WaPo hit piece on China

[Sarevok]

@Shep

Consider future Russian-China military relations. No matter how advanced China's conventional military gets they are still facing thousands of Russian nuclear weapons. Do they have any plans to counter that as well ? Because if they don't it seems the strategic balance still rests firmly in Russia's favor.

[Straha]

Gee, I wonder why stuff from the 1980s had Libya as full of crazies? Gee, could it be all the smack Libya was doing with us and the whole LINE OF DEAAAAAAAAATH and Ronald Von Reagan crossing their line of death and killing their planez?

As for the Muslims are violent and stupid heathen attitude -- that actually started to really take off with the 1970s and the whole first general round of Arab terrorism which was generally aimed at hyjacking aircraft and flying them to random locations -- it continued into the 1980s with the whole Achille Lauro incident where RONALD VON REAGAN used F-14 TOMCATS against TERRORISTS among others.

Golly gee whillikers batman! How many raging generalizations can you see here? Muslims are violent and stupid because certain muslims did bad things. It's like saying all Europeans are weapons-obsessed and racist because of the Nazis, or that all Japanese companies are super technologically advanced because of companies like Sony, or that all felons are recidivist because of one bad apple, or that all Democrats are spineless because of Barack Obama, or that all postal workers are deranged lunatics waiting to go off because of Patrick Sherill, or that all Republicans are spineless when it comes to the Middle East because of Ronald Reagan, etc. etc. etc.

I just reread some of "the Nuclear Seduction" (it's in a file right next to "On Escalation" on my computer now) and I thought one of the money quotes might just apply to this thread now.

Pretending that weapons matter is thus in every way more dangerous than the weapons themselves. Such a pretense – whether by the superpower governments or by the peace movements opposing those governments – can only confuse people about the existential risks and horror of a war fought with any nuclear weapons. This pretense also distracts attention from the occasional new weapon that actually adds to the risk of nuclear war. The furor over so-called U.S. first-strike weapons, for example, has almost totally eclipsed discussion of the real hazards of the U.S. sea-launched cruise missile (discussed in Chapter 9).
If the arms race doesn’t matter, we should simply say so, point out the genuine exceptions, and confront all who harbor or spread misperceptions or who speak and act like madmen. Otherwise we only add to the confusion, and to the danger.

Or, in other words, this shit about the weapons? It just doesn't matter. What matters is the ideology and thought process behind the weapons, and the thought process that might compel us to want to use the weapons, regardless of their specifications and capabilities. That's what we've got to analyze, think about, and confront if we want to change the world. Hyperventilating about the nature of these weapons? It's just a recipe for mental anguish and disaster.

[MKSheppard]

So they say.

Again with the whole denial of Chinese competency in increasingly larger core areas.

And your assertion that this is the design philosophy of the J-20 is based on what evidence?

• Your own inane commentary about "rar, needs fifth generation engines!". The Chinese have not yet reached the technical ability for super high thrust engines like the F119 or F135. Even the Russians are having problems producing engines of that thrust class.
• It is a reasonable assumption that the J-14/J-20 will use an increased amount of composites over the J-10B/J-11B/J-15A, but not to the level of expertise the US has had in fabricating increasingly large composite structures with increasing precision. So the airframe will be heavier than an equivalent U.S. one.
• The Chinese are not going to be as experienced as the US is in fabricating large airframe structres to the required precision and will not have the same level of experience in fabricating RAM for said airframe or applications to it.
• The Chinese will not have the expertise to produce AESAs on the same level as the F-22, and they will not have the equivalent level avonics expertise to make best use of sensor fusion and other data.

All these point to:

• An airframe with less T/W than the F-22; so it cannot employ the F-22A's capability to change it's energy state rapidly. This means more of an emphasis on boom and zoom fighting, using speed and altitude instead of engine thrust to change the energy state in a dogfight.
• An airframe less stealthy than the F-22 and with less advanced radars and avonics, meaning that they cannot rely on superior stealth and avonics to rack up massive kill ratios in favor of their aircraft. So they will have to rely on cruise speed and altitude to score lopsided kill ratios over legacy aircraft and and lessen the advantage the F-22 has over it.

By the way, I also make the same assumptions for PAK-FA; as the Russians are going to be facing the same technical problems and limitations as the Chinese, albeit slightly lessened on some fronts (a little bit greater thrust being available, etc).

Yes, and how many of those countries will be ponying up money for J-20s even assuming they could afford it?

Iran would be able to easily -- it just depends on if they have stopped blowing a whole wad of money each year on their BOMB PROGRAM and BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAM. There is also the whole issue of Russia welching on and off on the S-300 contract with them. So they will probably be inclined to buy Chinese in the future.

Indonesia would be able to afford it easily as well -- it all depends on a whole host of variables -- for example, will Indonesia manage to stick with South Korea's KF-X once the inevitable cost overruns occur and the Sorks come hat in hand asking for more money?

Vietnam is a slight possibility -- but they are primarily a Russian Arms Client.

Phillipines is a slight possibility -- while they have had long ties with the US, the PRC recently is sending military aid and other stuff to help aid the Phillipines in COIN operations against...Maoist guerillas. Yes, you can't make this shit up.

So what?

So what? You seem to be eternally stuck in the year 2000, where the Chinese were still very much reliant on license production, kits, etc. 2010 is a whole different ball game as a lot of investment over the past 15 years has begun to pay off for the PRC.

Based on what evidence? Paper projects that went nowhere? Anyone can start a project.

Actually, it went somewhere.

The main primary design would have been this:



With four RR Mk 202 Speys.

I am not exactly sure of the weights; but it would have been in the class of the Vulcan B.2 since both would have had the same installed thrust available. Plus, building something of the Vulcan B.2's weight was well within Chinese expertise; being only 14 or so tonnes heavier -- not exactly an insurmountable obstacle.

The six engined design was a backup, using weaker JT-3D-3Bs.

As part of the program, the H-6I test mule was built -- it flew in 1978 with four Mk 202 Speys. There's only one photo of it available:



The program was cancelled it seems in 1980 as part of an overall military spending cutback.

Since then, they've greatly expanded their aeronautic capabilities and have become significantly richer; yet there is no real long range bomber project visible anywhere.

I don't know, why did they sign a contract in 2005 if they thought their minimal capability was adequate? This is just weird Shep, you've seemingly built up this vision of the Chinese as the Grand Viziers of long-range planning and Machiavellian super intentions based on ... well nothing.

No actually, on very credible assumptions.

#1: The Chinese saw a need in 2005 for increased airlift and tanker capability, leading to the infamous contract signing with Russia for 38 IL-76s. That need has not disappeared; in fact it has only increased.

