I don’t think PRC will be able to match the US military.

However the US military will decline in strength. The US military is economically unsustainable and as such is slowly being cut down.

So by 2050 they’ll be more evenly matched with a weaker US and a stronger China.

Yes, that’s basically what I meant — globally the PLA will not be able to compete with the US quantitatively until late 21st century, but can match them in westpac, and deploy a meaningful constant force to the indian ocean, circa 2050. The flipside of the rise of PLA capabilities is the slight decline of US capability.

Regarding the procedures China is copying aboard the Lioaning including flight deck procedures and even the Ouija board aircraft handling system raises the question of do the Chinese even know what they are copying?

Or is it some sort of pantomime? In many cases being shown in videos taken onboard the Chinese carrier it appears that the deck crew is behaving as actors seen in the movie “Top Gun” and doing things that have no connection with the reality that is happening on the deck

A case in point is the running up to a J-15 which has just trapped onboard the carrier. In the case of a US Navy carrier, green shirt personnel called “hook runners” run up to the recently landed aircraft and using a long pole type device, help disengage the hook from the arresting gear and allows the aircraft to taxi clear of the landing zone. This ensures that the landing of the next aircraft proceeds smoothly and efficiently.

In the case of the Chinese greenshirts they just run up to the aircraft and appear to be standing around confused until the aircraft is directed to taxi out of the landing zone. If the Chinese are actually using the example of the American navy greenshirts how did they miss this important step? If China is trying to build a skilled deck crew they are building procedures today that will be difficult to un-learn at a later date. Some of these examples that have been observed are actually dangerous for deck operations.

I think it is a little early to call them out on how skilled their deck handling skills are based off a few clips, considering how small the movements can be and how difficult it is to actually objectively judge what constitutes good or poor deck skills.

However I think suggesting they are copying the mere movements without knowing what they mean is a little laughable. At the very least you would think they’d consider modifying what they may have learnt from the brazilians or headhunted former USN personnel.

Blitzo can you elaborate on the E/A-6s during the straights crisis?

-Merci

Ah I can’t recall the exact source (it might have been a published book translated by some fellows on one forum or another), but effectively the PLA’s antiquated networks across an entire military region were near rendered useless by a lone EA-6. It might have been an exaggeration, as a PLA military region is massive and EA-6s won’t have entered chinese airspace, but the third taiwan strait crisis was the catalyst for many PLA modernization drives we see today.

The issue is that any potential Asian confrontation with China (or Russia) is automatically a WWIII type situation.

I do not see potential for limited wars ala 1960s Indian-Chinese War or 1979 invasion of Vietnam or even 1965 and 1971 India-Pakistan Wars.

I disagree. I can only speak for China, but I think a short, intense conflict could certainly occur without escalating into a dramatic regional stand off that will involve the US — really once/if China gets into a spat with any of its neighbours and one side starts shooting, the ball is effectively in the US’s court if it wants to intervene.

I can certainly see a situation where there is a limited naval clash between China and say, phillippines or vietnam. Recently a phillippines coast guard ship shot and killed a taiwanese fisherman on his boat, and the phillippine navy’s refurbished USCG cutters have been deployed against unarmed Chinese coast guard cutters before. If tensions around some islands ratchet up and Phillippines or vietnam shoots first (China is quite careful to not be seen as the instigator, I believe, at least the best way it can be without distortion of western media), and sinks a Chinese CG cutter or a civilian vessel, we may well see limited military action along the lines of operation praying mantis or some of the island skirmishes of the 60s, 70s.

Those would be quite decisive, localized and short conflicts, and would probably end militarily and politically before the US has even made a decision as to whether it wants to materially intervene or not. Same goes for conflicts with Japan around diaoyu islands — limited skirmish at most.
Of course the fallout from any limited skirmish is that westpac neighbours will begin to arm up even more, US may install more bases etc, which only leads to potential for a WWIII situation in future.

F-15 has advantage of range/endurance which is critical in any Asian conflict.

Greater endurance gives you more options in a dog fight and takes out an important factor in combat (think issues with Mirage IIIs over Falklands or Bf 109s over Britain).

I don’t deny that, but such a situation also depends on where the air battle ends up being fought (i.e.: closer to a J-10A’s airbase or F-15J’s airbase or an equidistant arena?)

Also F-15 is more likely to have better quality AWACS support than a J-8 as well potentially jammer support courtesy USN E/A-18Gs.

Would it? E-767 is just an E-3s radar aboard a 767. KJ-2000 and KJ-200 are both AESAs, with the former derived from phalcon. We have no idea how any AEWC in the world performs relative to each other of course, apart from general estimates of range and “numbers of targets tracked,” and I’m not saying AESA is immediately the bees knees, and I do recognize some older systems like E-3 has been in service longer and may thus be more mature (although JASDF has operated E-767 not much longer than PLAAF has had KJ-2000), but I dont’ think there’s any real measurable discrepancy we can see between E-3, KJ-2000, A-50, E-767, etc etc, and chances are if both sides have AEWC, they should detect the other side’s fighters at about the same distance (which is where counter AEWC and striking airbases come in). In any case, in terms of J-8, J-10A, J-11B, F-15J, F-2, F-4J etc, AEWC should probably detect all of them at similar ranges, in which case what is of interest is how well an AEWC is defended, how capable both sides datalinks are, its operators, its processors, endurance, range etc etc.

