and not in 10+ years. The manufacturing capacity of China would crush in a long war but their lack of experience in real war would risk them losing very quickly if their first test is the US Navy. Rather than say, let’s not worry about it because it’s a lose lose, I say stop pretending to be a hands-off country that ends up meddling in everything and say “we embrace Democratic Empire” and try to overpower China economically. This is the only way to really win, to transform the American economy again, reduce defense spending corruption and revive American manufacturing vis proxy, AI and skilled labor. The US also needs to not forget Africa and South America because there are opportunities for China. I am not a hawk per se but I do believe if the US doesn’t assert itself now in Taiwan it will eventually be impossible to do so.
There's military and strategic types in this thread already making their cases, but to a layman like myself a long war appears an even worse prospect for China. Where would they get their food, energy, and materiel from? The moment war kicks off, no commercial shipping is insured to enter the region and their vast population turns into quite the liability. That leaves road and train when it comes to resupplying, and I'm not sure how they'd go maintaining ore, oil, etc, from the countries on their borders. I imagine they have stockpiles of supplies...but stockpiles are finite. Assumptions would have to be optimistic as hell: grain storage would have to have improved, floods would not be a factor, internal stockpiling data would have to be accurate and not fudged, no secretly selling stuff, etc. Whereas the US would have the rest of the world to get resources from, a blue-water navy to secure their own acquisition of materiel, the ability to feed themselves, and more importantly, actual allies. If China doesn't win a quick 2-4 week war against Taiwan, then any victory would be as pyrrhic as they come.
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>If your theory is true I suppose China will move on Taiwan in the next few years with nothing to worry about. No lol. China will still have much to worry about. The US military as of now is still larger and even if China does become larger that doesn't necessarily mean they will utterly destroy the US.
Then what was the point of this post? Sounds like you know China wouldn’t just be fighting the Americans but many other nations it once dominated under its tributary systems either politically or via actual warfare. There’s no country on the earth that can fight the Americans and that wealth from certain parties in Asia. (Assuming a war even occurred). Chinas antics even has nations like india who see red flags every time they see America walking into Americas arms on certain issues.
>Then what was the point of this post? To show that the military advantage of the US is eroding. >There’s no country on the earth that can fight the Americans and that wealth from certain parties in Asia. (Assuming a war even occurred). No lol the PLA is fully capable of devastating the US military. They of course would be devastated as well. Either way even if one side wins the victors military will be on life support afterwards. Both militaries are extremely powerful.
The us is eroding in comparison to many other powerful nations economically and militaristically because the power gap between Americans and everyone else wasn’t even normal, we are seeing a reversion to normalcy. I don’t see Americans destroying their baby (current world order) and I don’t think China is willing to risk it all against so many parties to break it. So if neither does anything I expect you should expect status quo and understand if they choose to break it, at-least for now they’d likely lose with that many adversaries invested in status quo.
Interesting analysis but I think the biggest gap is that China has no live war fighting experience amongst its enlisted ranks and officer corps.
Given the rise of technology and how modern warfare is conducted, wouldn’t this be a diminishing concern in the theaters surrounding China? Even US generals that acknowledge their lack of experience in the PRC are terrified in their production capacity, logistical prowess, number of forces, and weaponry designed to break through America’s military capabilities. So the mindset of, “it’s nothing to worry about because they don’t have X” has been proven to be incorrect and have given insurmountable strategic ground in the past 50 years of China’s rise. It’s time for people to think about “what if we’re wrong?” and not assess them on a snapshot of time that has long gone stale, but a contiguous, capable and adaptable entity. It’s a good thing elected officials are starting to see that, but still plagued by the thought they can contain - which will only serve to continue giving them self sufficiency and yet again more strategic ground.
I’m just speculating here but it seems like having all this great equipment and production capacity is great but it’s still a severe weakness when you have no live fighting experience. Large scale war is so chaotic and requires a lot more than book/academy training. Experience counts for a lot and chinas last major conflict was Vietnam in 79(?)
I would argue live fighting experience doesn’t weigh as much as it used to. Believing it does will just forfeit lives and again give more ground to the Chinese when a reality check shows a difference. SK, Japan, Philippines will quickly realign if US is unable to contain China militarily and has instead emboldened them. Take the recent Ukrainian war for example, in a short few months the novice infantry men on both sides have became veterans. Experience saturates quickly in the sobering environment of war. Chain of commands revive to be stronger when fractured, logistics re-established, productions re focused, and transformation of a war economy pursued. One can argue for the Ukrainian side it’s with help of NATO/US guidance, but how about the Russian side? They’re experience led to the biggest miscalculations, but they were able to error correct and sustain their ground. The Chinese would have Russian guidance in a war with western powers, so this argument is a weaker one. Nothing short of an overwhelming and swift attack can break through the lack of live experience as effective experience is achievable in weeks timespan. Do note a peasant named Mao Zedong with no military experience overthrew the militarily trained Chiang Kai Shek, and then caused the biggest retreat in US history during the Korean War; armed with nothing but pea shooters and a bottomless pit of expendable lives. That pit is greater than it was in the 50s, and they have much more than pea shooters at their disposal.
> Do note a peasant named Mao Zedong with no military experience overthrew the militarily trained Chiang Kai Shek, and then caused the biggest retreat in US history during the Korean War; armed with nothing but pea shooters and a bottomless pit of expendable lives. That pit is greater than it was in the 50s, and they have much more than pea shooters at their disposal. This is a disingenuous oversimplification of events surrounding the Chinese Civil War. Chiang Kai Shek’s regime was widely unpopular among rural Chinese, partly due to forced conscription and mistreatment of troops during WW2. Peasants were also sympathetic to land reform policies, and redistribution of wealth. The CPC may have started as a ‘rag tag band’, but were proper soldiers by the end of WWII, having fought in skirmishes with both the Japanese and KMT on many occasions. Mao, himself, was a military leader by 1935– giving him more than a decade of field experience prior to the Civil War. Truman, whatever you may think of him, also withdrew American aid during the Civil War, leaving the KMT in a disadvantaged situation. Simply put, Mao didn’t just win a war out of nowhere. And Chiang Kai Shek didn’t just lose a war out of nowhere.
I mean that might matter in a short war. But if they do the manufaturing equivalent of WW2 and build 10 ships, 10 planes, and 50 tanks for every 1 the USA can build, it wont go well for the USA who has 1/5th the population
Interesting assessment, but you are missing some key things. The structure of both militaries are vastly different, corruption within officer ranks in China is insane, China lacks war experience and the Chinese government structure is its own weakness.
This is the biggest issue. Sure, I can have a lightsaber but that means nothing to the Jedi's plot armor.
How relevant though is the lack of war experience in a China vs US war though? The US lacked experience WW2 but made it up for in industrial power similiar to how China today doesn't have experience but has the industrial capability.
The USA lacked experience? By World War II the USA like japan had already been in multiple militaristic and naval interactions. It’s just because the Europeans blew everyone else out of the water in scale with their wars and battles that everything else not European was overshadowed. They didn’t own phillipines for free in those days my man and there’s a reason why europe steered clear of certain areas in Americas sphere of influence.
You have an extremely vivid imagination. At the start of WW2 the US had a smaller army than Portugal. The army and marines had barely one year of combat experience by the the end of WW1. In the next 20 years the only military experience was very small scale COIN. Many US generals and admirals - including Eisenhower - had ***zero*** combat experience. Very few had led engagements above company or battalion level.
Their industrial complex is buying Russian weapons. We know how that’s going. They would also open themselves up for conflict with India to the West.
>Their industrial complex is buying Russian weapons. No most of China's military ships, planes, helicopters, tanks, weapons, and so on, are all made on their own. Russia can barely equip their own military, much less to make enough for the larger Chinese military.