#2: The Russians are clearly not credible anymore to the Chinese leadership in regards to strategic airlifters or tankers after the years long IL-76/78 saga, eliminating them from consideration for an interim buy of strategic airlifters in any serious quantity.

So what's left? The C-17 and A-400M. And both are unobtainable for various reasons; the C-17 would never be granted an export license; and the A-400M is another disastrous procurement programme -- and while it may have some of the range, it doesn't have the payload.

That leaves China with no other options for building up their strategic airlift/tanker capabilities but to develop their own.

How do we know the HQ-9 is "more than capable of handling ABM'? Because they did some tests?

Because the Russians long ago (before 1988) admitted that if your SAM has a terminal velocity of 880~ m/sec (Mach 3) or greater, it gains a de-facto ABM capability which can be accessed via upgrades to the battle management system and radars.

So yeah, hardly a credible threat to USN naval dominance, now is it?

Considering that the USN will drop to ten carriers by 2014; that leaves us with only three that can be reliably counted to be on station at any one time. You can surge the force to increase this; but it takes time, which may not be present in a crisis.

Against this, one PLA(N) CVA is more than enough to make the parity in forces in the Pacific Rim uncertain towards the US.

Yes, it is likely that the USN will bring some other force multipliers to the table, like our SSN force; but even that is uncertain; since many 688 class SSNs will be retiring in the next decade; and the Virginias are in relatively slow production.

Not at all. I have no idea what its capabilities are. Do you?

Considering that our LCACs are 1970s technology; it's a very safe bet to say that the Yuyi has the same performance characteristics give or take.

By that logic, every vehicle the PLA has ever used was good enough, since they used them. Kind of circular logic there Shep

No it's not. The vehicle is clearly in mass production and widespread use which shows that the PLA leadership is satisfied with it's broad technical-tactical characteristics.

The history of the PLA, PLAAF, PLA(N) is littered with prototypes which were produced in small numbers for troop trials, and then never heard of again, unless the designers interested a foreign nation in it.

Not really, no. Its one thing to eyeball and assume the armor is that thick, its another thing to actually know it.

So your reply to my study of LOS line of sight in the ZTZ-99 is to ask me to try and prove something that can't be proven unless I get the key to a PLA tank shed, ten hours alone by myself with a camera, a ruler and several pieces of power tools?

By that argument, we can reject all estimates of Russian armor protection levels beyond the early to mid T-72s; since all we have to go on the make up of the T-90's armor is vague drawings showing the existence of cavities for special type armor.

The same can also be said of estimates of protection for the Abrams family, since while we do have a good idea of the general LOS thickness of the armor boxes, we have no real idea of what goes into the special type armor other than educated guesses based off rumors and random statements.

Speculation.

Take a look at the lifting rings on the armor module. Here, I'll show them again.



Even with the weight divided three ways, it's obvious that the basic module can't mass that much as those lifting rings are there for a reason.

Thus it can't be largely armor, but the module is too integral to the frontal turret protection scheme for it to be an empty shell inside.

And we know they're "new advanced ERA or NERA blocks" worth a damn ... how?

Because we've seen early pre-production A2 shots with less advanced versions of the blocks with more gaps between each block showing that they are clearly some sort of ERA/NERA system.

The Chinese have deployed ERA on their tank or tank prototypes since 1988 and before that they had contacts with the Israelis who developed ERA in the West independently of what was going on in the Soviet Union at the time. They are on their fourth generation of ERA now; FY-IV. So why should Chinese ERA be massively less developed than Russian?

You mean early T-90s? Sure. None of the latest models have that vulnerability.

Even the Vladimirs still have noticeable portions unprotected. Not as bad as the original T-90s, but they're still there.

Well they're ... not. Unless you take their buying "hundreds" over a sufficiently long period of time.

You yourself have admitted that there are at least 300 ZTZ-99s in service with the PLA Ground Forces. At a rough price of $3 million per tank, that's $900 million dollars, which is quite a bit of change to spend on something that according to Russian experts barely beats a T-62 with ERA addons in terms of protection.

Production of the cheaper Type 96 exceeds the ZTZ-99, does it not?

Production of the ZTZ-96 ended in 2005/06 in favor of the ZTZ-96A. It seems that estimates are for 2009 that about 1,000~ ZTZ-96s and 300~ ZTZ-96As are in service.



The -96A is a significant upgrade of the -96 series which adds a frontal turret armor arrangement similar to the ZTZ-99, partial application of similar ERA to the -99 (glacis and turret side), and a thermal sight to round out the fire control system.

That last bit is a very important part. Thermal sights aren't cheap, even almost 30 years after their introduction on a mass scale. Introducing them to the low end tank is a sign that China is serious about modernization and overall force quality levels.

ERA blocks ! = built-in armor protection Shep.

For side armor which is fairly large in area, ERA makes sense over adding more armor plate; since you won't get hit very often in that region. Even the mighty Abrams has received ERA for side hull protection lately.

And lets note they're still using the classic Russian autoloader scheme, aren't they, and don't have an armored turret bustle.

OK, I admit I was wrong on that and misremembered; there were early rumors that the A2 had a bustle loader. The strange thing is that the ZTZ-98 preproduction prototypes for the ZTZ-99 had a western style layout with a human loader.

Not if the 1m of extra hull length goes towards simply accommodating the engine.

Longer hull also means longer tracks, meaning less ground pressure for a given weight, allowing heavier combat weights to be supported.

And the increased power means that using the same ratio of 21.5 hp/tonne as the T-90A, your tank can weigh 69.7~ tonnes, instead of the 46.5~ tonnes the smaller 1.000 PS engine gives you.

By the way, a comparison of hull lengths:

M1 Abrams: 7.93~m
Leopard 2: 7.72~m
ZTZ-99: 7.93~m (off a nice drawing)
T-90: 6.86m

Clearly, the Abrams and Leopard 2 aren't inconvienced by being about 1 meter longer than the T-90.

Just because you see some Chinese guy on the screen next to some parts doesn't mean they're building the entire engine from scratch, hence the "assembly from imported components" line.

The MTU-870 family, especially it's 1.500 PS configurations is at this point thirty years old and has a relatively sedate 31.76 L total displacement giving 47~ PS per liter.

Meanwhile, the top of the line in AFV diesel technology in 2010 is the MTU 883 Ka-524 for the USMC EFV which produces 2,700 PS on 27.4 L total displacement for 98.5~ PS per liter.

So yeah, I can easily buy an indigenous MTU-870 derivative being built in China.

Do you know that is not?

