plawolfinteresting picture from recent sino-russian excerises.
plawolfI actually had given quite a bit of thought to naval forces in the next 20 years, and came up with the following conclusions:
1)Aircraft Carriers are just sitting ducks for supersonic-hypersonic cruise missiles fired from SSNs from a great distance away which would make detection impossible. The nature of air-defense systems dictate that once the speed of a missile exceeds around Mach 3.5, it would be difficult to exterminate that threat.
2)Fast, high-powered, quiet subs will be important in future naval warfare. I am envisioning subs that would mainly carry cruise missiles with ranges exceeding 500 km.
3)Admittedly, USN SSNs are extremely capable and are the best in the world. That being said however, it is apparent that SSNs would not be able uphold the dominance USN currently holds over the Pacific. Let’s put it this way: the best chance for China to break out of US’ naval death-grasp is to initiate a naval-air blitzkrieg upon US naval and air bases in the Pacific, somehow disable them, and then quickly storm Taiwan. US SSNs are no help then. Nor are aircraft carriers, as they are not geared toward fighting high-altitude high-speed bombers, which I think is going to be a great priority to the Chinese, and which I believe they will be successful in acquiring.
The most important thing for China is to knock out the USN’s Pacific fleet in a very contracted period of time, which the Japanese in WW2 failed to do, including the fleet air arm, and also USAF bombers and strike aircraft stationed in the Pacific. Screw the Army, screw the Fighterjets, it’s the bombers and the strikers and the cruise-missile-launching SSNs that matter the most.
I think China is lucky in the respect that they could learn from the mistakes of the Japanese, if they do wish to use armed conflicts are a tool for clearing way for the Chinese rise. But generally, back to the topic, a full-out WW3 is really out of the question, whereas controlled, regional, short, capital-intensive, high-tech conflicts are possible, especially in the Pacific.
you are getting the completely wrong idea of what china’s game plan is.
china is not out to try and wipe out the US. its goal is merely to raise the cost of US intervention in taiwan to a level that no US government will be able to accept, and hence AVOID having to fight the americans at all.
once american interferance is no long an issue, the few zealots in taiwan that are counting on the americans to fight and die for their personal gain might actually re-join the real world and try to be realistic about how they deal with china (less monolog and more dialog). and if that happens, then maybe taiwan will rejoin the mainland of its own accord instead of having to be retaken by force.
china, unlike the US, has preciously little to gain and a hell of a lot to loose from war. that is why china tries to avoid it whenever possible.
plawolfBecause that is not as simple as you thougt. Such a huge structure has to survive several operational hazards. Just to get an idea about that, your are in need of some real operational first-hand experiances.
Even such a hull shows design features, how a carrier has to be built to survive hits from different weapons, to survive fire-hazards a.s.o.
A smooth sea-keeping behavior to enable an operational flight deck most of the times a.s.o. Sometimes those demands are contradicting.
When built already, that concept has be sound, with no real chance to correct design faults satisfactory.
Such a ship is a balanced design of a mix of stiff and elastic components. It is not just cutting steel for an ordinary ship. Even a destroyer is a much different class of design.
So before you waste billions, you have to be shure about the general details.
The Chinese are clever enough, to avoid Russian mistakes, who were forced to find it out the expensive way by trial and error.
When you have a sound and proven concept, you can look for refinements.
But without practical operational experiences before, that is very academic.
The French carrier CDG suffered several service entry delays, despite it was not the first French carrier. Before India started their own design, it bought British and Russian carriers. There is a deeper sense in such an approach.
and what century are you living in mate? :rolleyes:
there is such a thing as R&D you know. :rolleyes:
you think designers would start off trying to build the real thing after scribling a couple of notes on a piece of paper? :rolleyes:
if you have not even the most basic understanding of how ships are built, dont go around lecturing others with make-believe fiction.
computer models are used to assess strutural strengths; experience in designing and building other warships can be brought in to deal with damage control issues; scale models are used to test ship stability in different weather conditions…
all school-boy level common knowledge.
build a CV is not easy, not by a long shot. but the difficulties involved in building something that big and complicated is little different from building other ships of similar or larger size. successfully building ships of similar size to CV is all the pratical experience anyone needs to be able to make a fair decent CV.
the reason the world’s oceans are not swimming with CVs is because they are damn expansive to build and maintain, and as such, require a massive amount of protection from support ships and escorts. very few navies have anywhere near the budget for that.
then of course, there is also the ‘small’ matter of the opertional need for one.
plawolfthat all depends on what country you are talking about.
for a developed, industrialised nation, labour costs would probably make imported stuff more attractive in terms of price, and being developed usually means that they have sufficent technological and industrial capacity to make such components if the need arises.