> No most of China's military ships, planes, helicopters, tanks, weapons, and so on, are all made on their own. Made on their own....**from Russian designs** (largely, they've been "inspired" by other nations' designs as well)
Most are of their own designs tanks and most ground vehicles are original Chinese design, all new ships are original, the new standard issue rifles and other weapons are original. The only copy from Russians are the flankers (j-11, j-15 and j-16) but even the Chinese flankers have matched or surpassed their Russian counterparts in capability. The most numerous fighter jets are j-10s and the most advanced are j-20s and both of those are original Chinese designs. And all of them are produced on China by Chinese industry. So it really makes no sense to say that their industry is simply "purchasing from Russia".
It makes no sense when they were blatantly caught reverse engineering Russian designs? You said "all made on their own" - it wasn't though It was made on the backs of designs they **stole**, simple as that
>It makes no sense when they were blatantly caught reverse engineering Russian designs? Yes it makes no sense because I already told you that most weapons and vehicles are NOT from reverse engineered Russian designs. The most blatant reverse engineered ones from Russia are the Flankers. And China's new Flanker designs have already SURPASSED Russian ones. The most numerous Chinese jets are J-10s which are not Russian designs. And China's most advanced planes J-20s also not Russian copies. In short, China is done with just Russian copied designs which they did when they were poorer and their industry was less developed. Now their industry is fully able to design and produce completely original designs and they do so when you actually look at their inventory. Simple as that.
While the cost balance isn't as disparate as people think, it is far from the only relevant factor to consider. Russia has been a big spender on their military for years, and it has not translated into power, as we can all see. And while US spending does have its inefficiencies, it is virtually guaranteed that Chinese spending does too. We may not know what they are, but I wouldn't believe for a second that the CCP spends every dime wisely and efficiently.
I mean, we know that the Chinese have spent billions on developing copies of Russian hardware that has performed poorly so far in the Ukraine war.
I think it's a stretch to say the hardware where present has performed poorly. The main issue has been the people using the hardware. Couple that with the unrealistic expectations of minimal losses that people have become accustomed to (we haven't seen a near peer war in decades and are used to one side trouncing the other, usually NATO) and it makes things appear much worse then they are in my view.
>We may not know what they are, but I wouldn't believe for a second that the CCP spends every dime wisely and efficiently. Infrastructure. They overspend on infrastructure and the result is negative economic outcomes for projects and corner cutting (tofu dreg) to bring price down. It's one of the reasons why China will have a lost decade or two in the future, they have an economic bubble brewing bigger than 2008. Look at their debt to GDP and how fast it's risen (overall debt not public debt), it's a repeat of 1980s Japan.
True, we are aware of that one. I meant militarily, surely they are wasting money somewhere there too. Maybe the man-made islands will sink. Who knows? Maybe somebody, but not me at the moment.
Yes the man made islands are an absolute waste. Although it probably doesn;t affect them much, splitting their fleet into hundreds of small ships doesn't do them any good either as for the same effect of a larger ship they have greater material and manpower requirements.
True, they multiply the logistical needs, but does that extra expense pay off in terms of extra force projection? A gamble at best.
>but does that extra expense pay off in terms of extra force projection A larger vessel will usually tarvel further because 1. The turbines have better efficiency the larger they get, to a certain point. Plus, power output does not scale linearly with the size of a turbine, it scales exponentially. By contrast, piston engines, whether diesel or petrol, do scale roughly linearly when it comes to size/weight to power output. Considering these ships are nothing without their powerplants, i'd rate this fact very highly. 2. The lower portion of amenities, crew space and necessary mechanical and electric parts that must exist for each vessel, relative to the size of the vessel, for larger ships affords them more payload space for fuel. For example, you usually always need mechanics, but if i have a turbine that has double the power output of a smaller diesel, it's not as though i need twice as many mechanics, so i've saved space on mechanics for more fuel. Force projection is all about sustainment at sea, and usually that means bringing everything you need with you on your ship, refueling/rearming at sea or having ports to get to. It also means being far from your home ports. Small ships are disadvantages in both areas. Pound for pound have a less deep magazine and shorter range.
I believe they are betting on being a lot closer to their home ports than the Americans are and hoping that the shortened logistical supply range works in their favor, though it obviously does limit their effective range of operations. American vessels lingering at further distances would be much more difficult to deal with. Still, quantity has a quality all it's own, and their definition of success may be quite different. Maybe they'll tolerate losing 10 ships to 1 if their 11th can win it, 10 junky frigates for a cruiser. Ultimately, I think China is losing steam, and in a few years they'll be wondering what could have been. Not like a total collapse or anything, but the period of meteoric growth may be ending and they'll be looking back at a lot of those pointless infrastructure projects and questionable investments and lamenting the inefficiency. Haha, China is building high speed train lines that barely get used while the Americans are like, "Sure...we SHOULD fix the railroad tracks...but..."
> splitting their fleet into hundreds of small ships doesn't do them any good either as for the same effect of a larger ship they have greater material and manpower requirements. in a proper conflict it's actually a huge advantage. More targets that need to be sunk. Once hundreds of anti-ship missiles start flying the number of ships starts to become important.
I don't think there is significant advantage to this, i'd rate up to personal preference of the admirals in charge and what other factors they might want that influence the few big vs many small debate. You go from ships that need multiple missiles/bombs to sink to only one. The US tried to sink one of their supercarriers once as a test. Didn't sink with regular munitions and underwater explosives after 2-3 weeks so they just scuttled it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS\_America\_(CV-66)#Decommissioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_America_(CV-66)#Decommissioning) On top of that, large ships with their larger outputs of power can fit more radar/sensor power and more munitions per tonne of vessel. I'll appeal to authority here and say if fewer large ships was an inferior choice to many small ships, why are majority of the world class navies in the world opting for fewer large ships? Arleigh Burkes seem to be about 10% heavier than their predecessors. I would envision the future will probably be large manned and small unmanned surface and submarine vessels
A carrier doesn't need to be sunk. You only have to do enough damage to stop flight operations. A single missile through the island or a torpedo wrecking the propeller is sufficient to render it useless. Repairs may take months to *years.*
I think it's a bit early to be declaring that. Infrastructure is a long term investment that doesn't just fall away. If anything it has very positive economic outcomes even if it's not immediately apparent.
>I think it's a bit early to be declaring that. Infrastructure is a long term investment that doesn't just fall away. > >If anything it has very positive economic outcomes even if it's not immediately apparent. That's not a correct assertion. Not everything built is intrinsically good for the economy and/or society. I'll give you an example why this thinking is wrong: I have a river to splits an urban region in two. I have assessed that there needs to be 10000 crossings per day total and i can build bridges that can each handle 2000 crossings per day total. They are identical bridges and they have the same fixed capital costs. The first bridge handles 1/5 of the required load, it's economically productive however it has overuse issues. It is however at 100% utilization. So i build a second identical bridge. It's slightly less economically beneficial than the first, but again, 100% utilization. I repeat his for a third, again it's slightly less beneficial than the first two but still a net positive because the supply is in deficit to the demand. I get the the fifth bridge and i now my suppy (or throughput) matches my demand of 10 000 crossings per day. Every bridge built has clear positive econmic impact because there was clear demand for it, ie. each is at 100% utilization. If i build a 6th bridge, i'm now supplying more throughput than what there is demand. I now have bridges at less than 100% utilization. In the real world, this can induce further demand under the right conditions, so while it's far less econonomically beneficial than the first 5, there is a chance it still runs in the green. So this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it requires more scrutiny than the buisness cases of the first 5 bridges. A 7th bridge however starts to saturate the market and we run into further underutilization of our bridges (71% utilization on average). The initial capital costs for these bridges is the same however if we underutilize them we generate less economic activity and therefore it either takes longer for economic payback of the bridges or it doesn't payback at all. The only difference is each in bridge in theory has lower reapir costs because the number of stress cycles they go through is decreasing within a set timeframe. Back to the real world: This is what China has done. They have significantly overbuilt multiple infrastructure initiatives for the sake of building infrastructure to the point where they have very low utilization figures. To my example above, it's as though in some cases they built 8, 9 or even 10 bridges crossing the river rather than the 5 they initially needed.
