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| J-20. Presumably a high flying, long range, high speed interceptor/fighter (in the F-14 mold--my opinion) this airplane has the legs to make the Pacific a pond, the firepower to challenge 4th gen fighter weapons payloads and enough stealth to allow it to get close. Its the Chinese version of the F-23. The plane we should have built. |
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| BMP-3F. The Russian (and presumably the Chinese) military have a rapidly deployable, air droppable armored fighting vehicle that will give their airborne forces both strategic and tactical mobility. This is a capability that has been sought but still evades the 82nd. |
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| SU-35. The original SU-27 was designed to best the F-15 in all conditions. The SU-35 is listed as a 4th Gen + airplane. How it would perform against the US is a matter of conjecture but expectations of losses to competently flown SU-35's greater than 1 to 1 is foolish thinking. |
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| Hobei Class Fast Attack Boat. More formidable than LCS and much more plentiful. LCS might not be designed to fight them one on one but you can bet that it will be forced on us. |
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| Type 52D. Chinese equivalent of the Burke? |
When you fight a parity force you do have a higher risk of losing. But it isn't a guarantee of anything. The ultimate parity fight is a game of chess. Each side has the same pieces, the same power, and there is no "fog of war" to hinder a decision makers ability to know all the facts. Parity may even the playing field somewhat, but it does not decide victors and losers.Consider AM's words and then answer this.
If current trends continue will we have a parity force, or when you consider both numbers and quality an inferior force?
Note: I chose mostly aircraft and naval vessels because that is where the US is laying most of its Pacific eggs. If parity or superiority is achieved by our enemies in one of these realms then our entire strategy is at risk.
Well,you did lost great opportunities last decade:
ReplyDeleteThe F-22 was cancelled at 187 units
The FB-22
The B-1R upgrade
Northrop offered the USAF the B-2c at a fixed price of 500 million a unit
The M-8 Bufford
The EB-52
The Super Tomcat 21
Even today there are many weapon systems that will fade in to darkness without a second look...
The F-15Se,the F-16V,the Advanced SuperHornet,the MPC...the army will go after the 80 tons GCV when BAE allready can offer the CV-90...no money for the new M-1 A3 Abrams...No new ASW frigate(even if the biggest treath from china is their subs),no cheap hevelly armed corvette....
Didn't you just have this conversation with Spud?
DeleteYes...so?
DeleteThis being discussed at the services war colleges right now at lunch. Also the war colleges gaming and simulations departments I bet are running this. I would love to be a fly in the SCIFs to see the ppt briefs on the results of what you are talking about. In a year or two they will be written in a “what if” or hypothetical articles in Parameters, Naval War College Review, Air Force’s SSQ or MCU SAW student papers.
ReplyDeleteThe main problem in the US is the lack of economic growth. Military power flows from economic power. China is projected to surpass us economically within 20 years. That's on a GDP basis, not per capita. But they have 4x as many people.
ReplyDeleteThe US has been the dominant military power because it has been the dominant economic power.
The ruling class, especially on the Left, no longer believes in economic growth. The anti-progress, anti-human religion of environmentalism is now ascendant among the ruling class. The ruling class eco-left believes it is noble to sacrifice the American median standard of living for their earth religion.
That's why it's so difficult to build new roads, new power plants and the infrastructure needed to support economic growth.
The increasing ethnic diversity of America is also sharply increasing corruption which slows economic growth. It also undermines trust and cooperation (see the Zimmerman trial), lack of trust hinders economic growth.
The future of America is probably "Brazil with nukes" and an east asian over-class.
More crime, more corruption, massive disparities of wealth. It's not all bad. Better food and music. Maybe even sexier women. There are a lot of good things about Brazil, but it's a serious decline from America's position of economic, technological, and military pre-eminence.
Unless economic growth resumes America is destined to decline. Cheap energy was the key to America's economic growth for most of it's history. Today's eco-left ruling class is committed to raising energy costs for the middle class in devotion to their earth religion. Nothing impoverishes citizens faster than expensive energy. It makes everything -- food, water, transportation, all goods and services -- more expensive.
What's all this about an east Asian over class?
DeleteWe have bought into the internationalist globalism of the freemarketeers by confusing the creating of wealth with economic growth. While we have created lots of wealth, accumulated by less than 1% of the population, we've done a shit job of creating good-paying jobs.