The PLZ-04 has a significantly different turret shape, different muzzle brake, shorter recoil adapter, and is a 155mm/54 system, as opposed to the 152mm/47 of the 2S19.

Except of course the US doesn't just have M1A2s in its inventory.

In 2008 GDLS was given a contract to upgrade the last remaining 435 M1A1s in the US Army inventory to M1A2 SEPv2 configuration. The M1s went a long time ago from active duty or got converted to newer tanks.

[MKSheppard]

@Shep

Consider future Russian-China military relations. No matter how advanced China's conventional military gets they are still facing thousands of Russian nuclear weapons. Do they have any plans to counter that as well ? Because if they don't it seems the strategic balance still rests firmly in Russia's favor.

Honestly? We just don't know much about China's nuclear program in terms of specific details that are available in the public literature.

Just that the Second Artillery Corps -- SAC WILL NOT TURN BACK -- has over 100 ballistic missiles of different types.

We don't know much about their program for tomahawk style cruise missiles, or whether they plan to deploy them with nuclear warheads.

Likewise, we don't know how many gravity bombs or short range missiles they have developed for tactical aviation with nuclear payloads.

That isn't a problem limited to China.

We still dont' have a lot of information in public (at least in english) about the tactical aviation warheads that the Soviet Union designed.

We know some about the early Soviet bombs; but the later weapons are dazzlingly incomplete -- there are only small hints; like supposedly the Kiev class warships carried 18 x PH-28 devices in their magazines. They weighed only 250-300 kg, and were to give the YAK-38 a nuclear strike role.

[Bakustra]

That's a lot of words to say "I don't understand what dehumanization means, and also I hate Muslims".

Thank you my good sir!

Doing the same thing to Muslims has been less prominent, since the public and the propagandists are both more sophisticated, but even in Back to the Future and Transformers in the '80s you had stuff about Libya, and the same general attitude that Muslims are violent, stupid, heathens is still there, though now at least government officials are less interested in agitprop and so it's not quite as prevalent.

Gee, I wonder why stuff from the 1980s had Libya as full of crazies? Gee, could it be all the smack Libya was doing with us and the whole LINE OF DEAAAAAAAAATH and Ronald Von Reagan crossing their line of death and killing their planez?

As for the Muslims are violent and stupid heathen attitude -- that actually started to really take off with the 1970s and the whole first general round of Arab terrorism which was generally aimed at hyjacking aircraft and flying them to random locations -- it continued into the 1980s with the whole Achille Lauro incident where RONALD VON REAGAN used F-14 TOMCATS against TERRORISTS among others.

GOOSE. NO! GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE!

Shep, you're a fucking coward and this post only makes me hate you more. Why exactly are you responding to me, and not Straha's significantly more informed posts? I'd like to avoid any sort of impugning of your character, assuming that you have any left, so I am left unable to formulate any real response. You can read Straha's posts for an undoubtedly-better response, but since you responded to me, no doubt after straining your brain to figure out what demonization meant, I guess I might as well respond.

Yes, Shep, I'm sure that Libya is, was, and will be a direct democracy such that the totality of its citizens decided to attack the US and then they demanded that the entire world mix and match Arab stereotypes, savage stereotypes, and the same applies for the rest of the 'Ara'b world, and that only 'Arabs' are Muslims, such that your entire post is anything other than an apologetic for racism.
That's exactly what's happening here, you horrible excuse for a human being.

PS: Quit trying to copy Shroom's routine. You're actually worse than Carlos Mencia; at least he understood what was funny about the jokes and succeeded in copying them. You manage to fail on both grounds. Never try comedy again- you may be congenitally incapable of it.

[Shroom Man 777]

@Shep

Consider future Russian-China military relations. No matter how advanced China's conventional military gets they are still facing thousands of Russian nuclear weapons. Do they have any plans to counter that as well ? Because if they don't it seems the strategic balance still rests firmly in Russia's favor.

The Chinese are investing in ABM. Shep has done researches on this.

IMO, I don't think Shep holds any animosity towards the Chinese and I think he's just glad that they are turning into technological state of the art badasses. Military graphs, be they in American, Cyrillic or calligraphy excites him all equally.

Or, in other words, this shit about the weapons? It just doesn't matter. What matters is the ideology and thought process behind the weapons, and the thought process that might compel us to want to use the weapons, regardless of their specifications and capabilities. That's what we've got to analyze, think about, and confront if we want to change the world. Hyperventilating about the nature of these weapons? It's just a recipe for mental anguish and disaster.

Indeed. It's very simple-mined of people to just boil things down to dumb graphs revolving around dumb weapon systems nobody gives a crap about. But, like I said, it's no surprise given that these are the same people whose vote on domestic issues solely revolve around one-track-mind issues like "ballistic missile defense" or "nuclear power" or military budget or terrorism - without giving a crap about anything else, from the economy and healthcare, to civil rights and marriage equality and whatever.

It's really not surprising that these people are bringing their broken view of how the world works into all sorts of discussions, and how their fixation on useless military bullshit just shits over any discourse on geopolitical whatevers. I mean, come on, we've already seen how their stupid line of thinking has shitted up their own nation. We should have graphs representing how many XB-70 VALKYLIE MINOGUES could've been built using the lumber from foreclosed American homes and how many ABM sites illegal immigrant carpenters could've built if it weren't for goddamn JIMMY CRATER and Robert Saddam ZEROBAMASAMABINLADENARAMAMCNAMARA (we call him barry on the hill).

I'd vote for them because of nuclear power and ballistic missile defense.

I mean, shit, imagine how hilarious would it be if you had a debate on small town government local issues and twits like these suddenly start screeching about useless military trivias, except this is in a small town scale, their useless military bullshit would involve graphs involving 9mm bullets or .45 caliber bullets for the local sheriff's handgun - and instead of any actual discussion on local town issues, the whole conversation gets hijacked by these fatties. Then they'd bitch about how Mayor JIMMY CRATER was a LIEBERAL PUSSY for using limp-dicked 9mm bullets, while posting some shitty 1920s graphs about how .45 caliber ACP rounds had better stopping power in killing Filipino Moros or some other totally irrelevant bullfuck. Because that's what these people do, but on discussions involving geopolitics and international relations and whatnot, and with the tiny prick handgun anal-ogies enlarged and engorged proportionately.

[Sarevok]

This is a military equipment discussion thread shroomie. Did you not read the opening post which quotes an Washington Post article discussing China's military ? Sheps thoughts on why some of the popular conceptions on Chinas military maybe wrong was most enlightening. I actually learned new and useful things reading Vympels, Sheps posts. What Straha is doing on other hand I have no idea. He seems to be vehemently expressing his personal feelings in a non political discussion.