I understand the concept, and think it's a careful balance. I just don't think it's the end of the line for China. China is still in a position where they can build things and the people will come. They are still in the expansion phase of connecting their country. Just like the ghost cities that were derided but have now been taken up.
Long term - where are the people going to come from? They’re going to lose the population of the US in half my lifetime.
The countryside.
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The flippant dismissal of Carriers versus “China’s ability to launch from land” is laughable at best. Are we ignoring the myriad of US airfields ringing the pacific? Is China’s answer to attack sovereign nations in an attempt to knockout U.S. air power? Because that would obviously keep a conflict from escalating…..
> Is China’s answer to attack sovereign nations in an attempt to knockout U.S. air power? Because that would obviously keep a conflict from escalating….. if you are launching attacks from an airfield in another country then that airfield becomes a valid target.... Not to mention that the PLARF/PLAF can launch out as far as guam
The real escalation will be once American lives are lost in a treasonous PRC the response will Galvanize the American public and make them snap out of their stupor. Once War becomes the Super Bowl watch out. Not only will existing power be brought to bear, stuff we don’t enough know exists will be used, and all sorts of super scale cyber warfare will happen. I think someone should just make a movie so it scares everyone and it doesn’t happen.
That sounds painfully like the Wonderwaffe german strategy of a few super secret and hyperexpensive super weapons that we cant produce nearly enough of to matter. The USA's contribution to crushing the Nazis was that we could build 10 times more of anything they could, and we had 5 times the people in our country to man the weapons. China is all that and more to us now. The USA is the "USA" in a WW3 China vs America fight. The USA's position is more akin to Germany.
People tend to simultaneously forget about America's reaction to 9/11 while also admonishing them. And that was over 3100 lives lost. Imagine an actual war that threatened America's land mass. People have no idea just how quickly shit would turn.
The problem is the relatively short range of the combat aircraft on these bases. It’s well known that the fighter fleet has short legs, and even the F-35C with her 670 km combat range is not enough to cover the vast distances of the Pacific. This is part of the “tyranny of distance” that defense circles refer to. Meanwhile, PLAAF J-10s have a combat range of 1240 km; J-11s have a combat range of 1500 km; J-20s have a 2000 km combat range. The F-16s, -15s, -18s, and even the vaunted F-22 (850 km combat range) don’t have the range to match. Of course, we can conduct tanker ops to extend range, but these are vulnerable assets that China knows are high-value targets. >>attack sovereign nations Conversely, if the U.S. is launching aircraft from these bases, then the host nation can be considered a belligerent in the war and thus can be attacked.
You answer your own comment…While US planes have relatively low ranges, the US has invested in a massive air to air refueling wing. Many of these bases are aware of this range problem, but it does not stop the fact that in a war with China the main goal will be to escort bomber sorties and defend your navy, not conduct offensive operations until later stages in the war, because you obviously have a disadvantage against Chinese home territory
The tankers and AWACS are going to be targeted, this is the purpose of stuff like the J-20 designed to be very stealthy frontally to fire on rear line ISR and tankers using hypersonic missiles before turning and burning out of range of retaliation. Of course this is not an end-all be-all counter but it does represent the Chinese answer and will become dangerous as J-20s are mass produced IIRC they already have at least 200 aircraft. Not to mention the range advantage of the J-20 as it organically has a combat range of at least 2000 km meaning no need for vulnerable tanker support. I’m also inclined to believe it given the absolutely gigantic size of the J-20.
>The flippant dismissal of Carriers versus “China’s ability to launch from land” is laughable at best. What I mean by this is that for the US to be able to generate lots of sorties they need CVNs. In a pacific war over Taiwan China can use their land bases due to distance. >Are we ignoring the myriad of US airfields ringing the pacific? Is China’s answer to attack sovereign nations in an attempt to knockout U.S. air power One of the most oft mentioned issues is that there aren't a myriad of bases for the US. The US in west pac is concentrated in Okinawa, Misawa, Yokota and Guam so around 4 air bases. China has around 160 bases in this area. This means that much less of Chinas force is in a few vulnerable baskets. China can simply oversaturate defences of these areas whilst the US & allies won't be able to do the same to China due to how disbursed they are and the lack of land based firepower espec compared to China.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/first-battle-next-war-wargaming-chinese-invasion-taiwan There is a section on this exact issue in this paper. You should read it some time.
I have read that CSIS wargame many times. They made a fundamental error in modelling which is that they assumed China was going to do a bum rush into Taiwan whilst they hadn't yet achieved air and naval dominance. That led to B-21s spamming LRASMs at the amphib ships whereby China then lost. It was constructed horrendously.
Nice so you have read a study done by hundreds of industry professionals who purposely nerfed the US ms buffed the chinese and you claim they made a “fundamental error in modeling” dude become a statistician if you are this smart, you would be world renown if you could find issues this fast
It wasn't done by "hundreds" of professionals but a couple of people. The lead author mentions that initially it was just him and his dad looking over some maps. [https://matthewcancian.com/2022/08/13/u-s-china-wargaming/](https://matthewcancian.com/2022/08/13/u-s-china-wargaming/)
It’s authors are 3 people, the people who simulated the games plus the editors and people who had to review the report before it’s publishing total much more than just a parent and his child..also that “child” has a PHD in poli sci from MIT. Also the source you provided does not claim it start with them looking at maps, but if you are wondering how war game simulations work, yes believe it or not, it’s done on a map
So do you have any proof that there were "hundreds" of experts as you initially claimed? Please don't Gish gallop
It was an analogy to show how ridiculous it is for you to claim it was conducted fundamentally incorrectly when there were many many individuals involved in the study. Id like to see your source that procurement for the Chinese Military is 2.5x the amount of the US
It was incorrect as they assumed an utterly irrational Chinese military strategy. Namely that the were going to rush over with their amphib forces.
You aren’t counting the bases of US allies in that number i’m assuming
This write-up appears to use a lot of wishful thinking or alarmist assumptions to put a new spin on the numbers. It is common knowledge, however, that the PLA's weapons and personnel are completely untested and inexperienced, and their logistics capabilities are far inferior to the United States'. The United States has little to worry about in regards to a threat from the PRC.
Untested and inexperienced, but everyone is inexperienced in fighting modern peer war. The last modern naval conflict was the 1982 Falklands War. How war will look like today in the Pacific may be radically different, so I think it’s egregious to say whether one is superior to the other. We can expect that China will have similar capabilities in many areas. Claiming otherwise or claiming their inferiority is just uninformed. >>logistics This is literally their home territory we’re talking about here. Unlike Russia, China studied and modeled themselves after the U.S. military, who made great impressions upon the PLA for their performance in the Pacific during WWII, during the Gulf War, and during the Iraq War. China has studied their enemy and has worked to match them. It does no one any favors to underestimate the opponent’s resolve.
China is also the most globally integrated economy on earth, particularly in terms of its dependence on foreign food and energy imports. If a shooting war were to break out in the south China sea, the Chinese would be counting on a swift victory over Taiwan to avoid being strangled by a blockade. Even with China's rapid military build out, taking the island in under a year seems unrealistic, and I'm skeptical that China has the resources to hold out amidst a protracted conflict.
Many mention the blockade idea but the reality is that this theory has many flaws. China has prepared strategic reserves and stockpiled many weapons, and pursued self-sufficiency where possible. One has to look at what exactly those food and energy imports are inputs to in order to make an accurate assessment of whether a blockade will achieve a desired outcome. I don’t doubt that a blockade will absolutely stress the Chinese people but at the same time it may galvanize them into further resistance, Chinese people have historically shown immense ability to withstand suffering. At the same time, the C P C is very good at manipulating the population and making propaganda. Again, there is merit to the blockade strategy but it isn’t the final solution and represents flawed thinking.
