Great read on the new Chinese stealth plane and its design to combat the USAF at its weakpoint
- Thread starter FSUTribe76
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Interesting insight into the "long game" of Chinese thought. They are not in it for the immediate, but plan in a patient way.
Knowing that they cannot seize fighter plane dominance, they instead look to best our best in a different manner.
Knowing that they cannot seize fighter plane dominance, they instead look to best our best in a different manner.
A little off topic but over the next few decades you will see several nations catch and possibly pass the U.S. in military superiority. Not just technology but even the quality of our individual Solider. Most people don't realize that it was not just our military that made us at times the worlds only super power; but our economy and ability to produce technology that set us apart from most other nations. Today our economy and economic power is not in very good shape and the level of recruit our military gets is getting weaker and weaker. This is not surprising when you realize less than 20% of military age citizens are even capable of serving in our military. While we will be able to create the technology needed to keep our military on the cutting edge; we likely will not have the funds to produce it. Don't get me wrong it is not like some country is going to come over here and kick our butts; however the days of the US going in and kicking ass are probably over. Not to mention our saving grace in most of the last 50 years or so of conflicts has been sea and air power dominance, those days are ending as well.
Interesting article. I'm fascinated by the machinations and strategery involved in geopolitical wargaming... Sounds like a good avenue for China to focus on. Hopefully US joint forces have accounted for this scenario and have a counter play.
SFNole
SFNole
We still have enough nukes to blow the whole world to high heaven. That will always be our saving grace.
Interesting article, but one section of the article stuck me as funny.
In the end yes China’s ingenuity is startling, whether this is a pre-production aircraft or even a technology demonstrator, but what is even more surprising is the brilliant strategy behind this machine’s design and even more startling is how apparent its mission appears to be...”
This just smacks of American arrogance. And really reminds me of the blind British arrogance before the rug was pulled from under them.
Sheer numbers helps China in so many ways, strong huge labor force (and fighting force) who intimately understand production of goods (like the US did going into WW1 and 2), a population of that size dictates more genius / MENSA types (even with # of people who have no formal education), plenty of people who have access to and expectations of education (for that class of people). So yes, lets be startled by a country that has been out maneuvering the US for a decade +.
And when any American born person in college doesn't know some of the basics of US History, we shouldn't be surprised by anything. This isn't jaywalking sample, thats a set of basic questions to college kids. Way to represent Red Raiders.
In the end yes China’s ingenuity is startling, whether this is a pre-production aircraft or even a technology demonstrator, but what is even more surprising is the brilliant strategy behind this machine’s design and even more startling is how apparent its mission appears to be...”
This just smacks of American arrogance. And really reminds me of the blind British arrogance before the rug was pulled from under them.
Sheer numbers helps China in so many ways, strong huge labor force (and fighting force) who intimately understand production of goods (like the US did going into WW1 and 2), a population of that size dictates more genius / MENSA types (even with # of people who have no formal education), plenty of people who have access to and expectations of education (for that class of people). So yes, lets be startled by a country that has been out maneuvering the US for a decade +.
And when any American born person in college doesn't know some of the basics of US History, we shouldn't be surprised by anything. This isn't jaywalking sample, thats a set of basic questions to college kids. Way to represent Red Raiders.
I don't think the closing Tech gap has to do with our economy. We are still spending WAY more than Russia and China put together not just in pure dollar figure but also as percentage of GDP over China (America blows 3.50 of every dollar in the economic on the military versus China's 2.05% but behind Russia's 5.75%). So blowing through that much money we SHOULD be head and shoulders above the rest.
The closing gap in my mind really has to do with two issues 1) the relatively recent incredibly poor performance of our intelligence agencies to keep our state secrets and 2) our military industry has been churning out a bunch of dud platforms either because they're too bloated and expensive to deploy in sufficient numbers (B-2, F-22, Seawolf and Zumwalt) or just complete POS boondoggles (F-35, Littoral ship, V-22, etc..).
I had a part in the 3 above working for Lockheed Martin... Great Technology and Greaty War Machines... in theory... They are far too expensive and take far too much time to procure, build and test. The Zumwalt by example probably could have brought about a new generation of naval destroyers but the costs growth was about 3X the original bid and was a couple of years behind schedule... The original plan of 18 ships was dropped to 3 with one being a testing ship.
What size was China's GDP in 1980 compared to a few decades later?
With 4x our population they only need to be 1/4 as capitalized to have as big an economy. How long before they are half as capitalized and have an economy twice as big as ours?
Their economy is far better than what it was before Mericuh outsourced all of our production to them, but we still have almost double the GDP as each of our citizens produces about $53k and each of theirs only about $6k. China's GDP is at 9.24 trillion and the US is at 16.9 trillion.
Now in 1980 the Chinese GDP was a paltry 0.19 trillion to the US's 2.9 trillion. So yes they are making up ground, but it's not ground that will continue to grow. Right now they already have all of our production, but the future isn't in mass production but in local 3D printing of plastics, metals and even organics. So the future will be about raw resources not production capacity imo.
We are actually pulling ahead in the tech areas that matter the most: power systems, materials, robotics, information systems, and cyber warfare.
We have the best universities in the world. We continue to draw the best minds.
We have the best universities in the world. We continue to draw the best minds.
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Im not sure what definitive evidence exists on "pulling ahead on tech areas" aspect, but the evidence does exist to show the minds are coming for the high quality education and then many returning to their home countries. As many countries are now able to support the higher salary and investment in the high tech industries. Many people in the community also think changing our work visa and immigration polices have already and would continue to negatively impact us retaining these people.
It is not how much we are spending; it is where, how, the process, on what etc.. I work in a future technologies area for the military and trust me how things are decided on, who is chosen, how the process moves is beyond crazy. You also have to look at what we are capable of spending in the future. As our national debt passes 20 trillion, unfunded liabilities roughly 100 trillion, spending roughly 500-700 billion a year more than we take in eventually there will not be the money to spend we are spending now; even if our economy started growing at 5% which is unlikely the money is not there. Defense contractors don't spend billions in programs with a hope that the military might buy it and as the military is less able to fund or purchase technologies there will be less and less innovation. Throw in the quality of individual the military gets nowadays and the US military is in trouble.
I would like to see our immigration laws change to allow better talent retention. That said, there are a number of reasons why we've been able to retain so much of the best talent.
- best and richest research universities, hospitals, and institutes
- best capital markets
- best legal regime
- free, secure, diverse, functioning democracy
- we own the moon
Oh I have zero doubt that the military budget is ridiculously with boondoggles and useless stuff while underfunding actually useful platforms. Case in point is the A-10 which works and is beloved by everyone except military industrial block and their captured "Fighter Mafia" generals at the top that throw bags of money after bags of money into the F-35 moneypit. A weapons platform that is allegedly a flying pig aerodynamically with close to zero dogfighting capability against even previous generation fighters, with ridiculously short legs and a small payload all to go with a mediocre stealth capability that is defeated by some already existing technologies let alone something purposefully built to combat it.
Another example is how we keep buying M1 tanks even after the generals say no mas we have WAY to many for the current need.
US should start a government funded resource mining operation on the moon and the Arctic at the same time. Perhaps we'd only have to give 1 up. Drill baby drill.
I would like to think at some point soon in this 21st century of still increasing entwined global markets, the risk of the top 20 world military powers across the globe having a mass war becomes next to zero due to the dependency on one another for economic prosperity.
The most productive group in a society is the middle class. The chinese middle class is the size of our entire population.
The way we spend money through capital hill will lead to the downfall of our dominance.
Their civilization is measured in thousands of years. Ours in a few hundred. Different perspectives.
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