[Simon_Jester]

To be fair, this thread started as one of those military-trivia discussions. Shep saw an article in the Washington Post about how Chinese armamentations were shit. He attempted to counter by proving that Chinese armamentations were, in fact, not shit.

Arguments about the state of Chinese armamentations are OK, given the context, Shroom.

There are, of course, tons of other issues about how to look at China: do we need to be able to beat them in their backyard, do we back off and acknowledge them as a legitimate power with reasonable claims to a sphere of influence in East Asia, and so on. And those issues of strategy affect American military posture.

But that doesn't mean it isn't legit for Shep to discuss whether Chinese armamentations are or are not shit.

So I think Sarevok has a point. While it's all very well for Straha to come in and try to deconstruct nuclear warfare and the idea of designing weapons with specific opponents in mind via postmodernism, I don't think Shep should be obliged to shut up.

[Thanas]

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread.

[Sarevok]

Yeah. Politics and ideological differences between US and China are a very complex topic. One could write volumes of books on it and still not arrive at an answer. There is a time and place for everything and this thread don't seem appropriate for that sort of discussion. It has proven fruitful in providing many interesting tidbits of information on China's military and I hope it continues that way rather than devolve into a tangent.

[Sarevok]

Honestly? We just don't know much about China's nuclear program in terms of specific details that are available in the public literature.

Just that the Second Artillery Corps -- SAC WILL NOT TURN BACK -- has over 100 ballistic missiles of different types.

We don't know much about their program for tomahawk style cruise missiles, or whether they plan to deploy them with nuclear warheads.

Likewise, we don't know how many gravity bombs or short range missiles they have developed for tactical aviation with nuclear payloads.

That isn't a problem limited to China.

We still dont' have a lot of information in public (at least in english) about the tactical aviation warheads that the Soviet Union designed.

We know some about the early Soviet bombs; but the later weapons are dazzlingly incomplete -- there are only small hints; like supposedly the Kiev class warships carried 18 x PH-28 devices in their magazines. They weighed only 250-300 kg, and were to give the YAK-38 a nuclear strike role.

Well what about their air and missile defenses ? Being able to burn the Russians in a tit for tat nuclear retaliation is not good enough !

[Bakustra]

This is a military equipment discussion thread shroomie. Did you not read the opening post which quotes an Washington Post article discussing China's military ? Sheps thoughts on why some of the popular conceptions on Chinas military maybe wrong was most enlightening. I actually learned new and useful things reading Vympels, Sheps posts. What Straha is doing on other hand I have no idea. He seems to be vehemently expressing his personal feelings in a non political discussion.

Sarevok, your posts are kinda like leprechaun gold- a worthless treasure. Straha started out by challenging Shep's use of terms like "Hindoo" and perpetuating Islamophobic stereotypes. Then he brought up the fact that the details of weapons systems are secondary to the mentality of the user. This is important. It's why the US lost Vietnam and why Korea ended up the way it did. They failed mentally despite having a physical advantage, and Shep's approach to the military ignores this. That's worthy of critique, and if Shep wanted to have this be a thread solely about masturbation discussion of the technical capabilities of the Chinese airforce, there's an entire god-damned subforum for that. This is news and politics, and the political implications of this shouldn't be ignored, nor should Shep's general incompetence as a human being when he insists on displaying it.

To be fair, this thread started as one of those military-trivia discussions. Shep saw an article in the Washington Post about how Chinese armamentations were shit. He attempted to counter by proving that Chinese armamentations were, in fact, not shit.

Arguments about the state of Chinese armamentations are OK, given the context, Shroom.

There are, of course, tons of other issues about how to look at China: do we need to be able to beat them in their backyard, do we back off and acknowledge them as a legitimate power with reasonable claims to a sphere of influence in East Asia, and so on. And those issues of strategy affect American military posture.

But that doesn't mean it isn't legit for Shep to discuss whether Chinese armamentations are or are not shit.

So I think Sarevok has a point. While it's all very well for Straha to come in and try to deconstruct nuclear warfare and the idea of designing weapons with specific opponents in mind via postmodernism, I don't think Shep should be obliged to shut up.

First, you misunderstand Straha. He's arguing that mentality is more important than the physical characteristics of the weapons themselves, especially given incremental changes versus significant ones. This is something that should be understood by anyone that has studied the failures of the French in Algeria, both the French and the US in Vietnam, the UN in Korea, and the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ignoring that is something that is worthy of criticism, if only in the hope that some Shep-sympathetic lurker might change his views, because Shep sure as hell will never. (Feel free to prove me wrong any day now, Shepster. Any day.)

His earlier critique was about Shep's habitual, unconscious use of stereotypes and prejudicial language, which is also something worthy of critique, and you could put the rest of the previous paragraph here too.

Yeah. Politics and ideological differences between US and China are a very complex topic. One could write volumes of books on it and still not arrive at an answer. There is a time and place for everything and this thread don't seem appropriate for that sort of discussion. It has proven fruitful in providing many interesting tidbits of information on China's military and I hope it continues that way rather than devolve into a tangent.

Damn! You managed to not improve at all in the time I was writing this post!

[Straha]

This is a military equipment discussion thread shroomie. Did you not read the opening post which quotes an Washington Post article discussing China's military ? Sheps thoughts on why some of the popular conceptions on Chinas military maybe wrong was most enlightening. I actually learned new and useful things reading Vympels, Sheps posts. What Straha is doing on other hand I have no idea. He seems to be vehemently expressing his personal feelings in a non political discussion.

Go back to page 1, where Shep says that we MUST view China not only as a rival, but as an ENEMY who we've got to be able to defeat in a war. This isn't a military equipment thread, it's a propaganda thread as to why the US Military needs to start spending more money to make sure the rising Chinese dragon will never be able to defeat us. It's a call to change US foreign affairs doctrine, and internal policy, in response to China. What I posted were International Relations scholars and Cultural scholars talking about how this conception of world politics, especially in specific to China, does no good and actually leads to a great deal of harm in the world both in the short-term and the long term. Moreover, as Pan says, it specifically blinds US leadership to the harms that their own actions are causing and furthering domestically and internationally. The final post I made above, from Schwartz and Derber, was specifically about how focusing on weapons and weapons races alone is harmful because the capabilities of the weapons, when you look at it from a policy-makers perspective, only increase in tiny increments that aren't actual "game changers". Focusing on stuff, as Vympel was pointing out, that China might have a new fighter/class of warship/tanker/whatever doesn't much matter. Instead what matters is the mentality behind the arms race, this conception that we need to classify China right now as an "enemy" and respond to everything they do in kind.