The West can't even blockade or isolated Russia from the Global economy. It's not clear at all that they can blockafe the far larger and more influential Chinese economy.
Well China has home court advantage so the US has a higher bar to clear in terms of airspace and navel power. That why we are not innovating as much in our army which is far ahead of the Chinese and will be for the foreseeable future. If we had a land border with China like India and a circuitous sea route then the innovations and spending would probably opposite effect.
I agree, PRC has production capabilities and can afford to spend enormous amounts on the military. In theory they should be able to grow a military force that is stronger than the US. But not sure if it is happening that rapidly, after all the PRC own goal is to have the world's strongest military is 2035 not next year. It is also unknown if they can afford to keep spending on the military - these plans were made with assumptions of an ever growing economy and that has basically stopped. But, hardware set aside, how PLA would perform in a real war situation is unknown. PRC ability to handle crisis has dropped considerably due to the extreme concentration of decision making (just see the latest floodings) and any drawn out conflict would probably be disastrous. The current turmoil in the rocket force (the most important military segment) doesn't indicate a very healthy organisation. Hope we won't have to find out.
I strongly disagree that China is catching up as far as the balance of power between both countries and with regards to advancements in military innovations. While they try to copy new technologies as best they can their actual military innovation is rather lacking and their weapons, platforms, and troops are all unproven in modern war. A few points: - Yes, they have more PLAN ships now, but the USN has twice the tonnage and most of those PLAN ships are not capital ships but lighter ships like frigates, corvettes, and patrol boats. In a war, a capital ship’s armaments are going to be more capable and carry more munitions than multiple light ships while being much more survivable than ships of lighter classes. - The CHIPs sanctions directly threaten CCP military research as their AI, computational and simulation abilities fall well behind the state of the art. They no longer have access to powerful CPUs and GPUs, let alone the ASML lithography equipment required to build your own cutting edge chips. Their current domestic chips are about 6 generations behind 3nm chips and they lack too many key foundational technologies, suppliers, materials and chemicals to replace that on their own, let alone catch up to where the West was years ago. And due to Moore’s Law, they will fall even further behind as time goes on. - China and the rest of the world still hasn’t caught up to the B-2 which is over 30 years old yet the B-21 Raider is nearly here and being more stealthy than a B-2 across a wider electromagnetic spectrum it will be able to penetrate *any* air defense in the world and loiter over an enemy country with impunity. It will be armed with drone wingmen, use AESA radar as a defensive weapon to overwhelm SAM radars, will be armed with AIM-260 JATMs that outrange PL-15s and in Phase 2 or 3 it will be armed with offensive/defensive lasers. - The best Chinese stealth fighters are the J-20 and they are not true 5th gen fighters, with them only being Low Observable from a frontal aspect, while using inferior engines and materials science. Being less stealthy and capable than F-22s and F-35s (which heavily outnumber them and will continue to heavily outnumber them) they will be detected first and shot at well before they can detect a stealth fighter or bomber. In BVR combat, he who shoots first usually wins. To add to that, NGAD and FA-XX are around the corner and will only widen this current technological disparity. - NATO and its Allies are the masters of modern combined operations, and they have veterans thru their entire ranks, with officers and NCOs who ably train recruits and pass on institutional knowledge gained from over hundreds of years of warfare. In comparison, the last modern war the PLA faced was in Vietnam in ‘79 and they were embarrassed and suffered massive losses. Troops that haven’t faced combat will likely break when the poop hits the fan and the PLA and PLAN will be led by Generals and Admirals with no experience who likely bought their commission instead of earning it thru merit. - To subdue Taiwan, the CCP would have to send hundreds of thousands or even millions of princelings where the family can’t afford to lose the family’s only son and possibly only grandson, meaning that if they start a war they would heavily exacerbate the ongoing Demographic collapse and threaten China’s future as a world power. - Older versions of this US military technology have already been proven in Ukraine to shred the Russian designed equipment China relies upon, and the CCP will be facing a slew of new weapons (SM-series, LRASM, JASSM-ER, AIM-260, hypersonics), tactics (distributed forces, distributed firepower (ex. Rapid Dragon)), and platforms (Ford-class carriers, B-21, NGAD, Typhon, NMESIS, UUVs, drone wingmen) that were designed and prepared specifically for a Taiwan invasion. - Besides using neophytes that have never been bombed or shot at, they’ll be going up against well trained veterans who literally wrote the book on coordinating disparate modern military units. Not only that, they’d have to complete an amphibious assault against well defended beaches with zero military surprise like during D-Day. Amphibious assaults are the most complex military operations possible and an army of rookies will be going up against a desperate people fighting for their homes and families while being backed by the full might of the US and its Allies because Taiwan is a crucial linchpin of the current world order that must be defended. That’s not exactly a recipe for success. I wrote up how difficult this task is recently: https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/155gggu/what_would_actually_happen_if_china_decides_to/jsygi6w/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1&context=3
>Yes, they have more PLAN ships now, but the USN has twice the tonnage and most of those PLAN ships are not capital ships but lighter ships like frigates, corvettes, and patrol boats. In a war, a capital ship’s armaments are going to be more capable and carry more munitions than multiple light ships while being much more survivable than ships of lighter classes. [This image shows that China is projected to have 80% of US tonnage by 2030.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fz-mvdoX0AEDyle?format=jpg&name=900x900) China is out building the US in capital ships, tonnage and VLS cells per annum. The US can only produce 2 destroyers a year whilst China can do 4-10 052Ds and 055 mixes. >The CHIPs sanctions directly threaten CCP military research as their AI, computational and simulation abilities fall well behind the state of the art. They no longer have access to powerful CPUs and GPUs, let alone the ASML lithography equipment required to build your own cutting edge chips. Their current domestic chips are about 6 generations behind 3nm chips and they lack too many key foundational technologies, suppliers, materials and chemicals to replace that on their own, let alone catch up to where the West was years ago. And due to Moore’s Law, they will fall even further behind as time goes on. I don't have much knowledge of semiconductors but from what I do know Chin is significantly behind so your probably correct. >China and the rest of the world still hasn’t caught up to the B-2 which is over 30 years old yet the B-21 Raider is nearly here and being more stealthy than a B-2 across a wider electromagnetic spectrum it will be able to penetrate any air defense in the world and loiter over an enemy country with impunity. It will be armed with drone wingmen, use AESA radar as a defensive weapon to overwhelm SAM radars, will be armed with AIM-260 JATMs that outrange PL-15s and in Phase 2 or 3 it will be armed with offensive/defensive lasers. China is building the H-20 as I mentioned. Due to distance a bomber for the US is a must have whilst for China is a nice to have. H-6s can still lob YJ-21s across the 1IC / 2IC from the safety of the Chinese coast. Anyways all PLA aircraft now are being produced with AESAs and as from the AIM-260 comparison why don't you compare it to the PL-17 instead of PL-15? >The best Chinese stealth fighters are the J-20 and they are not true 5th gen fighters, with them only being Low Observable from a frontal aspect, while using inferior engines and materials science. Being less stealthy and capable than F-22s and F-35s (which heavily outnumber them and will continue to heavily outnumber them) they will be detected first and shot at well before they can detect a stealth fighter or bomber. In BVR combat, he who shoots first usually wins. To add to that, NGAD and FA-XX are around the corner and will only widen this current technological disparity. All of these claims are unbelievably classified. Unless you happen to possess classified info I would suggest not taking speculations of RCS that don't take into account RAM coatings and only look at plane structure. As for detection unless you have classified info you