some F35 info

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Think about that just a second. A jammed transmitter does not matter, since the jammer is now an illumination source.

Passive radar is simply a bistatic radar application using separated and possibly non-cooperative transmitters to illuminate the target.

Bistatic has an obvious advantage when dealing with stealth technologies. Stealth is not a Klingon Cloaking device, it does not make any aircraft invisible and there is no one thing it does. Instead it is the fusion of many different functions to reduce or control the reflected energy from a platform. At the most basic level you reduce the reflections as much as you can, and then you redirect the remaining reflections in any direction but back towards the source. But, if the tracking system, passive radar, transmitter and receivers are not in the same directions (from the protected platform) then this is much harder to do.

So you can shut down the transmitters used. They can, of course, be hard killed. They might be reduced in capability by soft kills if you hit the infrastructure. But, if you have jammers active for any reason then your own jammers, on other aircraft / platforms, have just become illuminators for possible passive radar exploitation. Or your own AWACS, sweeping the airspace to maintain control of the battle space might be providing the illumination needed.

Passive radar, optimized to use non-cooperative sources, is a hard nut to crack.

T!

Agree with 99% of what you said. But if the receiving passive radar is being jammed............
(In other words the someone has made the whole spectrum in nothing but hash. Think something like chaff.)

Stealth has never been a guarantee of risk free operations. It does nothing but reduce the response time to react once the stealthly object has been detected.
 
Agreed....although passive bistatic systems depend on those non-cooperative sources which may not be in the right place at the right time to provide the necessary inputs. That's a risky proposition. Also, getting a firing solution using bistatic systems is incredibly challenging. Yes, you can vector an aircraft into the area but the aircraft must still acquire the LO platform, and do that without being shot down itself. This may be tricky depending on the scenario given airspace control and GBAD free-fire limitations.

It doesn't matter if an adversary can see you if they can't get a good enough solution to engage weapons. In such cases, all the adversary can do is watch while you conduct your operations.

This is why I have always laughed, or at least snickered, when various "information" outlets have screamed how stealth is useless because old VHF and UHF Russian radars can "see right through it". Detecting the target is present is not the same as being able to shoot the target.

However, look closely at passive systems and what is in the development pipeline today. They are really starting to get good these days, and depending on a lot of variables, sensor location geometry, signal being used to detect, etc, you can indeed get tracking accuracy on airborne targets measured in 10's of meters. Sure, not most systems, and not most events, but the potential is there and they are getting better all the time. This is a maturing technology that is going to be a major threat in the next few years, we are still pretty early on the curve today.

T!
 
Agree with 99% of what you said. But if the receiving passive radar is being jammed............
(In other words the someone has made the whole spectrum in nothing but hash. Think something like chaff.)

If you make "the whole spectrum nothing but hash" then you also deny your own use of the spectrum. EA just does not work like that.

Chaff does not jam anything, although it does deny / degrade track of some radars (not all radars are impacted significantly by chaff) by seducing the tracking systems to it or by masking the real targets in the false targets. "Jamming" most often implies active systems, an active jammer that radiates, not a passive system like chaff (although chaff and similar false target reflectors are sometimes called mechanical jamming).

Any energy you use to actively jam will be reflected off everything in the sky to some extent, and can become a potential illumination source to actually help the passive system track targets. The jamming platform itself becomes a beacon, and easily tracked by passive systems. You can, of course, increase the impact of chaff by combining jammers and chaff, using the jammer (or some other active source) to illuminate the chaff bundles, corridors, or clouds.