DeleteBoth the neo-liberal left and right of this country have presided over the dismantling of our manufacturing sector. Millions of of good-paying jobs have been sent overseas and while this is good for corporations (who are notorious tax dodgers), it has been disastrous for the middle-class.
Manufacturing jobs pay better than service sector jobs. So, we close factories here and then expect American workers to work for half of what they earned at a factory to work at Walmart selling Chinese goods that might have been fabricated in their own community at one time.
Meanwhile, those same corporations have incorporated offshore to dodge paying taxes and the result is that we have a smaller tax base. With a service sector based economy, we have jobs that pay less thus further reducing the tax base.
We keep squeezing the middle-class and small-business who are left with the bill while multinational corporations find tax loop holes to avoid paying taxes.
Buy American and Buy Local to keep the dollars in this country and create jobs.
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ReplyDeleteSolomon, what do you think of the Navys X-47 progress today and its future in breaking parity?
ReplyDeletei believe it has a chance to but its got to be used and equipped with paradigm breaking weapons/tactics. if we simply use it as part of the current airwing then all we've done is added back aircraft to the super carrier that get us back the strike distances that we had during Vietnam.
DeleteJ-20: Nowhere near as stealthy as our 5-th gen fighters. Nowhere near as advanced.
ReplyDeleteBMP-3: Not air-dropable, flimsily armored, even the Russians admit it is a failed design.
Su-35: 25 years in development to come up with yet another Su-27 clone that adds essentially nothing to the already existing dozen Su-30 variants, which still don't have the capabilities of our F-15C/E versions. An example of failure, if ever there was one.
Hobei Class: Nothing but a FAC like the dozens of other types in service around the world. In no way comparable to the LCS, since it's not in the same class or has the same missions.
Type52D: Come on!
you're not seeing things correctly. the SU-35 is an evolved SU-27. it is a match for the F-15, Eurofighter, Rafale and in numbers can put a hurt on limited numbers of F-22's. Remember we only have 187 of those airplanes. that's hardly an overwhelming force. if our F-22 can get a kill ratio of 3 to 1 then they'll still be rapidly overwhelmed and that's assuming that enemy tactics allow for that kill ratio.
DeleteHobei? yeah its a FAC but its got numbers and ship killing missiles. it will swarm and it will kill the LCS. we're talking about a ship that can hit at long distance and again, the LCS will be called on to fight one on one and will come up short.
Type 52D. yeah. again. its got a "type" of Aegis radar (which was stolen) and in numbers (and it will have numbers) it will be a tremendous factor in future fights. integrated with Chinese Air Force and Naval aviation it will take a toll on our forces.
J-20. it doesn't have to have all aspect stealth. it has to have good frontal stealth to allow it to close in and launch an attack. to disregard what the enemy is doing is to be fooled by the enemy and to be taken. its a leap forward that we didn't see coming and mixed with a highly capable conventional air force it could prove lethal.
Even if it is on a 1:2 ratio of US to Chinese ships in quality, the Chinese can build on a scale that we cannot hope to keep up over time.
DeleteThere are six different classes of ships being built in several Chinese shipyards. They are capable of building at a rate geometrically larger than us.
http://thediplomat.com/2012/11/01/u-s-navy-take-notice-china-is-becoming-a-world-class-military-shipbuilder/?all=true
China's PLAN grew from 172 to 221 vessels between 2005 and 2012. If they continue at a rate of 40+ new ship every seven years, they could have over 300 ships within 15 years. In 21 years, they will have built 120 new ships and that rate is but a fraction of their capability.
We aren't going to be building 120 ships in 20 years.
So we're counting hulls now? It doesn't matter what those "40 ships a year" were? FACs, tugs, hospital ships.
DeleteThat's no way to compare. China is building more because it has to replace rusting POS left overs from olden days. It's also building more smaller ships for missions which the USN isn't interested in.
I guess a Chinese frigate is 50% in "quality" of what a Burke is?
These are all assumptions, and we can discuss the "kill ratio" of F-22 to Su-35 all day and get nowhere (although, I say it is 105:1!). fact is Su-35 is nothing more special than the Su-30s that already exist, and China (or anyone else) doesn't have unlimited numbers of them, either. China has about 100 of them. In total it has about 315 4-gen advanced fighters (Su-27 and family). That puts things into perspective. It might be in the same class as Super Hornet, but F-22 and F-35 aren't in that class. 187 F-22s doesn't seem like a small number to me. That alone would be the single most powerful air force on planet earth, if we forget all the other types the US deploys.