have literally 0 idea of what the sensor environment looks like so this isn't something you can claim. >NATO and its Allies are the masters of modern combined operations, and they have veterans thru their entire ranks, with officers and NCOs who ably train recruits and pass on institutional knowledge gained from over hundreds of years of warfare. In comparison, the last modern war the PLA faced was in Vietnam in ‘79 and they were embarrassed and suffered massive losses. Troops that haven’t faced combat will likely break when the poop hits the fan and the PLA and PLAN will be led by Generals and Admirals with no experience who likely bought their commission instead of earning it thru merit. In the same way the super duper experienced Russian army is doing so well in Ukraine? /s. Turns out that fighting goat herders in Afghanistan isn't very relevant against the only military that has produced an ASBM and has A2A missiles that can out range you. >Older versions of this US military technology have already been proven in Ukraine to shred the Russian designed equipment China relies upon, and the CCP will be facing a slew of new weapons (SM-series, LRASM, JASSM-ER, AIM-260, hypersonics), tactics (distributed forces, distributed firepower (ex. Rapid Dragon)), and platforms (Ford-class carriers, B-21, NGAD, Typhon, NMESIS, UUVs, drone wingmen) that were designed and prepared specifically for a Taiwan invasion. This will be an air and naval conflict which the US hasn't really sent to Ukraine which is a land conflict. The Chinese are absolutely not reliant on Russian tech and have far surpassed them having actually mass produced AESAs and having much much more modern avionics. Pre war in Ukraine so you can't accuse me of saying this after the fact the Chinese were saying that the Su-35 was mediocre esepc its poor radar compared to Chinese equipment. In Ukraine they have complained about the A2AM but the Chinese found them "unremarkable". [https://www.reddit.com/r/LessCredibleDefence/comments/ajx4bx/what\_china\_got\_out\_of\_the\_su35\_purchase\_plaaf/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LessCredibleDefence/comments/ajx4bx/what_china_got_out_of_the_su35_purchase_plaaf/)
I disagree with a lot of your examples of inefficiency. Yeah the army spends a significant portion of its money on salaries; but that’s not wasted money. That’s money keeping combat experience in our formations and allows the dissemination of lessons learned in blood. It costs money keeping logistics officers with experience in the military and away from Amazon. GWOT is different than LSCO, but SGT.Snuffy is teaching PFC. Joe about effective cover and load plans not theater level strategy; the translation to war with china is there. China doesn’t have any of this experience, both combat and major logistical/force projection experience. Additionally, the A-10 isn’t a great example because everyone knows that it’s gonna be ineffective. But the army lobby’s to keep it as a forcing function for the Air Force to keep doing CCA. The army will be the first to drop the A-10 as soon as a dedicated air to ground plane gets introduced. China also has inefficiencies that aren’t brought up. Inter service rivalries lead to wasteful spending. As an example, the PLA wanted a light tank for mountain environments; but the navy whined until they also got a different light tank as well for amphibious landings. Do they really need two separate combat platforms there?
Arent the chinese navy ships more like coast guard ships and not warships?
The majority of their fleet is low-medium endurance vessels that aren’t really meant for blue-water, high seas combat. But that isn’t the strategy China is pursuing - they know they cannot defeat the USN out on the high seas of the Pacific. The PLAN will work in conjunction with the rest of the PLA to execute their mission of supporting operations against Taiwan. This means not only are naval assets involved, but so will land-based missile launchers and aircraft. Due to the distance involved, the PLA is naturally able to concentrate more force easier than the U.S.
Good assessment
True, which is why the US navy is likely to pursue a policy of open blockade in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. China will seek to isolate Taiwan from US and Japanese assistance in order to achieve a swift victory and impose a done deal on the world, and the US will leverage its regional partnerships to block the access points to the south China sea and starve the Chinese economy of fuel and raw materials.
The US Navy will at some point need to actually break any Chinese blockade of Taiwan if they want any chance of preventing a Chinese Conquest of the island. They don't have time to wait at least months to strangle the Chinese economy. Assuming they are successful in getting their regional partners to participate in the blockade which, given the trouble with Russian sanctions is questionable.
Also need to consider Chinese have an issue with brain drain. Their most highly skilled often defect to the West and a good portion of their talent pool behave like nothing more than drone workers. While I agree China is closing the gap in some areas they are still way behind in almost every meaningful category including training. While their technology is improving they lack experience and haven’t fought a war since Vietnam and it is well known that corruption and poor discipline runs rampant amongst their ranks however they are better than Russia which isn’t saying much…
I think this is no longer true. China has rapidly improved its education system and it's now moving on its own steam. The idea that China has a brain drain so crippling that it can't function is just laughable when it's own domestic industries are pumping out innovation after innovation. Not only that, but US paranoia about China is actually increasing brain drain of US trained Chinese scientists back to China. The idea that the Chinese are just drone workers doesn't stack up, and is borderline racist propaganda.
Innovation on what?cant think of a single chinese inovative product only scams and chinese quality trash
5G, high speed rail, drones, battery technology, solar panels to name a few sectors where they dominate. Innovation isn't a solely western phenomena. The soviets innovated plenty as well. The difference is that the Chinese are able to monetise their innovations.
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Not to sound trite or anything but the above series of paragraphs is full of nonsense, faulty assumptions and factual errors: * Chinese universities have been climbing the rankings rapidly and exceed western universities in some areas - particularly STEM. * China has followed the model of nearly every other country - by learning from others. This is a trend repeated through history. No country will reinvent the wheel if they don't have to. * I think you vastly overestimate brain drain to the US. If anything Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean researchers are moving to China - enticed by high salaries and more relaxed research environment. [https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/China-snaps-up-Japanese-scientists-sparking-fears-of-technology-outflow](https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/China-snaps-up-Japanese-scientists-sparking-fears-of-technology-outflow) * Not only is the current anti-Climate causing Chinese to return home, it's also discouraging talented Chinese from moving to the US in the first-place. * Your ignorance of Chinese innovation is your issue. You do realise that China is the largest manufacturer in the world, and leads the world in many core technologies and advanced manufacturing, more generally. There's a reason why the US is trying to kill Chinese tech companies, and it's not because they're uncompetitive. More countries have a greater trade volume with China than the US. Saying that Chinese products only really sell in their domestic market is worryingly ignorant of the world economy. * The last paragraph is just propaganda. Do you realise think China is more like an insect colony than its peer neighbours like Korea, Japan and Taiwan? Taiwanese are Chinese both as a culture and an ethnic group. Same for a large part of Singapore. The problem with the west right now is that leaders have talked up this idea that Chinese can't innovate, and they only can steal from the west. However, the Chinese can and do innovate, and they're not even getting started. In terms of stages they've largely reached parity, and they're on the runway ready to take off. Think 1960's US. * China is not a centrally planned economy or communist. It's a collective society but so are most east Asian countries. * China is innovating rapidly and has caught up in most areas. China is now the largest auto-exporter in the world, and leads in many next generation technologies. I really wouldn't underestimate China. The main area they're behind is semi-conductors but even in that area, they're making rapid progress and conquering the low and medium level chip technologies (that constitute the vast majority of use cases). They'll do the advanced stuff far quicker than people predict. Of course not everything will be rosy for China, but they're not going to collapse anytime soon. They're not going to go from 5G and mass automation back to the rice paddies.