But chaff is basically just another target to track. It does not prevent passive systems from seeing things, it only increases the number of items to be tracked. Think of passive systems as similar to TWS radars, they can do multiple things that appear, to the human time frame, to be simultaneous, but are really sequential at a fast rate. Where chaff can be extremely effective against radars that can only look at one target at a time, it tends to be less useful to defeat radars that can, in the human time frame reference, do many things at a time. Take either classic conical scan or monopulse tracking radar. These kinds of systems can only track (develop correction errors or operator indications) one target at a time. So properly deployed chaff tends to be "better" against many of those systems because it puts two targets at one time into the track gates (angles / range / Doppler) of the system. As the targets (real and chaff) separate, the radar, or radar operator if he is in the loop, has to decide which to track. By knowing how the radar works you can develop chaff techniques that increase the probability that the radar will select the chaff over the real target. Defeating the operator can be tougher, once he is properly trained and can visually identify chaff on his scopes he is quite often harder to beat than the automated systems of the radar.

But for systems that can see and track multiple targets at one time it is just a situation of "there was one target, now there are two, one has motion that could possibly match the original, the other does not". Chaff, discounting kinematic countermeasures, tends to not act like aircraft or missiles.

Basically, I can't really think of too many situations where chaff might actually work against passive systems other than to confuse the air picture by increasing the target count. And if you discriminate non-moving targets then the chaff quickly falls out of the picture.

T!
 
If you make "the whole spectrum nothing but hash" then you also deny your own use of the spectrum. EA just does not work like that.

Chaff does not jam anything, although it does deny / degrade track of some radars (not all radars are impacted significantly by chaff) by seducing the tracking systems to it or by masking the real targets in the false targets. "Jamming" most often implies active systems, an active jammer that radiates, not a passive system like chaff (although chaff and similar false target reflectors are sometimes called mechanical jamming).

Any energy you use to actively jam will be reflected off everything in the sky to some extent, and can become a potential illumination source to actually help the passive system track targets. The jamming platform itself becomes a beacon, and easily tracked by passive systems. You can, of course, increase the impact of chaff by combining jammers and chaff, using the jammer (or some other active source) to illuminate the chaff bundles, corridors, or clouds.

But chaff is basically just another target to track. It does not prevent passive systems from seeing things, it only increases the number of items to be tracked. Think of passive systems as similar to TWS radars, they can do multiple things that appear, to the human time frame, to be simultaneous, but are really sequential at a fast rate. Where chaff can be extremely effective against radars that can only look at one target at a time, it tends to be less useful to defeat radars that can, in the human time frame reference, do many things at a time. Take either classic conical scan or monopulse tracking radar. These kinds of systems can only track (develop correction errors or operator indications) one target at a time. So properly deployed chaff tends to be "better" against many of those systems because it puts two targets at one time into the track gates (angles / range / Doppler) of the system. As the targets (real and chaff) separate, the radar, or radar operator if he is in the loop, has to decide which to track. By knowing how the radar works you can develop chaff techniques that increase the probability that the radar will select the chaff over the real target. Defeating the operator can be tougher, once he is properly trained and can visually identify chaff on his scopes he is quite often harder to beat than the automated systems of the radar.

But for systems that can see and track multiple targets at one time it is just a situation of "there was one target, now there are two, one has motion that could possibly match the original, the other does not". Chaff, discounting kinematic countermeasures, tends to not act like aircraft or missiles.

Basically, I can't really think of too many situations where chaff might actually work against passive systems other than to confuse the air picture by increasing the target count. And if you discriminate non-moving targets then the chaff quickly falls out of the picture.

T!
Chaff was a merely a suggestion to illustrate the point. Also keep in mind that many war-gaming scenarios include denying/closing down the entire US electronic warfare spectrum.
Watching the 70th anniversary parade the other day, gyrocopters were also on parade in Bejing. Why would an army rely on gyrocopters? shutdown the entire EM/RF spectrum and now that gyrocopter makes sense.

Assuming that modern aircraft are still operable, I guess the mission planning and execution will have to rely on the same techniques the Germans used for Riesenflugzeuge raids over London 100 years ago.
 
