3 ms·

Specifically, this could be amazing to map out non-public comms, radar and AA systems. This could provide the sort of information you'd want for a future milita

Specifically, this could be amazing to map out non-public comms, radar and AA systems. This could provide the sort of information you'd want for a future military conflict. I hope I'm completely wrong about this.

doodlebugging 4y ago
You are probably not wrong about this since we know China wants to take Taiwan at some point in the future. It makes sense that they would map out any vulnerabilities of potential adversaries who might be involved in defending Taiwan since the battle for Taiwan will not be easy.
- ecf 4y ago
  China invades Taiwan and the entire free world beats it into submission, no contest whatsoever. Straight up steamroll. That’s why China wants to triple their Nuclear stockpile in less than 10 years. They know they don’t stand a chance otherwise. https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2022/11/29/pentagon-china-nuclear-stockpile-00071101 https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2022/11/29/pentagon-china-...
  - doodlebugging 4y ago
    There is some truth to this. We don't want to have to find out though since this will go nuclear as soon as military operations start to affect mainland China. They will launch first and then hope for the best. They know they will only have one shot at it. There will be no time for the "free world" to meet and decide how to respond since it will be every man for himself at that point. There will be no true winners. When the dust settles, most of the world's population, including everyone north of the equator, will be dealing with the fallout of something that did not have to happen. If anything of American society remains then they will find themselves needing to manage their own affairs with no central government or services to fall back on. Other adversaries may try to land forces here to sweep across the nation while we are down. It will be up to us to stop them and to restore some local semblance of law and order so that we can all organize a strong defense. China doesn't have the industrial ability to build a navy strong enough to counter the US Navy so they have to carry out these intelligence operations in order to identify any exploitable weaknesses in communications infrastructure, military capabilities, etc. They have the manpower that they can call on to conduct a large scale invasion of Taiwan but they have no way at the moment to transport them to the island in large enough numbers to hold a beachhead. They are rapidly expanding their landing craft fleet though and their "civilian" navy is large. We need to arm Taiwan to the point where it is obvious that any attempt to float an invasion fleet across the straights will be a disaster. We also need to maintain regular patrols through the South China Sea including past all of the recently fortified islands claimed and manned by China so that we have the assets in position to mount a credible defense and to deny China the opportunity to prevent reinforcements or to blockade the island. We have gamed this many times over the years but all things considered, we wasted the opportunity to prevent it entirely. Had we taken economic steps to prevent the growth of China's economy and the strong dependence of the west on cheap Chinese products by bringing industries back onshore in the US and Europe then we could have moderated their growth in a more controlled fashion instead of dumping cash into their economy that effectively set us up as the financiers of our own destruction. Today, we are looking at the near certainty, unless Xinping is replaced, of a war with China after several decades of allowing them to make up a huge technological deficit by stealing intellectual property on a huge scale so they could turn it against us. We can always strike first. That would make us the asshole though so it is better that we exhaust every other option before pushing those other buttons while we scramble to produce things we developed years ago but put on the back burner since there was no pressing need for them against less capable adversaries. Like the Russians, China can throw millions of men at any adversary and many of those men know, because of the One Child policy, that there is a demographic situation where they will never marry or have families. The next 10 years will be quite interesting.
    - defrost 4y ago
      > China doesn't have the industrial ability to build a navy strong enough to counter the US Navy . . . and, yet, . . . As China Expands Its Fleets, US Analysts Call for Catch-up Efforts The disparity has prompted U.S. maritime experts to call for a "Ships Act" comparable to the recently enacted "Chips Act" that supports the return of chip manufacturing to the United States. .. Bryan McGrath, managing director at The FerryBridge Group, told VOA Mandarin that the shipbuilding bases of the U.S. and China are simply not comparable. "The Chinese industrial base is a behemoth, and the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base is freakishly undersized as a function of the size of America's economy and its influence in the world," McGrath said. As of 2020, the U.S. Navy had 297 battle force ships, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. China surpassed the U.S. as the world's largest navy with an inventory of about 355 vessels, according to a U.S. Defense Department report released in 2021. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) projects that China will have 400 battle force ships by 2025 and 425 by 2030. https://www.voanews.com/a/as-china-expands-its-fleets-us-analysts-call-for-catch-up-efforts-/6746352.html https://www.voanews.com/a/as-china-expands-its-fleets-us-ana...
      - doodlebugging 4y ago
        This is true and I actually read that report so I obviously forgot about all that. The one thing that is not covered well there is the type of ships in the Chinese versus US Navy. Even with fewer ships we have more tonnage. A large part of the Chinese Navy consists of coastal defense assets which are smaller vessels. With that said they do have excellent anti-ship defenses and are gaming to be able to manage a conflict where we bring our carriers and air assets to bear. https://www.defenceprocurementinternational.com/features/maritime/china-now-boats-the-largest-navy-in-the-world https://www.defenceprocurementinternational.com/features/mar... This is the reason that we have inked defense agreements in the region. Spreading the costs of defending the free passage of goods through the South China Sea with other nations allows us an opportunity to build a larger, more modern navy and buys time. We should be investing in naval assets too since some of the most recent programs ended up with us buying fewer vessels than originally contracted and with those vessels being ill suited for the original task they were designed to handle. As the VOA article mentions, we will likely run into problems mobilizing for a ship-building effort since it already is hard enough to find skilled workers (welders, etc) for industries that employ most of them today like the pipeline and oil and gas industry. A return to teaching trades in high school would be a great start that would pay dividends nearly immediately as the first class graduates into the work force. Feel free to double check everything I posted. I could be totally wrong about any or all of it. Thanks.