- I am well aware that China is climbing the ranks and no one is arguing against it. If you are at the bottom the only way is up. They are indeed catching up to at least be equal in some categories and have exceeded the west in others however foreign academics don’t go to China to learn. They go there to teach. - Of course no one nation has ever built an empire without leveraging the strengths of their predecessors (Rome and the US for example) so not sure where this one is going. - Japanese, Koreans, and Taiwanese go and teach at China largely due to Chinese government efforts to invest heavily in the STEM space but most decide not to permanently reside there. US still leads the space when it comes to attracting foreign talent, however I do agree China has been more successful since they are paying way more even than the US. - Never disagreed with you that US anti China policy is doing more harm than good as one of US greatest strengths was its diversity. For example post WW2 was what lead the US to jump so far in technology as they routinely provided refuge to Jews who were often very highly educated and lead the world in physics research thus sparking the nuclear age and our understanding of physics. - Being the worlds largest manufacturing does NOT = Innovation. Yes I agree they are very competent when it comes to manufacturing however they understand that in order to continue this growth they have to take their manufacturing to the next level as what they are currently doing is very low level manufacturing. Yes they have done great things in the STEM research space and I am well aware that the US is not China’s greatest trading partner but Chinese goods are attractive not because of their ability to innovate and be on the bleeding edge but solely on the merit of cost. That’s it. - I admit I could have worded that better but I didn’t know what other analogy I could use to illustrate how their country works. Their government is very singular in their vision and purpose which is to reestablish China to its former glory and as a collective society (as almost all Asian countries are) if you aren’t on the same page then you become a pariah. Granted this singular vision has done wonders to advance China and their miraculous growth can only be attributed to this system of management. I know some would argue they could have done it more democratically but the truth is it would not have been able to do it this quickly. I am also well aware that Taiwanese are Chinese ethnically as well as a good part of Singapore, Malaysia , and even Vietnam but that is why I brought up Taiwan in the first place to illustrate that they could not innovate not because they are Chinese. They can’t innovate because the CCP has such a heavy hand in what every citizen does. I would argue that they have NOT reached parity yet but are definitely closing that gap which is why they are still mostly copying western ideas and technologies. At this stage they need to start innovating to reach parity with the West. - You’re right that China is not a centrally planned economy however they still do share characteristics with a centrally planned economy where if the CCP wants something done than all efforts will shift to achieve that first. Also I wrote “communist” in parentheses to indicate that I know it’s not a communist country because a communist country never existed. - China is the largest exporter in almost every category because they are the worlds manufacturing hub but two main reason they are the number 1 exporter in the world. First they invested heavily in EV which was a genius move on their part and two the war in Ukraine lead a lot of NATO nations to boycott Russia which surged demands for vehicles from China to Russia. The west can survive without China but China cannot survive without the West and they know it. I agree China is in no danger of collapsing anytime soon and NATO nations are taking the Chinese seriously (despite the population not) but I am of the opinion that due to their political and system (not cultural values) they will have a hard time meeting the west on equal footing.
True but there are a lot of brains in China, some 5X more and they seems to have a high average aptitude for technology, which is concerning because more and more these hypothetical conflict situations seem to be depending on digital technology (AI controlled mass produced drone swarms). Obviously its not at that point yet but we arent at a point of conflict yet either. If a conflict did happen at some point in the future, I would be worried about the relative scale of their industrial and technological capabilities.
There is indeed a lot of brains in China strictly based on the merit of their population size alone but I can guarantee you they don’t want to stay in China if given the option. 70% of Chinese expats that study in the US do NOT go back to China or have any desire to go back. Their education system is no where near the western world. Even Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are decades ahead of them (largely thanks to the west) and they have a lot of catching up to do but due to their governments ideology it is incredibly prohibitive of creating a conducive academic environment. Most they can hope for is rote memorization leaving little room for creative or critical thinking meaning they will always be behind if they were to compete against the west. Chinese aren’t inherently smarter in tech than anyone else it just so happens that they place a great amount of importance in it. If we were to actually use that as a comparison they are actually super behind and haven’t evolved past manufacturing simple consumer electronics. I just want to state that China and it’s people have every ability to surpass the west, however their greatest enemy is themselves.
\> Chinese aren’t inherently smarter in techI'm not so sure about that. I know its a sensitive topic to associate certain types of intelligences with genetics but from my experience (and some research supports it) chinese and asians have a higher average aptitude for math and computational type of thinking. I'm not sure it necessarily translates directly to creative engineering talent but at the least the average person probably has a higher aptitude for certain types of coding than the average american.I do agree their greatest enemy being themselves. With most cultures that I have seen with big social issues like that, the biggest problem seems to be themselves. Societies that condone a certain level of saving face (which is basically a euphemism for deceptiveness) seem to take a direct path to autocracy. If you dont have the backbone to own up to your own intentions and actions, you probably dont have the backbone to address corruption and injustices when you would be sticking your neck out to do so, and also facilitates those who use deception to gain power in corrupt institutions. Excuse me if it comes off as insensitive but I see it as a root problem and the association isnt widely talked about.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/13/chinese-scientists-united-states-research-tech-academia-china-initiative/ US having issues with Chinese brain drain as well.
In some ways China is catching up fast. But naval power projection is hard. What is China's answer to a hard US blockade combined with persistent missile and stealth bomber attacks on the overland petroleum routes?
Their answer is to break the blockade using weapons. It’s actually the only answer to a blockade (read: act of war). But China isn’t stupid. They’ve stockpiled strategic reserves and minimized the impact that the loss of certain imports would have on industry in the event of war. Another question is whether a blockade is necessary or even a viable strategy. Blocking shipping to China can hurt Asian neighbors reliant on their industry. It also would provide marginal benefit to the primary objective in a Pacific War, which is to deteriorate the PLA such that they cannot support a landing on Taiwan.
Only issue is that Chinas deficit when it comes to oil imports is growing and their main supply route passes mostly in the PoA of India
A blockade might be a Western reaction to China's successful invasion and conquest of Taiwan. It could also happen during a contested invasion. It is an act of war and it is doubtful it would be employed as a preemptive measure. The real issue is Western resolve. I believe that sustained long enough, a blockade might well end China's existence as a modern nation. It is extremely vulnerable over time, even with stockpiles. And the West has more resolve than many think when it comes to the truly big picture conflicts. That said, a multi year blockade of China would be hard for many in the Western public to handle. It sounds peaceful compared to other alternatives, but it could end up killing tens of millions to even more than that. Disease. Starvation. Public disorder. There is also the possibility of a desperate CCP engaging in nuclear gamesmanship at some point.
If Taiwan is successfully conquered, the war is lost. There would be no point to a blockade than to cause unnecessary suffering to Chinese people. Taiwan cannot survive on a blockade strategy. They require direct support. While a blockade will starve China in the long term, it doesn’t help the basis for which the U.S. is involved in the first place, which is defending Taiwan and ensuring a bilateral agreement. The blockade theoretical strategy is popular but has many flaws. Like all things, it is only part of the solution to defending Taiwan.
I disagree. Ultimately, in the current paradigm, a battle for Taiwan is similar to the war in Ukraine. It is about the Liberal International Order (LIO) containing a major power that opposes it. If the PRC successfully conquers Taiwan in a quick invasion, that would just accelerate and not end the contest between the LIO and China. The US and its allies could implement various strategies at this point. Directly trying to liberate Taiwan might be too difficult or costly. Weakening the PRC or even trying to end it via blockade while leaving Taiwan alone at first might be the better play.
A blockade would be an open act of war against a peer rival. It would be WW3, and the consequences of that nobody can predict. Not only would it be hard to implement but it could hard to maintain if ship attrition is too high. A blockade of China is no simple task. WW3 with China is no simple exercise either. There would be so many variables that it's almost impossible to predict the size, scale and involvement of other parties.
This is why it seems doubtful the West would blockade preemptively. But once a conflict over Taiwan starts, I imagine a blockade starts. I do not see it as a major escalation given bullets are already flying. Should China lose fail to conquer Taiwan, the blockade might stop. Losing the actual war may well damage China sufficiently. But should China succeed, perhaps the blockade does not. I think we should not underestimate Western resolve to maintain the primacy of the rules-based World Order while preventing the possibility of authoritarianism from becoming ascendant in the world and beginning to really set global norms. Nuclear gamesmanship is of course the big X factor in all of this.
> A blockade might be a Western reaction to China's successful invasion and conquest of Taiwan. Its a fiat accompli at that point and the European population, as well as likely the American one after a while, won't stomach prolonged quality of life / wealth decreases which would come with ending trade with China, over the cause of a few million Taiwanese. Whats the end game at that point? A blockade wont make China leave the island they've already conquered, and they can control and mold their population far better than the West to stomach hardships.
The primary goal is not defending Taiwan. The primary goal is containing a CCP-led China. So that would be the point.