Chaff was a merely a suggestion to illustrate the point. Also keep in mind that many war-gaming scenarios include denying/closing down the entire US electronic warfare spectrum.
Watching the 70th anniversary parade the other day, gyrocopters were also on parade in Bejing. Why would an army rely on gyrocopters? shutdown the entire EM/RF spectrum and now that gyrocopter makes sense.

We may have shifted position in the discussion here ;) Not sure, but always up for a discussion.

I have to ask, as either a defending or attacking (different answers to those two situations) force, how do you "deny/close down the entire US electronic warfare spectrum" and what does that gain you? What US systems are being attacked, and how? How does that prevent an enemy from using passive systems, including passive bistatic radars, detecting or tracking US stealth aircraft? If they shut down the entire EM/RF spectrum (not really possible) how does the enemy, presumably defending, coordinate defense without access themselves to the EM/RF spectrum?

T!
 
We may have shifted position in the discussion here ;) Not sure, but always up for a discussion.

I have to ask, as either a defending or attacking (different answers to those two situations) force, how do you "deny/close down the entire US electronic warfare spectrum" and what does that gain you? What US systems are being attacked, and how? How does that prevent an enemy from using passive systems, including passive bistatic radars, detecting or tracking US stealth aircraft? If they shut down the entire EM/RF spectrum (not really possible) how does the enemy, presumably defending, coordinate defense without access themselves to the EM/RF spectrum?

T!
I agree I might have inadvertently shifted the discussion. Perhaps our views differ because I expect the environment to get real quiet due to attacks on both terrestrial and space-borne C4ISR assets along with active attempts to passively track and destroy radiating transmitters. The PLAN Counterintervention defense network is supposedly robust enough to work in a completely degraded EM/RF spectrum that also has degraded their own cyber assets while supposedly shutting down those of their opponents. This would still leave various tracking technologies available (Long range optical, aural, passive IR, etc.) The Chinese believe they can do it. And claim to be practicing it.

A recent PLAN journal discussed completely "blinding" US assets as a prelude to sinking 2 US CVN prior to invading Taiwan (Admiral Lou Yuan, Chinese Academy of Military Sciences.).
 
I agree I might have inadvertently shifted the discussion. Perhaps our views differ because I expect the environment to get real quiet due to attacks on both terrestrial and space-borne C4ISR assets along with active attempts to passively track and destroy radiating transmitters. The PLAN Counterintervention defense network is supposedly robust enough to work in a completely degraded EM/RF spectrum that also has degraded their own cyber assets while supposedly shutting down those of their opponents. This would still leave various tracking technologies available (Long range optical, aural, passive IR, etc.) The Chinese believe they can do it. And claim to be practicing it.

A recent PLAN journal discussed completely "blinding" US assets as a prelude to sinking 2 US CVN prior to invading Taiwan (Admiral Lou Yuan, Chinese Academy of Military Sciences.).

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face, or maybe the Moltke version sounds better to your ears (paraphrased) "no plan of operations survives with any certainty beyond the first contact with the enemy".

So the basics of what you are saying: the PLA has a plan to leverage the US reliance on technology by denying much of the advanced sensor networks and technologies developed over the years. They believe they can reduce the US capability to perform to near useless levels while still having an ability to complete their desired objectives themselves. Sounds ambitious to me.

And of course, the US has not considered this, weighed the real demonstrated capabilities of the enemies defenses, and has made no plans to operate under such attempts....

I think the PLA could maybe achieve (assuming they can at all, I have doubts) such control over the spectrum only for a limited time, and then in limited regions. And that still leaves the "holes" they have left for themselves to use, which can be used by an attacking force. Day 1, maybe, Day 3, not so much, Day 5, they better have a new plan. And they better be willing to take losses in regions not so reduced.