also, developed nations generally enjoy a technological advantage, and so would normally be leading the feild with the newest designs (unless a total lack of vision has resulted in them giving up in certain fields). as such, it would be perfectly reasonable to stop making 2nd gen silicon wafers and import them more cheaply from elsewhere when your plants are moving onto production of 4th, 5th gen wafers instead.
however, for a developing or a developed nation with less industrial capacity, giving up on such items is just the first step in giving up all together.
how could you hope to master more advanced technologies when you cant even succeed with the simple stuff?
without the ability to make things for yourself and relying entirely on imports is just plain stupid.
as i said before, engines and radars wont fly by themselves.
it would be an act of lunacy to spend zillions of $ developing and maintaining state-of-the-art engine and electronics equipment and still be all but defenceless because you have given up on the ability to put an airframe around it all.
plawolfWhen I said non-critical, I was thinking of wire bundles, nut, bolts, standard industry fasteners, low technology machined parts, etc.
I don’t think the US aircraft industry needs a strategic skills in producing wire bundles.
such trivial parts are hardly worth the effort of special mentioning as they cost pennies. what kind of cost saving do you expect to make from saving on such things?
plawolfI don’t think that’s entirely true.
You want to retain the ability to make the most advanced parts. Anything else of a commodity nature or non critical nature, you’re better off farming out.
an engine wont fly by itself. just look at the british and germans to see what ‘merely retaining the ability to make critical parts and letting go of non-essential component production’ would lead to.
sure they still can make a whole plane independently if they REALLY needed to, but the costs and time frames involved would be prohibitive unless WWIII break out, and even then it is only useful if they can get everyone up and running before their existing forces are all depleted.
I don’t think there’s a current US maker of ejector seats, unless Martin-Baker is a subsidiary of a US company.
but there are plants making ejection seat in the US IIRC. that is american citizens who have the skills, and since the plant is located in the US, the US government can just nationalise it and maintain production if it needs to (not that it would ever come to that of course, seeing how blair love to suck up to bush so much).
plawolfIf you want to spend scarce military budget on a low-tech jobs program for aerospace workers, then that is an incredibly stupid waste of money. The billion dollars needed to design, test and certify a jet trainer (this is money spent before the first trainer is delivered) could be used for critical systems that would enhance that country’s defense posture and still provide jobs for those same aerospace workers.
thats a very short sighted point of view.
those that give up at the first obstical tends to waste a great deal of money, but those that persist have envariably gained a great deal.
its also not just about jobs, but maintaining the ability to make something, as highly skilled and experienced people are key to the success of any nation’s areospace industry.
plawolfall post cold war US army and marine corps short to medium SAMs. hell, even the long ranged stuff has only been used in missile defence and the only planes they ever shot down were allied ones. :rolleyes:
plawolfIIRC, the laser in the nose is only a rangefinder, and of course, only a small percentage of PLAAF A5s have that.
even if the laser in the nose were able to serve as a designator, its fixed positioning would make it all but impossible to use it to guide a bomb anyways, as the A5 pilot would need to keep his nose pointed at the targeted all the way till the bomb hits. if he tried, chances are his A5 would hit the target before the bomb.
plawolfB-52 boring? With 8 smoky loud engines, and mistakable sound, and a vertical tail that seems to never end I fail to see how the B-52 could be considered boring.
But to each his own I guess….
the B52 is only impressive because its big and noisy, but thats nothing special. slap a couple of military or just plain old engines on any of todays long-haul airliners with a dab of black paint and you have something just like it. 😀
plawolfThe 747 OUGHT to look more sophisticated, considering it’s 16 years newer!!! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
so we are only comparing planes made in the same year then? :p
plawolfThe ventral fin looks like the FLOGGER’s too.
its no secret that china managaed to obtain a flogger or two from egypt during the cold war (i think the plane/s are now sitting on the deck of the minsk) and some of the flogger’s best design features were either lifted onto the J8II, or were the insperation behind some of the modifcations to the orignal J8I.
plawolflol, i thought we are all entitled to our own opinons. :p
compared to the likes of the B1, B2, british volcan and Tu160 blackjack, the B52 is just plain boring. even the bear is far more interesting for their massive counter rotating props.
the B52 is just like a 747 with a bomb bay instead of passenger compartment.
hell, even a 747 looks more sophisticated compared to a B52.
just my opinion, no need to get too upset. its not personal. 😉
plawolf1. B52 – whiles its size is impressive, it just looks like a overstretched loo-roll with wings when viewed from a distance.