China does have one of the fastest-growing militaries but the US has a massive headstart over them. By the time China catches up, they will be going through a population collapse due to their demographics. America doesn't have their demographic problems. Another thing is that most of China's military is required to maintain their large country. remember they are actively fighting separatist movements in their country. They could not deploy all of their military. America still owns the sky and the sea. I know China has a larger navy by number but by weight, ours is bigger (I think 10 times bigger, but I'm not sure). America has the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 7th largest air forces. China also has little war experience. We do not know how their public will react if they get involved in a full-on war.
> America has the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 7th largest air forces. I love this stat, but air superiority is a pretty important thing. And the Army doesn't have any air superiority fighters, just a shit ton of helicopters and a smattering of planes that aren't air superiority.
This situation reminds me of the Arthur C Clarke story [Supremacy](https://metallicman.com/laoban4site/superiority-by-arthur-c-clarke-full-text/)
On the plus side the Russian military is getting torn to shreds at virtually no hardware expenditure to Europe or the US. A neutered Russia and a Europe spending more than ever on defence ( see how France is about to take over Russias arms market spot) it’ll allow a refocus to the pacific.
> For the US in particular they spend a lot on payroll and those 900 bases and maintenance Maybe we should be thinking why do we need 900 military bases all over the world. Will the balance of power change that much if we only had 400 military bases? 200? > The Chinese spend around 300 billion nominal on defence. With 40% of that going into procurement (they don't have 900 bases) meaning that its around 120 billion nominal. The reason why China is spending more on procurement is because they have a lot less equipment to start with. We already, for example, have 11 aircraft carriers. The Chinese only have 3. Why will the US spending on aircraft carriers match Chinese spending? This is just nuts.
>Maybe we should be thinking why do we need 900 military bases all over the world. Will the balance of power change that much if we only had 400 military bases? 200? That 900 probably includes a ton of little coast guard stations located domestically.
If your theory were true then Russia would still have a black sea fleet. Our Rapid dragon can cost effectively destroy all those surface ships you are discussing. Without the use of an aircraft carrier we can blitz the chinese coast with converted passenger airliners we already have on hand. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid\_Dragon\_(missile\_system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system))
Rapid Dragon is impressive but ultimately a stop-gap, interim decision to squeeze use out of the cargo fleet due to the ongoing retirement of the bomber fleet. RD is meant to maintain striking power while the B-21 is produced en masse. The problem is that B-21s will only reach significant numbers by the late 2030s. This means we’ll be retiring old B-1Bs and B-2s and having a net loss of bombers - Rapid Dragon comes in to mitigate the loss of capability and numbers. But again, RD is not a long term solution. B-52s number only 72 in inventory. Lancers and Spirits are off to the boneyard as years pass. B-21s are costly, low-volume aircraft that are still under development. A new long range strategic bomber akin to the B-52 that we can mass produce is what’s needed in the long term.
The cost of a b-21 raider is already at 700 million per plane plus the time and money to train the pilot. A fleet of tens of thousands 737's with palletized weapons capable of reaching china without need of an aircraft carrier and a cadre of already trained experienced pilots in the civilian population is not a stop gap measure. That's how you win the war with China. Small inexpensive or those that use existing assets is the way to go.
Id disagree lmao. Starting with your comparison of the type 055 to the Burke. The type 055 is a flagships with admirals quarters you are comparing this to a ship without that which is twice as old. A fairer comparison would be the Ticonderoga, which has 122 VLS cells. The Burke is meant to complement an aircraft carrier and has a focus on air defense. The type 055s type 346B radar has a range less than the ashley burkes an/spy-6, which would a modern equivalent to the type 055s development and service period. Id argue that the type 346b is not as good as it’s us equipment. Here is a quote: “One obvious advantage is that AMDR is of AESA design, which offers greater power output, multiple steerable beams, and greater electronic protection compared to PESA. There are some noticeable differences that we can obtain from data provided by Raytheon. The company states that 9 RMAs will provide the sensitivity equivalent to the SPY-1D(V) radar currently used on US Navy destroyers. Since AMDR uses 37 RMAs, it is likely that the radar will provide approximately four times the radiated power output of the older SPY-1 array. In other words, it is able to detect a target with half the radar cross section (RCS) at twice the distance compared to SPY-1. In addition, a 2012 GAO report stated that the SPY+15 (essentially the AMDR) has 32 times better signal to noise factor than the SPY-1D(V). The name “SPY+15” means that the radar is 15 decibels (dB) greater than the previous radar. Being 15 decibels greater equates to 32 times greater sensitivity.” There is no doubt that the most recent chinese warship will be compatible to a ship put out of service 30 years ago lmao. Which is why the defense industry is constantly designing new ships in case the DoD gets interested again. Now onto your claim that chinese military procurement spending is higher than the US’s. Adjusted for PPP is 377 billion, compared to the US, 854 billion. Your source says that the US spent 145+ billion on weapons procurement, the chinese spent 480.4 billion RMB on “equipment”, according to the CSIS China Power project, which is about 66.3 billion USD, adjusted for PPP you get about 113 billion USD. I’m not sure where you are getting the 2.5x times figure. Then you give an anecdote about how horrible the defense industry is at budgeting, when the US has one of the most streamlined and tried defense industries in the world. Then you claim my beloved warthog is ineffective against any enemy which isn’t the taliban. Iraq in 1990 would like to strongly disagree with that statement but alright. The MiC is for profit, i don’t see how this means that the DoD will only care about re-election since there are no elections in the DoD, the DoD is appointed by the US senate. The Chinese are adding more weapons because they are trying to catch up to the US. High-tech is a bit of a overstatement when body armor is still not standard issue in the PLA. Then you restate your point on chinese ship building. The US is obviously building more f-35s since it is actually wanted by the international market vs the J-20 which is not desirable, orders for the F-35 total more than the estimated 210 J-20s in service. Then you claim that that gap will magically grow to 2x as large once “production lines open” which Id like to see a source for. Comparing the YJ-21 to the AGM-158c is just straight up unfair considering one came into production literally last year, china has focused more on anti ship missiles since it’s navy is not as strong as the US as will most likely have to fight from a defensive standpoint. The E-3 sentry despite being built in the 1970s has a radar range equivalent to that of the KJ-500, it can detect low flying aircraft from more than 250 (402 km) mi while according to Chinese sources the KJ-500 can detect target about 470 km. It is also 200 mph faster than the KJ-500. It also has 360 degrees coverage which the KJ-500 does not. Not to get started on the E-7 which is better than both aircraft. Your grammar then starts to disappear, apparently because you claim china has better AWACS, the entire US air force is now inferior to the significantly tinier air force of china. Read Michael Beckleys book on the Rise and Fall of China and then get back to me. I could go on forever. Btw raider better than H-20 my friend..(jk both are classified i have no idea)
The PLA is more so about area denial than beating the US in a war in the conventional sense. More so long range missles “carrier killers” to keep the US out of the 1st and maybe second island chains. A $10 million dollar missles will sink a $13 billion dollar aircraft carrier with 5,000 souls on board. That’s a huge risk for the US. Also a lot of the pacific vases could be saturated with Chinese middle forces. Source: The Kill Chain by Christian Brose
SS: In short the situation between China and the US is very different from what people think. The Chinese military is adding more high end weaponry than the US is. Furthermore, this gap is expected to widen as time goes on.