Sinking 2 US CVNs would be a major event, it would warrant real retaliation against the government who ordered it. If the ships were actually sunk, vs just rendered inoperable, the possible death toll may be over 11,000, or more than all of the US deaths in all of the conflicts since Vietnam combined. Even if most of the sailors could be saved, and only say 10% died, it would be the highest single day (or even single week, if spread across a week of time) loses of US combat forces since at least as far back as the Korean war, and more likely one of the major battles of WW II. If for some reason 25% of the personnel were lost it would be more than the deaths from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Not to mention the political ramifications of sinking a US carrier, what that does to US national security, and how responses would have to include showing other potential adversaries the gravity of major attacks by nation states on US warships. I have serious doubts responses would be limited to the initial areas of conflict.

You specifically mentioned optical and IR technologies as things the PLA would plan to have available to them. It is a good thing that stealthy platforms, like the F-35 (to return to the subject of the thread), don't attempt to reduce their visual detection or IR signature, or limit their active emissions in the RF spectrum and lean more heavily on IR or visual detection or queuing, ah? Darned short sighted of the designers to not include IRST....

;)

T!
 
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Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face, or maybe the Moltke version sounds better to your ears (paraphrased) "no plan of operations survives with any certainty beyond the first contact with the enemy".

So the basics of what you are saying: the PLA has a plan to leverage the US reliance on technology by denying much of the advanced sensor networks and technologies developed over the years. They believe they can reduce the US capability to perform to near useless levels while still having an ability to complete their desired objectives themselves. Sounds ambitious to me.

And of course, the US has not considered this, weighed the real demonstrated capabilities of the enemies defenses, and has made no plans to operate under such attempts....

I think the PLA could maybe achieve (assuming they can at all, I have doubts) such control over the spectrum only for a limited time, and then in limited regions. And that still leaves the "holes" they have left for themselves to use, which can be used by an attacking force. Day 1, maybe, Day 3, not so much, Day 5, they better have a new plan. And they better be willing to take losses in regions not so reduced.

Sinking 2 US CVNs would be a major event, it would warrant real retaliation against the government who ordered it. If the ships were actually sunk, vs just rendered inoperable, the possible death toll may be over 11,000, or more than all of the US deaths in all of the conflicts since Vietnam combined. Even if most of the sailors could be saved, and only say 10% died, it would be the highest single day (or even single week, if spread across a week of time) loses of US combat forces since at least as far back as the Korean war, and more likely one of the major battles of WW II. If for some reason 25% of the personnel were lost it would be more than the deaths from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Not to mention the political ramifications of sinking a US carrier, what that does to US national security, and how responses would have to include showing other potential adversaries the gravity of major attacks by nation states on US warships. I have serious doubts responses would be limited to the initial areas of conflict.

You specifically mentioned optical and IR technologies as things the PLA would plan to have available to them. It is a good thing that stealthy platforms, like the F-35 (to return to the subject of the thread), don't attempt to reduce their visual detection or IR signature, or limit their active emissions in the RF spectrum and lean more heavily on IR or visual detection or queuing, ah? Darned short sighted of the designers to not include IRST....

;)

T!
Like the Soviets, I don't see the Chinese as being invincible. And I understand that most military's scream about a lack of readiness to counter XXXX threat.

But, a brief perusal of open press US military journals, various Rand reports, etc., will indeed raise your eyebrows about the state of US military preparedness to fight in environment that denies use of C4ISR.

Sinking a CVN? When did they become sacrosanct? We expected to last about 48 hours. Long enough for the Soviets to finds us and hit us with either nukes or incendiary warheads. (I had a very pleasant Russian submariner show me a picture of my CV in his periscope over a beer in the Submariners club in St. Petersburg. The picture was taken while I was crew.)

"They believe they can reduce the US capability to perform to near useless levels while still having an ability to complete their desired objectives themselves. Sounds ambitious to me." - Last time it worked for about 7 months. Who has the industrial base now? We can't even fix a national asset like the USS Truman because we didn't keep a critical part on the shelf. She just missed a deployment date and won't sail for another 60 days making her 90 days late for a scheduled deployment. The Ike (CVN-69)? Her six month yard period just ran 18 months. And the rest of DoD ain't much better.