2. J8I with the open nose – easy to mistake it for a J7/Mig21 from a distance, no innovation at all.
3. Tornado – looks too much like it was constructed from giant lego blocks.
plawolfExample: Suppose one component’s requirements for cool down time is 20 seconds at 20 degree C. Another source has the technology to boost it to 5 seconds, but is only willing to offer knowledge to improve it to 15 seconds. As the result of the new 15-second cooling technology, the overall performance could increase by 20% at a low cost, is the project manager going to reject the technology automatically as “superficial” because they could already meet the requirement? Is the manager going to say “Oh that cooling technology equals the whole set of blueprints for the entire product”?
yeah yeah, one can always find remote possibilities to make far fetched idea seem less obserd.
how much do you think the russians would reasonably hope to get of the suppling such fringe tech and how much do you think they would need to finish work on their next gen products?
and even if the russians did offer such assistance for free (which is never going to happen), there is a good chance that the chinese will still turn it down. why? because its not a good idea to need foriegn parts for your weapon systems. just look at the falklands for a good example why not.
and also, by choosing a chinese subsystem, the development and production of the subsystem by domestic suppliers not only helps to keep the money in country, but also helps to develop indiginous technology and industry that would be invaluable latter on on a whole range of products.
even if the russians were to offer such small assistance and the chinese were to accept it, does that change the big picture in any signifant way? would the PL12/SD10 fail because of the lack of such russian assistance?
mutli-national suppliers for different parts of a plane is nothing new or special, would anyone EVER question whether the likes of the F16, F15, F18 etc are entirely american just because some european companies like R&R might have provided some none-essental parts? but strangely thats what some people would like to instist for chinese projects.
unless you can PROVE russian involvement in critical component manufacture or design, then the PL12/SD10 IS/ARE chinese projects and any russian input would be wholey insignificant and not worth all the attention given to it, even if they existed in the first place – which there is no evidence whatsoever for.
I am not going to repeat it again. Technology assistance doesn’t have to be a choice between breakthrough or useless. Seeker technology isn’t an onepiece. It is not simply about getting a BVR missile, it is about getting a GOOD performance BVR missile. Improvements at a manageable cost is always a good thing, it doesn’t have to be a critical solution to the unsolvable problem to be useful. Your post is more junk dressed up in the same binary logic. If you still couldn’t understand it, there is nothing more to say.
technology assistance on fringe systems that only offer marginally better performance to domesticly available products are wholey insignificant and are not worth any meantioning as these parts are not critical to the success of the project.
the only instance where such involvement would merit speical meantion is if the systems were ciritally important and unavaialble domestically.
A company doesn’t either “hope for miracles” or give up. They find new ways to compete. If by providing technology assistance as part of the deal, the company could secure large order and other favorable terms to get the resources for current survival and new R&D efforts (therefore future competitive edge), then it’s not called “make sure they go out of business”
and what deal is there to make? what deal has been made? :rolleyes:
if you are only providing non-essential subsystems that are only marginally better then domestic ones, you have ZERO power to force any sort of off-setting deal. you only get bargining chips when you have something that the other guy wants.
the power in such negotiations are going to be on the chinese side, not the russians. and they are going to push for full tech transfer, which the russians will resist. but. because the chinese have an alternative, they can always use that to force the russians’ hand (give us full tech transfer or you dont even get crumbes from the big pie).
even if the russians were to get to sell the sub-systems, the prices would need to be very competative compared to what the chinese company is offering or else the extra costs would not be worth all the extra money and there would be no deal.
at most the russians can expect to get a few $m out of such deals through the life of the missile. not nearly enough to fund their research.
so doing that is in effect doing nothing, and not worthy of a meantion.
the only kind of deal that would get the russians anything close to a decent amount of money is if they supplied critical components that the chinese cant produce yet, or are far better then what the chinese can make. but the chinese will not settle for anything less then full tech transfer and total integration with their own radars regardless of who supplies the actual products.
that is not something the russians are ever going to agree to. even if the company involved were desperate enough to agree, the russian government would block it.
No one said “perfect knowledge” is required to make estimations. There you go again. It must be knowing everything or useless.
please. :rolleyes:
so you think you can strike a deal with only the most rudermentry background knowledge? :rolleyes:
what makes you think the russian companies have any better idea of what the chinese are capable of compared to the rest of us?
these are defence industry companies working under the most secretive conditions.
how would the russians know what level of tech they should offer? if they tried, the chinese would play them for the very latest stuff the russians have, and no way are the russians going to offer that.
since the chinese have altenatives, they can just keep the russians sweating and play for the big prize. if the russians cave, great, if they dont, no big deal.
What story about PL-12? Read it yourself. AGAT research institute said nothing about PL-12.
well if you are going to be picky, then there isnt even a PL12. when has any offical chinese source ever even mumered PL12 before? :rolleyes:
fact of the matter is, if the chinese can make a ARHAAM for export without russian help, then they can make one for internal use just as easily.
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