ReplyDeleteSecond, yes a FAC might be better armed in the anti-ship role than a LCS. It may also be better armed in the anti-ship role than any number of other specialized ships in USN inventory. I don't see however how an LCS would be in a situation where it is all alone, facing Hobei FACs. Whats the rest of the USN doing at that time? (also, we seem to under-estimate the capabilities of the RIM-116, which seems to me to the best anti-missile weapon in service in the West)
Nothing special about fixed radar arrays, and that doesn't mean it is "Aegis-like". Nothing special or impressive about the Type52D, and certainly won't be in numbers to match the USN. The entire PLAN has about 14 destroyers that aren't junk, and none of those approach Burke level of capabilities. In the region, the Japanese Navy seems to be more impressive.
As far as the J-20, sure but even its frontal aspect stealth is most likely not comparable to F-22/35. There's no way for it to be. It is a leap forward, but then again simply because something "looks" like stealth, doesn't mean that it is of the same levels as the products of a company that has been doing it now for over 30 years. Remember, Chinese cars look like a BMW, but they aren't :)
Overall China doesn't actually have the numbers to challenge the US, neither in air nor naval capacity. It doesn't have the technology to do it. It doesn't have the skill to do it. Of course, it is in the interests of those who advocate for more and better equipment for the US military to portray China as the next big thing. So if it serves the purpose of a scarecrow to get the US to become better, I'm all for it. But, internally, between us, China is a paper tiger.
Also, I can see how the Su-35 (and Su-30 before it) are a "match" for F-15. Fine, but that means it isn't such a threat, after all. And it took them 25 years to develop the Su-35 (first flight was in 1989 I believe). Total failure.
DeleteSimply on a numerical basis, the US has about 10 times more 4-th gen fighters than China. Of course, numbers aren't everything: there's training support, EW etc. Which is even more to the US advantage.
Without getting into the big controversies . . .
ReplyDeleteThe Chinese Type 97 APC is not a BMP-3 copy. It puts the turret of the BMP-3 on a new, Chinese chassis that has far superior infantry arrangement, fixing a major weakness of the BMP-3. It does retain the amphibious capability of the BMP-3.
Also, @anonymous, it is ridiculous to criticize the BMP-3 for not being air droppable: the Russians produce the entire BMD series for air drop and so would never have reason to air drop any of the BMP series vehicles.
Folks, I think many of you might be missing the point of this thread. The point is to be a warning... While we are making plans to keep building Burke's until 2042 and falling back on F-16s, F-15s and A-10s (I am not even mentioning F-22s because with their small numbers and cost, many already doubt whether the Pentagon would risk many of them in combat with any force approaching parity)to provide the bulk of the numbers in our air defenses, others (particularly China) who just 15 years ago weren't even on the board militarily have managed to leap ahead in their design and are proving they are willing and capable of cranking out weapon platforms in quantity.
ReplyDeleteWhile, many of you are correct that the quality and capability of current generation weapons are indeed suspect, you are missing the fact that their weapon development cycles and production capacity expansion is leaving us in the dust. At their current rate of development (and Theft!!), how long before they actually DO start producing aircraft with kill ratios close to an F-15 or a ship class that can match a Burke in armament levels given Chinese abilities to advance critical technologies in other areas in the last 10 years. Anyone doubt their capability of putting their own Space Station in orbit by 2020 or that their Beidou GPS system will become fully operational on schedule also in 2020? (They even managed to claim the frequency band the EU wanted for their GPS system by launching their test system ahead of schedule and being first in orbit.)
Anyone who still doubts China's ability and WILL to build a new generation of weapons in the next 15 years capable of going toe to toe with the weapon systems and platforms we designed in the 1960s and 1970s needs a reality check. And when you consider that, because of the actions of our current administration, we will be relying on aircraft and ships designed in the 1960s and 1970s to continue to provide the bulk of our defense for the next 20 to 25 years, you realize the reason for concern. And as far as reliability, which do you think will have the edge in 10 years, a 5 year old J-20 or a 40 year old F-15? We have decided to continue to "tread water" while others are working daily to design or steal the next generation of weapons. We cannot afford to have every BRIC around the world doubting our ability to exert a stabilizing force anywhere in the world, because given a new arms race, this time around, we would be the ones suffering the "Soviet-style" bankruptcy that leads to irrelevancy.