And while I appreciate your optimism, even the Navy is now saying stealth isn't what it was. We can both agree that the RCS/IRST suppression still makes it harder to detect reducing firing solution time and easier to break the kill chain. Retain a little pessimism my friend.

I believe the Chinese are able to completely suppress the full electromagnetic spectrum in localized areas of battle for short periods of time. And fully able to control the battle and its outcome due to doctrine and training to fight in that environment.
 
Like the Soviets, I don't see the Chinese as being invincible. And I understand that most military's scream about a lack of readiness to counter XXXX threat.

But, a brief perusal of open press US military journals, various Rand reports, etc., will indeed raise your eyebrows about the state of US military preparedness to fight in environment that denies use of C4ISR.

Sinking a CVN? When did they become sacrosanct? We expected to last about 48 hours. Long enough for the Soviets to finds us and hit us with either nukes or incendiary warheads. (I had a very pleasant Russian submariner show me a picture of my CV in his periscope over a beer in the Submariners club in St. Petersburg. The picture was taken while I was crew.)

"They believe they can reduce the US capability to perform to near useless levels while still having an ability to complete their desired objectives themselves. Sounds ambitious to me." - Last time it worked for about 7 months. Who has the industrial base now? We can't even fix a national asset like the USS Truman because we didn't keep a critical part on the shelf. She just missed a deployment date and won't sail for another 60 days making her 90 days late for a scheduled deployment. The Ike (CVN-69)? Her six month yard period just ran 18 months. And the rest of DoD ain't much better.

And while I appreciate your optimism, even the Navy is now saying stealth isn't what it was. We can both agree that the RCS/IRST suppression still makes it harder to detect reducing firing solution time and easier to break the kill chain. Retain a little pessimism my friend.

I believe the Chinese are able to completely suppress the full electromagnetic spectrum in localized areas of battle for short periods of time. And fully able to control the battle and its outcome due to doctrine and training to fight in that environment.

Your assumption is that we are the only nation to have problems. The Chinese have unquestionably made significant leaps in all areas of their military capability they are still learning and its one thing to build a power base and quite another to be able to maintain it. A lot of their technology is cutting edge (for China) and people with the required skills are in short supply.
Stealth will have to develop and improve to stay concurrent, that shouldn't be a surprise, and in this area the US are well ahead. It's a good bet that having developed the stealth technology the US will have looked at how to deal with opponents with stealth, any look at the history of countermeasures will confirm that.
China is a huge country and it clearly has ambitions that extend well beyond its borders and with this in mind it's modern armed forces are small. Heaven forbid if it ever did but if the chips go down, the USA can count of the assistance of the European countries who are technically well developed to support them, who would China look to for support? Russia is bankrupt and in my opinion is less well equipped militarily than China.

You are right to believe that we should take the threat seriously but, and its an important but, you shouldn't consider them to be supermen who never make mistakes.
 
Your assumption is that we are the only nation to have problems. The Chinese have unquestionably made significant leaps in all areas of their military capability they are still learning and its one thing to build a power base and quite another to be able to maintain it. A lot of their technology is cutting edge (for China) and people with the required skills are in short supply.
Stealth will have to develop and improve to stay concurrent, that shouldn't be a surprise, and in this area the US are well ahead. It's a good bet that having developed the stealth technology the US will have looked at how to deal with opponents with stealth, any look at the history of countermeasures will confirm that.
China is a huge country and it clearly has ambitions that extend well beyond its borders and with this in mind it's modern armed forces are small. Heaven forbid if it ever did but if the chips go down, the USA can count of the assistance of the European countries who are technically well developed to support them, who would China look to for support? Russia is bankrupt and in my opinion is less well equipped militarily than China.