This is a completely political discussion and has been from the first post, and, ironically enough, the more focused on weapons it becomes the more political it gets. I'm responding to the overt politics of Shep's posts, and waiting for a response.


Oh, yeah, almost forgot. There was also the post where he said that the world wont bat an eyelash when the Muslim world disappears (from the Arab countries to Indonesia), and that the world wont miss Pakistan when it's nuked into oblivion by "hindoo" atom bombs. If you can't see all the things objectionable there, and why it merits some sort of response, then you have a serious problem.

EDIT: I typed this up while Bakustra was responding. Hats off to him for summarizing all this up too.

[Pelranius]

Going to the issue of Chinese tanks, the ZTZ-96 has been produced into the 1,000 range because it's gone to places like Guangzhou and Fujian, where the logistic networks are a lot less advanced than that of say Beijing or Shenyang (the ZTZ-96A weighs at about 46 to 48 tons, the ZTZ-99A1 weighs 57 tons and the ZTZ-99A2 probably in the 60 to 65 tons range*), and generally speaking, lighter tanks are more maintenance friendly.

*The ZTZ-99A2 has an additional 200-300mm of turret height compared to the ZTZ-99A1 (look at the smoke grenade launchers as a reference) and it's glacis plate has been changed, probably for better protection. The additional turret height is probably additional protection against top attack munitions like the Javelin and Spike, and if so, they've probably increased side protection as well. As for the bustle mounted autoloader, it's still within the realm of possibility (the ZTZ-99A2's turret is about .5m longer and if you rearranged the back layout of the ZTZ-99 turret by moving the electronics out, and taking the larger volume of a larger turret into account, you could mount a bustle autoloader in there. Not that that's definitive proof, mind you, but the possibility still exists).

[Bakustra]

It occurs to me that it would be easy to misread my post, so what I mean is not just the military failures, but the greater political ones which underly them. For example, the French failed in Algeria more because the ultras and pieds noirs shot down any compromise proposals and so radicalized the Muslim population to the point that de Gaulle's moderate proposals were rejected immediately in 58 and 59 where they would have been accepted in 48 or even 50, dragging the war onwards to 1962 and probably contributing to Algeria's rule by strongmen- not that we can say that said proposals would necessarily have been better for Algeria, but France would have preferred an independent but distant Algeria to a hostile one.

Similarly, the failures of Korea and Vietnam were not that America fought poorly, but that America had to fight at all; the US decided to make an enemy where we had had an uneasy ally, and so failed utterly by putting the world under the specter of nuclear annihilation. While counterfactuals are difficult to estimate, one can hardly argue that the US and USSR becoming existential threats to one another did not contribute massively to the nuclear arms race.

[Simon_Jester]

First, you misunderstand Straha. He's arguing that mentality is more important than the physical characteristics of the weapons themselves, especially given incremental changes versus significant ones. This is something that should be understood by anyone that has studied the failures of the French in Algeria, both the French and the US in Vietnam, the UN in Korea, and the US in Iraq and Afghanistan...

Doubtful, in an environment where you don't have one side getting crushing technological superiority over the other. For instance, a lot of the back-and-forth during the Korean War had nothing to do with "mentality" and everything to do with who was equipped with what, and where. At first the, North Koreans advanced thanks in large part to having good weapons, and plenty of them. When they were pushed back, it was in large part because the UN had brought in larger armies with more sophisticated weapons- not because of any "change in mentality." In turn, the Chinese counterattack that pushed the UN back down the peninsula was not a "change in mentality," it was thousands and thousands of guys with guns.

The war was decided by material factors to a very large extent, because both sides had modern weapons, although not always in the same degree. Both sides had plenty of access to those weapons, too- no ragtag guerilla bands fighting on a shoestring. In fact, your choice of the Korean War as an example is quite poor; the Korean War was one of the last major conventional wars fought by the US.

In your other examples, we see one factor that is always present: crushing material superiority on the side of the US (or France, in Algeria). When the US wants to blow something up, they have planes that can bomb anything they please; when its enemies want to blow something up, they have to do it using nothing but pipe bombs and courage. The US's troops move at will through most of the country, while their enemies move cautiously for fear of being spotted and destroyed. Conversely, the enemy is rooted in a local population that has few reasons to support the US, and often many reasons to support the local opposition to the US.

There's a name for this: asymmetric warfare. And it gets a special name for a reason- because one side has overwhelming material advantages, while the other has overwhelming advantages in terms of recruitment, knowledge of local conditions, and willingness to accept casualties. It's asymmetric, and as such, it's all about applying one's own advantages to neutralize the enemy's advantages, rather than trying to confront the enemy's strength with your mirror-image version of that strength. The details of how you get overwhelming material advantage matters less, given that your ability to have it is secure.

Most of the wars the US has fought in recent memory had this asymmetric aspect. But that doesn't mean all future wars will, or that we can ignore what weapons are capable of because we endlessly assure ourselves that the details don't matter compared to how we think about war.

While that works tolerably well in a counter-insurgency war, where you can afford to count on material superiority, it works very badly in a conventional war, even a conventional war against a smaller opponent. The last time someone tried to talk themselves into thinking that "mentality" mattered more than bullets, we got the opening battles of World War One.

It occurs to me that it would be easy to misread my post, so what I mean is not just the military failures, but the greater political ones which underly them. For example, the French failed in Algeria more because the ultras and pieds noirs shot down any compromise proposals and so radicalized the Muslim population to the point that de Gaulle's moderate proposals were rejected immediately in 58 and 59 where they would have been accepted in 48 or even 50, dragging the war onwards to 1962 and probably contributing to Algeria's rule by strongmen- not that we can say that said proposals would necessarily have been better for Algeria, but France would have preferred an independent but distant Algeria to a hostile one.

Similarly, the failures of Korea and Vietnam were not that America fought poorly, but that America had to fight at all; the US decided to make an enemy where we had had an uneasy ally, and so failed utterly by putting the world under the specter of nuclear annihilation. While counterfactuals are difficult to estimate, one can hardly argue that the US and USSR becoming existential threats to one another did not contribute massively to the nuclear arms race.

The biggest problem with this is assuming control over the mindset with which an international situation is approached. When you dominate the situation, that's easy enough to achieve: French policy toward Algeria dominated the tone of the war in Algeria because the French had a huge edge in physical power. France had much more power to affect Algeria than Algeria had to affect France, so the decisive moments of the war were the moments when the French made (bad) decisions about what policies to enact. The war was decided in the minds of the French, not on the battlefield.

But the closer you come to an even match in material strength, the more you have to take into account that the other party (not necessarily an enemy) can make independent decisions that affect you, even as you are affecting them. The issue is no longer entirely under your control, or entirely in your mind, and changing the way you think about the issue won't necessarily change the reality.

