A breakout year in every respect
In 2024..
The matter is simple: the much-propagandized U.S. conventional military supremacy is nothing but a bluff. This is not to say that US Armed Forces cannot create devastation and turn some geographic localities into rubble; they certainly can. But they cannot fight a peer or better-than peer opponent and win. Andrei Martynov. America’s Final War.
Deutsche Bank’s defense analyst: “Because of China’s combat aircraft modernization efforts, we’re downgrading Lockheed to Hold [from Buy] as we feel our prior thesis struggles to hold water and we have increased concern on the long-term support for F-35. The revelation of further advancements in combat aircraft capabilities by China is potentially undermining long-term [Pentagon] demand for the F-35 aircraft.”
Keeping score
China fields the largest army, navy and ground-based rocket force in the world, a sophisticated hypersonic missile arsenal and is tripling its nuclear arsenal by 2030, while the U.S. military is rapidly shrinking. In the current budget request, the Army will be reduced to 442,300 active duty soldiers, the smallest it has been since 1940. The U.S. Navy fleet, now half its 1984 size, has 250 vessels to China’s 400. Similarly, the U.S. Air Force is the smallest since WWII, as retirement of aging aircraft outpaces replacements.
China is even catching up in arms sales. At the Zhuhai Airshow, 134 Defense Ministers spent $40 billion on missile-carrying drone ships, assault-rifle-carrying robot dogs, jet fighters, directed energy weapons, self-propelled howitzers and huge UAVs. An HQ-19 missile defense battery1 cost $180 million for six missile carriers, sixty missiles (@ $1 million each), plus radar, support, parts and service. An American THAAD battery costs $1.35 billion for 9 launchers and 48 missiles whose range is shorter1 than the HQ-19.
Technology
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China’s Type 076 amphibious assault ship’s tonnage greatly exceeds the U.S. America class amphibious assault ship and Japan’s Izumo class helicopter carrier, but also features an electromagnetic EMALS for launching fixed-wing aircraft..
Submarines detected hundreds of meters below the surface using sources in the skyemitting ELF waves. Ground-based technical verification has been completed.
The world’s first single-photon Raman lidar system detects objects 1,000 m. below the sea surface.
CAS’s new hyper-sampling imaging technology enhances image quality now that CCD and CMOS image sensors have reached their pixel resolution limits.
The PLA’s Electronic Warfare unit targets US carrier strike groups, includes AEGIS ships’ AN/SPY-1 phased array radar, E-2C Hawkeye early warning aircraft.
Hardware
Egypt placed its first order for Chinese J-10C fourth generation fighters, far more capable than anything but Israel’s F-35s, but with more capable air to air missiles.
Chinese fighter pilots get more training hours than USAF pilots, with the discrepancy growing due primarily to low availability rates of the F-35.
First hypersonic aircraft achieves a horizontal landing. The The MD-19 flies a 600kg payload 8,000 Km at Mach 7 (5,000 mph).
China’s first nuclear-powered guided missile submarine, the Type 093B, beat NATO in 30 km submarine communications test. 351 ft. x 36 ft. x 24ft, 6,000 tonnes, 30 kt.
The PLAN’s Mach 10 YJ-21 missile skips for 1,000 Km 100 km. above the earth on a Sänger trajectory. China’s hypersonic glide aircraft are capable of going around the Earth.
Chinese missiles could close the runways and taxiways in Japan, Guam, Pacific. U.S. countermeasures unlikely to solve the problem.
Chinese strikes on airfields will stymie USAF if there is a conflict in the Indo-Pacific. Bases inside the first island chain are in range of thousands of Chinese missiles.
Jari/Orca – the world’s largest stealth unmanned surface combatant. 420-tons, 200-ft long, 40 knots, 5,000 mile range, 16 anti-ship, AA missiles; torpedoes; integrated mast w. advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR); helicopter/UAV pad.
WZ-8 Mach 7 deep penetration ISR1 strike drone.
GDF600 hypersonic gliding bomb with submunitions2
A multi-layered kill chain of hypersonic air, sea and land-launched ballistic missiles for zero survivability of capital ships closer than the second island chain.
China’s $4 million CH-7 UAV stealth bomber has 9000 km range, 2-ton payload. America’s $2.1 billion B2 stealth flying wing has 11,000 km range and 16-ton payload = 600 CH-7 missions for every one B2 mission. Hua.
The Serbian Defense Force uses HQ-19s. Chinese missiles outrange their American counterparts by 50%-100%, thanks to their N15B fuel, a high-energy, heterogeneous solid propellant of ammonium perchlorate (AP) and octahydro-1,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine (HMX) particles. Their warheads use CL-20, the world’s most energetic explosive. The US has mastered neither of these chemicals.