You are right to believe that we should take the threat seriously but, and its an important but, you shouldn't consider them to be supermen who never make mistakes.

Please refer to first sentence in my post:
"Like the Soviets, I don't see the Chinese as being invincible."

In the Pacific, I believe we can count on Japan (Although the PLAAF does has published doctrine to blockade Japan and create a famine.) along with Australia. There are also a lot of choke points along the routes that China needs to move her oil. (I don't think Russia can replace the all the oil.) Korea will sit it out, as will New Zealand and the countries adjacent to the nine dash line.

I do not believe we should count on any European NATO members. I believe Russia will happily cut off the gas to aid her new ally and to punish Europe for the sanctions.
 
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Please refer to first sentence in my post:
"Like the Soviets, I don't see the Chinese as being invincible."

In the Pacific, I believe we can count on Japan (Although the PLAAF does has published doctrine to blockade Japan and create a famine.) along with Australia. There are also a lot of choke points along the routes that China needs to move her oil. (I don't think Russia can replace the all the oil.) Korea will sit it out, as will New Zealand and the countries adjacent to the nine dash line.

I do not believe we should count any European NATO members. I believe Russia will happily cut off the gas to aid her new ally and to punish Europe for the sanctions.

I did note your first line, however the tone of the postings have generally been very negative. Do you really think that the Chinese are less liable to error than the USA and its allies? How many stealth aircraft does china have, probably less than 50 and how effective are they? Then how many does the USA and its allies have?

I have no doubt that China has a plan to blockade Japan, but I find it difficult to believe that it would work. They don't have the navy or airforce, and missiles have there own limitations.

As for Russia I think they would stay out of it, possibly supplying mainly Oil and Gas to both sides. Russia imports huge quantities of food and agricultural machinery from the world and both sides can play the blockade card. One thing Russia cannot afford is to let its people go hungry. The risk of serious instability would be too high.
 
I did note your first line, however the tone of the postings have generally been very negative. Do you really think that the Chinese are less liable to error than the USA and its allies? How many stealth aircraft does china have, probably less than 50 and how effective are they? Then how many does the USA and its allies have?

I have no doubt that China has a plan to blockade Japan, but I find it difficult to believe that it would work. They don't have the navy or airforce, and missiles have there own limitations.

As for Russia I think they would stay out of it, possibly supplying mainly Oil and Gas to both sides. Russia imports huge quantities of food and agricultural machinery from the world and both sides can play the blockade card. One thing Russia cannot afford is to let its people go hungry. The risk of serious instability would be too high.

Pardon my negativity, after 40 years of either wearing the uniform, working with active duty navy and reading the professional journals from the US and other countries it's hard not be a little jaundiced. Particularly in view of what the USAF and USN are doing these days.

"They don't have the navy or airforce, and missiles have there own limitations."
Report to Congress on China Naval Modernization - USNI News
 
Pardon my negativity, after 40 years of either wearing the uniform, working with active duty navy and reading the professional journals from the US and other countries it's hard not be a little jaundiced. Particularly in view of what the USAF and USN are doing these days.

"They don't have the navy or airforce, and missiles have there own limitations."
Report to Congress on China Naval Modernization - USNI News

I still stand by my comment, they don't have the navy or the airforce. The majority of the increase in the Chinese Navy is in short range FPB and Corvettes and they actually have one less attack submarine compared to 2005. We all know that numbers are not everything and there is no denying that the capability is significantly improved. However if you were to change the date of the paper to 1973 and substitute Soviet Union for China, the majority of the report would be very similar.
China are doing what Russia did in the late 60's and 70's (when I was in the RN). I am not being complacent, the development should be watched and measures taken to compensate but it's also important to stand back and have a clear view of the situation and not be drawn into automatically thinking the worst.
 
But, a brief perusal of open press US military journals, various Rand reports, etc., will indeed raise your eyebrows about the state of US military preparedness to fight in environment that denies use of C4ISR.
I don't think much I read in a Rand report about this will be a huge surprise.