[Bakustra]

Really? The overall stalemate in Korea was because Truman and Eisenhower rejected the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons to destroy the Chinese forces and the Chinese were not interested in a unified Korea so much as avoiding an American puppet on their frontier. That was ultimately what allowed the cease-fire to be enacted. Had MacArthur his bloodthirsty way, then we would have had Armageddon or a Chinese withdrawal. Had China a sincere commitment to internationalism and Kim Il-Sung's dreams of a unified Korea, the war would have dragged on for far longer and probably would have pre-empted Vietnam. Material superiority is only really significant when it outweighs psychological factors, and all the evidence of history shows that psychology is critical.

The deeper reasons why any nation wins or loses a war are generally psychological. France lost Algeria before it began because the FLN were willing to pay any price for Algerian independence, and France was not willing to pay any price to hold onto Algeria. But the specifications of individual weapons are generally incremental when compared. Like, if you went from a Mustang to a F-16 in a year, that would be a game-changer, but that's not the case most of the time. But the mentality of considering incremental differences massively significant is dangerous, because it leads to arms races, which are themselves a spiral of hostility. So the idea that China is "catching up" to the US 1) treats China as an otherized enemy and 2) will likely precipitate a dangerous arms race and increase of tensions. The only saving grace is that we're on better terms with China than we were with the USSR in 1948- slightly. We still have Sinophobic panic among so many pundits, akin to that against Japan in the '80s, but this time the constructed rival is armed well enough to make them a credible enemy. In fact, in both cases we have otherization through Orientalist ideas of culture, which then disseminates through the mass media... But this time, it's completely accurate, and we need to act before the Chinaman hordes totally-non-racist-description-of-a-large-group-of-Chinese-individuals overrun us and put fluoride in the water.

[Sarevok]

Sooo what Bakustra is saying, translated from postmodernism speak to human language, is that war is decided by psychological factors. Sort of like psi combat in the game Alpha Centauri. When 2 units fight in psi combat there weapons and defenses are ignored, instead the unit with strongest mental strength wins. Now I get it - what a profound view of modern warfare that happens to eerily fit some 10 year old video game !

[Straha]

Sooo what Bakustra is saying, translated from postmodernism speak to human language, is that war is decided by psychological factors. Sort of like psi combat in the game Alpha Centauri. When 2 units fight in psi combat there weapons and defenses are ignored, instead the unit with strongest mental strength wins. Now I get it - what a profound view of modern warfare that happens to eerily fit some 10 year old video game !

No, not really. This really isn't that complicated, and I'll get into a more in-depth response to Simon_Jester in just a moment, but the main criticism here is against Sheppard's representation of other people. Let me make this rather blunt and personal. Go back to the first page. Sheppard makes a claim there, most of the way down, that the Muslim world is going away, and the world will not miss them and, essentially, ought not mourn their deaths. He specifically mentions that nobody will care when Pakistan is nuked into oblivion by the "hindoos".

You are from Bangladesh. He is saying your life doesn't matter. You, because you come from a mostly Muslim country, do not count. If you were to suffer catastrophe, war, plague, whatever, it just wouldn't matter. Moreover, because your country has rather close ties with the PRC, it'd probably be a good thing, because China ought be our enemy, and any friend of our enemy is an enemy of us. This is what I am arguing against. This dehumanization of a wide swath of the world, and the outright classification of China as an "enemy" whose every action must be countered, for no better reason than we ought have 'an enemy.'

[Bakustra]

Sooo what Bakustra is saying, translated from postmodernism speak to human language, is that war is decided by psychological factors. Sort of like psi combat in the game Alpha Centauri. When 2 units fight in psi combat there weapons and defenses are ignored, instead the unit with strongest mental strength wins. Now I get it - what a profound view of modern warfare that happens to eerily fit some 10 year old video game!

Your sig offered me false hope for a second, but on re-reading, it was not to be. This is.. sincere.

Normally, at this point I'd ask whether your parents dropped you as a baby, but the question is not a matter of whether, but rather "how often?" and "how hard?". Seriously? Are you seriously saying that "hur hur, videogames videogames, psychology doesn't matter in the military".

If I put you, with the absolute best firearm in the world, perfectly customized for you, and the nicest set of body armor available- if, in other words, I kitted you out admirably, and then put you up against a squad of grunts from WWII, then you would die (and the average intelligence of the world may well rise noticeably). You would die because you haven't a clue, you're not mentally trained for combat or for killing, and the grunts are. They will be far more effective than you, unless you're secretly a former soldier and/or a secret agent. Psychology matters on every level, and the fact that you claim to be learning from Shep's posts- well, you're learning the wrong things! Read Clausewitz, read Jomini, read Sun-Tzu, read Machiavelli! Read and learn the basic foundations of how warfare works, or else all the facts will be worse than useless. Educate yourself, and be proud of your ignorance no more!

Alternately, you do know better and are trolling because you hate me SO MUCH that you abandon all dignity for it. In that case, my only suggestions for you are the many sexual favors you could perform for me.

Your last sentence I altered, because you threw in what I will now call the "Sarevokerritch Gap", in your honor, between the last character and the exclamation point. I thought you might like to know that I consider your post faulty even in basic composition.

Finally, I ignored the crack about postmodernism initially, because it's such a loaded word, but very little of what I am saying is really postmodernist in nature, unless by postmodernism you mean "anything that doesn't conform to my abysmal understanding of the social sciences world in general". I mean, phrases like "agency" might be considered postmodernist, but if you knew what it, and "otherization", and indeed most of the terminology that Straha and I are using meant, then you (well, not you, but a hypothetical you without so many dead synapses) wouldn't be whining about postmodernism at all.

*stupid*

*words*

Is that postmodernist terminology I see in there? I think that this post is automatically worthless because of that!

[MKSheppard]

J-20 takes a bow.

OK, about two months ago at an airshow, a display was put together for a select group of people. Naturally, photos leaked.





At the time, I thought it was just a generic stand in; but it looks like this very well could be the J-20 cockpit or at least a early preproduction concept for flight training.

[Phantasee]

How… relevant. Are you going to address anything said to you in this thread (and to be honest, at this point I would prefer if you continued ignoring me and addressed Straha since he is so much better at explaining things)? Or will you continue to post pretty pictures?

[Simon_Jester]

How… relevant. Are you going to address anything said to you in this thread (and to be honest, at this point I would prefer if you continued ignoring me and addressed Straha since he is so much better at explaining things)? Or will you continue to post pretty pictures?