doodlebugging 4y ago

You are probably not wrong about this since we know China wants to take Taiwan at some point in the future. It makes sense that they would map out any vulnerabilities of potential adversaries who might be involved in defending Taiwan since the battle for Taiwan will not be easy.

ecf 4y ago
China invades Taiwan and the entire free world beats it into submission, no contest whatsoever. Straight up steamroll. That’s why China wants to triple their Nuclear stockpile in less than 10 years. They know they don’t stand a chance otherwise. https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2022/11/29/pentagon-china-nuclear-stockpile-00071101 https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2022/11/29/pentagon-china-...
- doodlebugging 4y ago
  There is some truth to this. We don't want to have to find out though since this will go nuclear as soon as military operations start to affect mainland China. They will launch first and then hope for the best. They know they will only have one shot at it. There will be no time for the "free world" to meet and decide how to respond since it will be every man for himself at that point. There will be no true winners. When the dust settles, most of the world's population, including everyone north of the equator, will be dealing with the fallout of something that did not have to happen. If anything of American society remains then they will find themselves needing to manage their own affairs with no central government or services to fall back on. Other adversaries may try to land forces here to sweep across the nation while we are down. It will be up to us to stop them and to restore some local semblance of law and order so that we can all organize a strong defense. China doesn't have the industrial ability to build a navy strong enough to counter the US Navy so they have to carry out these intelligence operations in order to identify any exploitable weaknesses in communications infrastructure, military capabilities, etc. They have the manpower that they can call on to conduct a large scale invasion of Taiwan but they have no way at the moment to transport them to the island in large enough numbers to hold a beachhead. They are rapidly expanding their landing craft fleet though and their "civilian" navy is large. We need to arm Taiwan to the point where it is obvious that any attempt to float an invasion fleet across the straights will be a disaster. We also need to maintain regular patrols through the South China Sea including past all of the recently fortified islands claimed and manned by China so that we have the assets in position to mount a credible defense and to deny China the opportunity to prevent reinforcements or to blockade the island. We have gamed this many times over the years but all things considered, we wasted the opportunity to prevent it entirely. Had we taken economic steps to prevent the growth of China's economy and the strong dependence of the west on cheap Chinese products by bringing industries back onshore in the US and Europe then we could have moderated their growth in a more controlled fashion instead of dumping cash into their economy that effectively set us up as the financiers of our own destruction. Today, we are looking at the near certainty, unless Xinping is replaced, of a war with China after several decades of allowing them to make up a huge technological deficit by stealing intellectual property on a huge scale so they could turn it against us. We can always strike first. That would make us the asshole though so it is better that we exhaust every other option before pushing those other buttons while we scramble to produce things we developed years ago but put on the back burner since there was no pressing need for them against less capable adversaries. Like the Russians, China can throw millions of men at any adversary and many of those men know, because of the One Child policy, that there is a demographic situation where they will never marry or have families. The next 10 years will be quite interesting.
  - defrost 4y ago
    > China doesn't have the industrial ability to build a navy strong enough to counter the US Navy . . . and, yet, . . . As China Expands Its Fleets, US Analysts Call for Catch-up Efforts The disparity has prompted U.S. maritime experts to call for a "Ships Act" comparable to the recently enacted "Chips Act" that supports the return of chip manufacturing to the United States. .. Bryan McGrath, managing director at The FerryBridge Group, told VOA Mandarin that the shipbuilding bases of the U.S. and China are simply not comparable. "The Chinese industrial base is a behemoth, and the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base is freakishly undersized as a function of the size of America's economy and its influence in the world," McGrath said. As of 2020, the U.S. Navy had 297 battle force ships, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. China surpassed the U.S. as the world's largest navy with an inventory of about 355 vessels, according to a U.S. Defense Department report released in 2021. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) projects that China will have 400 battle force ships by 2025 and 425 by 2030. https://www.voanews.com/a/as-china-expands-its-fleets-us-analysts-call-for-catch-up-efforts-/6746352.html https://www.voanews.com/a/as-china-expands-its-fleets-us-ana...
    - doodlebugging 4y ago
      This is true and I actually read that report so I obviously forgot about all that. The one thing that is not covered well there is the type of ships in the Chinese versus US Navy. Even with fewer ships we have more tonnage. A large part of the Chinese Navy consists of coastal defense assets which are smaller vessels. With that said they do have excellent anti-ship defenses and are gaming to be able to manage a conflict where we bring our carriers and air assets to bear. https://www.defenceprocurementinternational.com/features/maritime/china-now-boats-the-largest-navy-in-the-world https://www.defenceprocurementinternational.com/features/mar... This is the reason that we have inked defense agreements in the region. Spreading the costs of defending the free passage of goods through the South China Sea with other nations allows us an opportunity to build a larger, more modern navy and buys time. We should be investing in naval assets too since some of the most recent programs ended up with us buying fewer vessels than originally contracted and with those vessels being ill suited for the original task they were designed to handle. As the VOA article mentions, we will likely run into problems mobilizing for a ship-building effort since it already is hard enough to find skilled workers (welders, etc) for industries that employ most of them today like the pipeline and oil and gas industry. A return to teaching trades in high school would be a great start that would pay dividends nearly immediately as the first class graduates into the work force. Feel free to double check everything I posted. I could be totally wrong about any or all of it. Thanks.