The US mil has become very network centric, with extensive sensor fusion from varied sources, and when able to use the full capability they have developed they are unequaled. But even at the more localized level, each soldier, each airmen, each aircraft or ship, there really is no force, on average, as capable.

Deny / reduce C4ISR and the US military will loose its "hammer swatting a fly" advantage, but it is still capable of defeating the Chinese, it will just take longer and result in higher losses. The Chinese are absolutely trying to change that, their modernization / expansion efforts are enviable, but they are not there yet, nor will they be in the near future.

And yes, the US mil does train / practice in a denied environment. They often don't like to, they prefer to enjoy the advantages of full systems, but testing and training of reduced abilities does take place.
Sinking a CVN? When did they become sacrosanct? We expected to last about 48 hours. Long enough for the Soviets to finds us and hit us with either nukes or incendiary warheads.
I don' t doubt, in the least, the Chinese have the technical ability to kill CVNs, especially in relatively close proximate to their territorial waters. That was not the point of what I was saying. They have developed techniques and hardware specific to that task. What I doubt is their willingness to do so, and to then suffer the escalation that would almost certainly come in the event of a couple of sunk carriers.

Killing a carrier would be a major escalation, and would probably expand a conflict significantly. Disabling it, without sinking it, would be far preferable.

You cannot compare the US / China matchup today to the Cold War US / Russia situation. I am NOT saying China is easy or second rate, not in the least, only that it is not very similar to that past situation.

Lets talk about the impact of such a conflict to the Chinese economy. Leaving out direct impacts (see what I did there? ;) ) due to any major conflict, reduced infrastructure, restricted shipping capability, etc, the US is about 18% of China's exports, on the order of 540 billion dollars a year. Are they going to take a chance to disrupt that, and probably a significant portion of the 700 billion a year to Europe also, by sinking a US carrier? The Russians never had that kind of economic tie to the US.

And while trade is important to both sides of the equation, China (more succinctly, the governing body of China, to stay in power) needs the US more than the US needs China. In the event of a major or protracted conflict the US would have major shortages of many items, but relatively few that are critical. The Cosco / WalMart shelves may run bare of weedeaters, plastic toys, and TV sets, but fuel, food, and medical services would continue mostly unharmed for quite a while. Sure, fuel prices would go up (impacting almost all other pricing), people would be unhappy about things like that, but life would go on.

China is far more dependant on foreign oil imports than the US is. And while Russia is the single largest supplier of oil to China, China still gets a lot of oil by sea. In the event of a protracted or expanded US/China conflict I doubt the Chinese Navy could keep sea lanes open. 30+ years ago this would have small impact on the average Chinese citizen...not so today.

I mention nukes here just for the sake of showing numbers and ratios, not as suggestion they would be used as the result of some regional conflict, I don't think the Chinese are that driven, and I am reasonably certain no US president wants to be the guy that used nukes, in Asia, for the second time. Russia had rough parity with the US in nuclear capability, China does not. In the late 1980's the Soviets had on the order of 40,000 warheads, and the US had around 23,000. MAD was much more than a concept. Today China has anything from 250 to 600'ish weapons, depending on which source you believe, and the US has roughly 6,200. Both have the ability to greatly impact the other, but the US has the ability (but probably not the will) to erase China.

Russia had a serious Blue Water Navy and threat to US battlegroups in any theater in the World. I do not claim China is not a threat to a battlegroup near home, however they have very limited ability to project Naval power beyond the immediate region. Russia was a World military player, China is a World power but more of a regional military player with desires to move up to the big leagues.

Much more importantly, for the entirety of the Cold War the Russian military was a dagger pointed at the chest of our friends and allies in Europe. They had a significant conventional military force that could, in a matter of days (because of location and geography) , roll into and over several nations with which the US was strongly allied and had historical ties. China does not have this lever. Who are they going to roll tanks into, Russia? India? They do, of course, threaten allies, Japan, Australia, etc, but they would have to ship forces there before they could occupy those locations. Not the same thing at all.