I think Shep is going to keep talking about Chinese military hardware because that's what he started the thread to talk about. On some level I can't blame him, because there's something very odd about the way everyone jumped on something he said to me, juggled the context a bit, and took it as a basis to start pounding on him for ruthless genocidal warmongering.

His first line to me was of the form:

"You need a defined enemy for military planning... [snip]"

This is true; if you are to build weapons at all, you must build them according to parameters set by what you want them to do, like any other piece of technology. It was pointless in context because it came out of Shep misunderstanding my attempt to distinguish between "China-as-rival" and "China-as-ENEMY," but it was not in and of itself some kind of "otherize China because they're evil and we need to gear up to beat them."

The real problem came with the next line, a response to my own arguments. You could translate what I said as "we should not turn China into a despised enemy-to-be-resisted-at-all-costs." Shep's response, though, boiled down to "the Chinese are not despicable not-to-be-missed types."

This was mixed in with the usual kind of "who would miss the Ay-rabs?" stuff, and I can understand why you would condemn him for that... but I don't think you have standing to turn the whole thread into a fight over Shep's perception of other nations. There are other things going on here.

Because having looked over what he said, I believe I see what he was getting at: that the enemies the US has found itself in the Middle East are in a different class, in the public eye, than the USSR was. That we did take the USSR seriously as a peer competitor, rather than just as this gigantic evil blot on the landscape.

And he was saying something rather similar about China: that if they ceased to be in play as a major power (as the USSR did), they would be missed.

Really? The overall stalemate in Korea was because Truman and Eisenhower rejected the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons to destroy the Chinese forces and the Chinese were not interested in a unified Korea so much as avoiding an American puppet on their frontier. That was ultimately what allowed the cease-fire to be enacted. Had MacArthur his bloodthirsty way, then we would have had Armageddon or a Chinese withdrawal. Had China a sincere commitment to internationalism and Kim Il-Sung's dreams of a unified Korea, the war would have dragged on for far longer and probably would have pre-empted Vietnam. Material superiority is only really significant when it outweighs psychological factors, and all the evidence of history shows that psychology is critical.

The relevance of material factors mostly comes down to what psychological factors are made possible.

There's never been a nation more psychologically prepared to go all out and totally wreck its enemies than 1940s Japan; if their success or failure had been a function of attitude they'd rule the world. They lost anyway, against opponents who by almost any measure were (marginally, perhaps) less committed to all-out prosecution of the war than they were. They didn't lose because they were psyched out; they lost because the balance of material forces became so unfavorable that even absolute willingness to sacrifice everything would get them nothing.

The mindset with which we approach a potential conflict has everything to do with perception of material factors, and many conflicts have ended badly for people who went into the situation misjudging the material factors in play.

Thus, ignorance of the material relationship between two powers is a very dangerous state of affairs for both powers. And advocating the irrelevance of the material relationship, to the point of actively rebelling against attempts to discuss it, is foolish.

So the idea that China is "catching up" to the US 1) treats China as an otherized enemy and 2) will likely precipitate a dangerous arms race and increase of tensions. The only saving grace is that we're on better terms with China than we were with the USSR in 1948- slightly. We still have Sinophobic panic among so many pundits, akin to that against Japan in the '80s, but this time the constructed rival is armed well enough to make them a credible enemy.

True to a point- but I'd argue that we're still in a position of legitimately needing to know what assorted Chinese military hardware is capable of. Among other things, if we ever have to fight a war anywhere for any reason, someone may be shooting it at us.

It doesn't do anyone any favors to have less information, or wrong information. If we should be trying to avoid an arms race with China, that is a valid argument of strategy, but not one we should use to beat down any attempt to talk about their military capabilities for fear it will provoke said arms race.

[Straha]

First, you misunderstand Straha. He's arguing that mentality is more important than the physical characteristics of the weapons themselves, especially given incremental changes versus significant ones. This is something that should be understood by anyone that has studied the failures of the French in Algeria, both the French and the US in Vietnam, the UN in Korea, and the US in Iraq and Afghanistan...

Doubtful, in an environment where you don't have one side getting crushing technological superiority over the other. For instance, a lot of the back-and-forth during the Korean War had nothing to do with "mentality" and everything to do with who was equipped with what, and where. At first the, North Koreans advanced thanks in large part to having good weapons, and plenty of them. When they were pushed back, it was in large part because the UN had brought in larger armies with more sophisticated weapons- not because of any "change in mentality." In turn, the Chinese counterattack that pushed the UN back down the peninsula was not a "change in mentality," it was thousands and thousands of guys with guns.

The war was decided by material factors to a very large extent, because both sides had modern weapons, although not always in the same degree. Both sides had plenty of access to those weapons, too- no ragtag guerilla bands fighting on a shoestring. In fact, your choice of the Korean War as an example is quite poor; the Korean War was one of the last major conventional wars fought by the US.

In your other examples, we see one factor that is always present: crushing material superiority on the side of the US (or France, in Algeria). When the US wants to blow something up, they have planes that can bomb anything they please; when its enemies want to blow something up, they have to do it using nothing but pipe bombs and courage. The US's troops move at will through most of the country, while their enemies move cautiously for fear of being spotted and destroyed. Conversely, the enemy is rooted in a local population that has few reasons to support the US, and often many reasons to support the local opposition to the US.

There's a name for this: asymmetric warfare. And it gets a special name for a reason- because one side has overwhelming material advantages, while the other has overwhelming advantages in terms of recruitment, knowledge of local conditions, and willingness to accept casualties. It's asymmetric, and as such, it's all about applying one's own advantages to neutralize the enemy's advantages, rather than trying to confront the enemy's strength with your mirror-image version of that strength. The details of how you get overwhelming material advantage matters less, given that your ability to have it is secure.

Most of the wars the US has fought in recent memory had this asymmetric aspect. But that doesn't mean all future wars will, or that we can ignore what weapons are capable of because we endlessly assure ourselves that the details don't matter compared to how we think about war.

While that works tolerably well in a counter-insurgency war, where you can afford to count on material superiority, it works very badly in a conventional war, even a conventional war against a smaller opponent. The last time someone tried to talk themselves into thinking that "mentality" mattered more than bullets, we got the opening battles of World War One.

We aren't, or at least I'm certainly not, trying to restore a concept or idea of elan, or anything like that. It's a much more nuanced argument than that. To summarize it down, what I'm saying is that the mental distinctions that we make now are far more important than the equipment that, in this case, China and the United States have. What matters is, to use a rough dichotomy, the "friend/enemy" distinction. In this specific case, the conception that China is an enemy, whose every move and every new technological development we must respond to. What the Pan stuff that I quoted from the beginning basically said that once you start imagining China like that it becomes a self-fulfilling social reality. The end result of this is that we're prevented from ever reflecting on ourselves and our views on China, and that we basically become railroaded into inevitable conflicts that neither side wants because China is the enemy.