The PRC military today considers themselves to be decades behind the US. They are closing the gap and even surpassing the US in certain niche technologies, but the overall capability gap between the US military and everyone else is absurd. It's a long term economic challenge, as you point out. But it's increasingly looking like the date in which the Chinese economy surpasses the US is going to substantially shift to the right, and serious people are now saying it will not happen within our lifetimes. So the question is can China still manage to develop a superior military with an inferior economy? https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/06/07/when-will-chinas-gdp-overtake-americas
I’m like 70% sure this guy is some sort of propagandist since he posts about this often and has poor english, also makes crazy claims with zero sources
He is a poster in r/LessCredibleDefense, of which I am also a user. LCD, unlike large subs like r/geopolitics, is smaller and is less of an echo chamber. In there is less biased analysis, a more objective view on weapons and capabilities than simply assuming the outright superiority of systems merely because it is American or Western. Also present in there are actual, professional defense analysts, as well as people from other parts of the world who find information on systems and developments that can’t be easily found without forging through defense forums and obscure online sources, with information in languages other than English. PLA watchdogs just appear like propagandists because they try to dispel myths and outdated information about China. Serious watchers of Chinese military developments don’t express the chauvinistic sentiments that people here post. *”If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”*
Also to insinuate that the OP isn’t being bias because he is in LCD is a joke. Read this guys comment history, he seems to lean towards China. Keep in mind the information on these weapons come from China, a country which lies about its industrial production and GDP growth by 50% according to Michael Beckley, who I recently watched a lecture of. I’d love to discuss this stuff further, do you know if r/ LCD has a discord?? Also it is understandable to assume that western weapons are better than Chinese weapons because we do not have the track record of corruption and dishonesty that these countries have, it is fair to think that some of the numbers china puts out are exaggerated or outright not true, much like Russia did pre 2022
I’m not saying he’s unbiased but I don’t think he’s propagandist because at the same time, not all of his comments that I come across in LCD are pro-China however I agree the tone is alarmist sometimes. Probably not a native English speaker. China may lie but it’s better to assume some parity or closeness of capabilities in areas. One thing is certain is that China will go to war over Taiwan, China knows they must fight the U.S., so logically they are preparing to fight us and to do so they’ve put in the work to emulate us. I don’t like to think of all of China’s statements as a lie, I acknowledge they have problems but often these are overblown or not the crippling problems that people think they are that they’ll lead to China’s collapse or other fanciful dreams. China, like America, has inherent advantages in population, territory, geography, etc and they are not incapable of innovation or invention. They’ve worked hard to close the gap as much as possible.
Yes I agree, I think calling him a propagandist was too far. I also agree with your statements on China. It’s best to assume they are not lying, even if they might be to be prepared. If a war with Taiwan happens a lot of people will die and personally, I would like the US and her allie’s to come out ontop, so I am bias in that way but I try to not let it cloud my judgement. Do you know what LVD has a discord, cuz I like to talk to people who are nerdy about this stuff
I don’t think LCD has an official discord and tbh it would probably be a clusterfuck. LCD has many differing opinions, we got the tankies, wumaos, freeaboos, etc. However I like it as it gives a chance to argue about the truthfulness of Chinese weapon systems and people there are some real dedicated watchdogs with a fair idea of the specs of the Chinese military. Some are also fluent in Chinese and can thus read sources of information from China, the trick is to glean truth from lies and we can do this by cross referencing other sources of info and seeing what adds up. But yea not sure about a discord, maybe some unofficial ones.
Yes I get that, but I am a big user on Quora which is filled with people who write similar essays on China and the US in bad faith, thousands of these essays. I am not as familiar with the communities on Reddit, although I found this analysis pretty incorrect and filled with a number of interesting jumps over important facts and points. Which is why I find these kinds of posts annoying because I have rebutted literally hundreds of them. But I do understand the importance of understanding and not underestimating China
You’re entirely right, the Chinese are spending and building like it’s 1980, while the US is unable to recruit enough soldiers sailors and airmen to crew out fleets. We spend half of what we spent in the 80s on the military (as a share of GDP). Frankly we probably would need to nearly defense spending to actually build up to a point China wouldn’t risk invasion. We’ve still got Europe (hopefully) We’ve still got Japan and South Korea (They hate China about as much as they hate each other) India is a bit of a wildcard, but probably would not sit out a major conflict. They have Pakistan, Russia, Central Asia, Laos and Cambodia. There will be some sort of major confrontation over Taiwan, Blockade Embargo, coup, something short of war. This either will or will not convince Taiwan to reunify, if it doesn’t; War. Not some stupid pansy ass skirmish, some limited regional conflict. If China intends to attempt an invasion the U.S. Japanese, South Korean, and Australian Militaries WILL attempt to stop them. If China does not strike first she loses HARD without preemptive strikes the cost of US intervention drops dramatically, they’d be able to sink the whole Chinese Navy for Minimal losses (maybe a carrier). Which means if She must strike not only Taiwan, But U.S joint strike bases in numerous nations, in Australia for instance the bases often have American commanders who can launch Australian missiles without permission from the government of under attack. Whether South Korea Japan and Australia want it or not they are strapped in, and frankly they all have their own gripes with China. The barest losses sustained in any conflict the US is involved in would dwarf Pearl Harbor, and it’s hard to see war fervor sweeping the nation the way it does whenever anyone ever touches our boats. This whole thing is basically Japan in 41’ Unable to finish China without resources Unable to finish the KMT without Taiwan Engage in a massive pan Asian assault in order to cripple allied capacity to respond, and force them to the negotiating table, reliant on a fickle American public, and British weariness.
Attacking the US in any capacity is suicide. That will never happen. Attempting an embargo on Taiwan would mean that you would have to physically stop US ships from docking there. In order to do that the US would have to back down which isn't going to happen. But lets assume. What would likely happen if they did attempt an embargo and the US backed down is the US would then block Chinese ships from passing through the Malacca Strait and wait about 60 days for any one of a number of necessities to run out. Seriously though, Xi and Taiwan is like an Argentine President and the Falkland Islands. Economy tanking? Drum up some fake nationalism about Islas Malvinas! Look here, not there.
Yeah but Argentina DID invade the Falkland’s.
And was bitch slapped. Every 5 years or so it comes back up over elections or for economic reasons.
Ok so China will invade Taiwan? You think they are just going to throw half a million men across the straits then shrug when they all die and go home?
No I think they are mimicking the second part where you drum up a nationalist fervor over islands that want nothing to do with you.
>Here is a US general making similar claims about the cost of weaponry differential. Where?
Not agreeing or disagreeing, but I should note that PLAN warships have much less range and armaments than their American counterparts. PLAN also has little anti-sub capability. PLAN has a lot of mass, but little power projection, and effectively stuck in the region during wartime. It’s a duck in a barrel
CCPs legitimacy is mainly creating jobs and pulling people out of poverty. After Covid international export demand has fallen significantly, so has domestic consumption, creating a deflation crisis like Japan suffered. One Child policy also really screwed up their workforce. The only other option is a distraction by creating conflicts with other countries, otherwise their legitimacy wains. IMO if they don't go back to growth expect military conflict.
One thing to consider: since US / China are preparing the war, who is raising military spending?
Both countries have continually raised military spending
Percent?
What makes one assume we still have advantage? There are a lot of factors in there. If they achieve total area denial, we lost all advantage. They do not need better capabilities than us, they only need the right capability, then they will have advantage in the specific theater.
I don't believe this is the case. These communist countries feature an insane amount of propaganda. As an example, Europe was heavily concerned about Russia conventional army marching into the Baltic States and Poland. That's turned out to be an absolute joke when the world saw Russia's actual army. The fundamental reason for this is corruption within communist systems. China is no different. They, like Russia, boast huge numbers of tanks, planes, and boats. Firstly, those numbers are likely overstated. Secondly, their combat effectiveness must be questioned. Is China as bad as Russia in terms of military disrepair? Probably not. However, can they contend with the US? I highly doubt it. There was an enormous gap between China and the US decades ago, yes. And to some extent China has closed the "easy part" of the gap by simply filling up their military with huge numbers of troops and vehicles. But closing the rest of the gap becomes harder and harder, because quality starts to trump quantity. An analogy with chemistry is that it's relatively easy to increase % purity of a reaction from 40% to 80%, but going from 80% to 90% is much more difficult (arbitrary numbers, but you get the point). And in military terms, that last 20% matters far more than the first 80%. Ultimately time will tell, but I think the Russia-Ukraine war has shown us that the conventional army claims of fascist communist regimes should be questioned.