The Blue Water naval parity between the US and Russia during the Cold War was relatively close, the Chinese Navy has nothing like that. SSBN's, SSN's, Cruisers, Destroyers, and Carriers, they are well behind the US, a fraction of the capability. For littoral combat and waters close to home they are formidable, but after the expansion of the conflict that would almost certainly result from sinking a Carrier, how long would those last?

I view the Chinese problem as having two "levels". The Spratly's and in, and outside that region. Inside that region they are strong and capable, equal to what US forces could bring to the table in many ways, ahead in some ways, and behind in others. More behind than ahead, but close. In the long term I think the US would prevail (assuming it maintained the resolve), but it would be a protracted effort. Outside of that region there is no real comparison, the US military has the advantage in every way I can think of.

And while I appreciate your optimism, even the Navy is now saying stealth isn't what it was. We can both agree that the RCS/IRST suppression still makes it harder to detect reducing firing solution time and easier to break the kill chain. Retain a little pessimism my friend.

Sure, stealth (the reduction of signature, across many regions) is not the game changer it was 25+ years ago. It is more a fact of military development for everyone than the silver bullet it used to be for the US.

But it still works.

Militaries may work on anti-stealth tech (view the expansion of passive radar systems that started this portion of this thread) but the vast majority of weapons systems that operate beyond short ranges are still radar guided. Stealth excels in the RF realm. What SAM is in the field, in numbers, today or in the near future that can intercept an aircraft at greater than 6 km? The VAST majority are radar guided, a minority are IR guided, and a vanishingly small percentage use some other technology.

Stealth is still more survivable than non-stealth. I believe it will, to some extent, be so for quite a long time.
I believe the Chinese are able to completely suppress the full electromagnetic spectrum in localized areas of battle for short periods of time. And fully able to control the battle and its outcome due to doctrine and training to fight in that environment.
And I don't. I don't think anyone can fully suppress the EM spectrum in the first place (maybe your idea of the full spectrum is different from mine). They can impact major important parts of it, they can reduce the usability of large chunks of it. But unless by "localized" you mean a bubble a few km across I doubt anyone, in a usable way, can deny it all, and I especially don't think they can do so without major impact to their own capabilities beyond preplanned events.

T!
 
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I think communist have always thrown the best parades.

Yeah, I laughed when I saw that, then I thought "that poor dude, he is going to catch a world of crap". I hope counseling did not involve a 5.8mm.

T!
He probably ain't gonna have enough points to make the next cutting score.
 
I still stand by my comment, they don't have the navy or the airforce. The majority of the increase in the Chinese Navy is in short range FPB and Corvettes and they actually have one less attack submarine compared to 2005. We all know that numbers are not everything and there is no denying that the capability is significantly improved. However if you were to change the date of the paper to 1973 and substitute Soviet Union for China, the majority of the report would be very similar.
China are doing what Russia did in the late 60's and 70's (when I was in the RN). I am not being complacent, the development should be watched and measures taken to compensate but it's also important to stand back and have a clear view of the situation and not be drawn into automatically thinking the worst.

Please go look at their commissioning rates. Particularly the Type 055 destroyer. You might be surprised. If you'd really to be taken aback, take a look at the size of their 'Coast Guard" and their commissioning rates.

One a personal note, two of my former shipmates toured the PLAAN Jian (Type 052D) a few years ago in Mayport. Both of them are intimately familiar with shipboard fittings and trained to assess material condition. (The Jian was in the middle of an around the world deployment and not a ringer sent on tour.) There were a few philosophical design differences that they saw that they questioned, and one of them noticed some electronics on the bridge were tagged out. They were impressed overall with the quality and condition of what saw especially considering the ship was mid-deployment.
 
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