What the Doty stuff that I quoted says, and here I can understand the aversion to wading through some of her dense prose, is that this conception of China matters more than anything else. What we say about China, and more specifically how we say it, matters because it becomes a strait-jacket for the mind, how we conceive of new policies, and even what new policies we can conceive of.

I'll leave the other stuff out of this for now, except to say that it all ties into the core message that I have for Sheppard. Classifying China as an enemy, paying this minute attention to Chinese weaponry in the cause of "enemy on the rise" China, and saying that we have to arm ourselves against China despite the costs is horribly problematic, and causes far more problems than Sheppard can claim to solve for. This, coupled with his blatant racism against Muslims, basically helps to perpetuate a mindset that renders war, no matter what weapons we have or don't have, inevitable. This is a mindset that needs to be challenged.

EDIT: You wrote your post while I was writing this. You say "There are other things going on in this thread" but Sheppy-poo's main argument is this. China is re-arming -> They are our enemy -> We need to arm up to beat them. Even his first post reads more like a polemic against underestimating the potential Chinese threat than anything else. Sure there are other things going on here, but they are intertwined with this leitmotif of militarism and thinly veiled racism, and I see no reason why this ought be ignored.

Also, it occurs to me, if you want a concrete example of why this mindset matters in regards to Korea, I have one for you. In 1949 (maybe 1950) Dean Acheson gave a speech wherein he explicitly made clear that the United States would defend a number of nations from Communist expansion, to the hilt if need be, but deliberately left out South Korea. Despite this, the fear of the spread of Communism was such an in-grained mentality inside the halls of Foggy Bottom and the White House that, when South Korea was invaded, there was no real debate over intervention. It had to be done. Communism had to be fought.

This becomes really problematic in when MacArthur starts kicking North Korean ass up the peninsula. The Indian government acted as an interlocutor between China and the U.S. Messages were sent that, basically, said that China would accept North Korean defeat, if the UN forces halted their advances and simply help the ground they'd gained. (Including, at the time, Pyongyang.) I'm sorry I don't have the actual quotes for this, I'm in the process of moving, but it's most enlightening. The message, however, just couldn't be transmitted through the halls of government. Every step along the way the conception that communism had to be fought meant that it simply could not get through, and when an order from the Joint Chiefs to MacArthur did come to halt his advances, it was simply ignored.

The end result? China intervenes in the war, and the United States and the UN fight a bloody and prolonged conflict with China, wherein they can't even attack China proper. These sort of mindsets, this psychological underpinning of war, controls us. Ultimately whether or not we had a slightly more advanced fighter, or a different carbine in Korea don't matter as much as these conceptions that force our hand.

That's why this matters, here most of all.

[Simon_Jester]

We aren't, or at least I'm certainly not, trying to restore a concept or idea of elan, or anything like that. It's a much more nuanced argument than that. To summarize it down, what I'm saying is that the mental distinctions that we make now are far more important than the equipment that, in this case, China and the United States have. What matters is, to use a rough dichotomy, the "friend/enemy" distinction. In this specific case, the conception that China is an enemy, whose every move and every new technological development we must respond to.

If you go back to Page One and look at my earliest posts in the thread, I said more or less exactly that myself. What I do not believe is that this compels us to avoid detailed discussion of Chinese military technology.

The end result of this is that we're prevented from ever reflecting on ourselves and our views on China, and that we basically become railroaded into inevitable conflicts that neither side wants because China is the enemy.

I can understand this, with the same caveat above.

I'll leave the other stuff out of this for now, except to say that it all ties into the core message that I have for Sheppard. Classifying China as an enemy, paying this minute attention to Chinese weaponry in the cause of "enemy on the rise" China, and saying that we have to arm ourselves against China despite the costs is horribly problematic, and causes far more problems than Sheppard can claim to solve for.

Understandable, though I think the extent to which he identifies China as "enemy on the rise" is much smaller than the extent to which he's going "Oh, look, Chinese stealth fighter! Shiiiiiny... [starts scribbling numbers down]"

I've seen him do the same for US military hardware both real and imagined.

This, coupled with his blatant racism against Muslims, basically helps to perpetuate a mindset that renders war, no matter what weapons we have or don't have, inevitable. This is a mindset that needs to be challenged.

All right, but I'm not sure how one would defend oneself against the charge "No! Even thinking about this kind of stuff in detail is poisonous! The fact that you get into arguments with Russians about whether Chinese weapons are inferior to Russian weapons risks creating a militaristic mindset!"

And it seems to me that that's what your argument comes down to: that you can't talk about these things without having to constantly reassure yourself and those around you that no you don't have a massive raging chip on your shoulder when it comes to China.

EDIT: You wrote your post while I was writing this. You say "There are other things going on in this thread" but Sheppy-poo's main argument is this. China is re-arming -> They are our enemy -> We need to arm up to beat them.

Actually, I think Shep's main argument stops at "Oh, look, China is arming* with domestic-built weapons that don't suck." I honestly question whether his thought process goes beyond that on the issue, on a level that can be described as a 'thesis' or 'argument.'

*Re-arming is, I'd say, the wrong word for someone who never had good weapons in the first place and is trying to catch up with modern standards of performance...

The end result? China intervenes in the war, and the United States and the UN fight a bloody and prolonged conflict with China, wherein they can't even attack China proper. These sort of mindsets, this psychological underpinning of war, controls us. Ultimately whether or not we had a slightly more advanced fighter, or a different carbine in Korea don't matter as much as these conceptions that force our hand.

That's why this matters, here most of all.

All right, though in many cases the material balance of forces dictates what mindsets are possible, just as mindsets dictate what thoughts and policies are thinkable. Counterinsurgency tends to bog down when the occupier becomes preoccupied with their own material superiority, for instance; it's difficult to think in terms of 'we're losing' when you know you have vast material superiority. Conversely, having material inferiority forces you to think about conflict in different ways: to focus less on relative ability to inflict physical damage and more on trying to find the weak points in someone's morale.

When the material factors approach parity, a lot of the kind of thinking you condemn can flow out of the simple need to have some idea what others, even those you're not planning to fight, are capable of. You may not take France's ironclad construction as a spur to build more of your own ironclads, but at the very least you need to know that France is building ironclads. And yet even having a community dedicated to figuring out who has what would seem to lead to "how do we counter this?"

Which you think is poisonous, but I'm not sure it's avoidable; taken in moderation I don't think it's much of a problem.