If we’re bringing in jammer support, I can say that PLAAF may bring in JH-7As carrying jamming pods, or Y-8G standoff jammers as well.

If we’re bringing in USN or USAF support, we can massively expand the scope by arguing that SSGNs and stand off bombers have struck many PLAAF airbases, reducing AEWC birds to scrap and making PLAAF rely only on inland fighter bases.
Or on the contrary we can say PLAAF had planned robustly for this conflict and unleashed a barrage of terminally guided I/SRBMs and CJ-10s at local US and Japanese targets, thus rendering their airbases useless.

It’s probably easier to straight up compare PLAAF and JASDF instead of roping in USN, or 2nd Arty, etc.

I think no single class of asset is worth anything strategically versus a similar class of asset that an enemy has, unless it has game changing capability which its peers do not have (such as F-22 and stealth), or unless it comes in large enough/overwhelming numbers, because we their slight differences in capabilities can be mitigated by the variability of the engagement or the tactics in which they are used.

In that sense, I do not think F-15J and J-10A differ that greatly, nor do the respective AEWC on either side, as both sides have 4 large AEWC (KJ-2000 vs E-767) and a larger number of smaller AEWC (but I want to quibble that the KJ-200 has a much larger endurance and range than E-2C, and is probably an operationally significant advantage too).

The only real qualitative advantage I would say the JASDF fighters have, are its HOBS SRAAM. (assuming sortie rate, ease of maintenance, availability, etc are all held constant, which may or may not be a viable assumption).

Whatever the case, the Western style forces have dominated in the electonic combat sphere for decades now.

Given lack of experience and harddata, it is hard to know how Chinese or Russian top of the line systems perform.

Agreed, but I think both Chinese and Russian electronics deserve the benefit of doubt in this case. Electronics is probably one of the strengths of the chinese military aviation industry.

Also, dominating against 3rd world air forces with early soviet era equipment doesn’t exactly make one convinced of how well they may fare against a modern chinese or russian opponent.
But I will admit that in the third taiwan strait crisis, USN E/A-6s were a devastating force to behold. In fact that may have been the slap in the face PLA needed to fully revolutionize and invest in their EW capabilites across the board.

Thanks for the update. It still reveals an obsolete force with 54% comprising obsolete J-7, J-8 and Q-5. Add the JH-7 into the mix and that’s near 65% obsolete.

700 modern fighters/attack aircraft is good for self defence but it’s insufficient for maintaining any large scale military conflict in North Asia.

And by the time the old crates have been pensioned off, the earlier J-10s and J-11s will need replacing.

No problem.

PLAAF still has masses of J-7s to retire of course. I somehow doubt all of those will be replaced by J-10s though, I think PLAAF needs to develop a new low cost fighter, perhaps based on L-15, with basic A2A, A2G functions, low cost life cycle. I simply don’t think they have the budget for a full J-10 (never mind 5th gen) fleet.

And you’ve basically struck at the heart of the issue with this comparison — PLA is still very many years behind the US, not only in terms of quality for some specific assets like stealth bombers and stealth fighters, but also in terms of quantity. And this applies to virtually every single comparison, from fighters, to AEWC, to destroyers, SSN/BN and carriers.
The only consolation for PLA’s seemingly less capable military, is that things were to hit the fan completely where 700 modern J-10s/flankers/JH-7As etc aren’t “enough,” then chances are we’ve arrived at WWIII already.

In that sense, China is hedging its bets and hoping that things in westpac stay quiet for the next few decades so they can consolidate its economic and technological prowess, while building its military strength. The flipside of this plan for reliable regional security, is the hope of “continued” economic decline of the US (which will be a very very slow process — hard to stop a supertanker), and in turn, hope for military spending to slowly subside too (in some cases, one may believe that china hopes the US will keep on spending on military adventurism in the middle east so as to bleed their budget more and more).

Once/if the China can face the US militarily and economically on an even footing in westpac and defend its own interests in the indian ocean and gulf to some degree, that would be the line of even struggle. That’s probably three or four decades away, if things can continue the way they are (there will be bumps along the way of course, economic, social, political, but overall trajectory is what’s important).

For the moment, PLA is focused on preserving an ability to give the US a bloody nose if a military confrontation occurs (their belief probably rests on the idea that the US government and public may not be willing to sacrifice a few thousand of its sailors and pilots for a few islands in westpac), which is their own form of minimal conventional “deterrence” against a larger escalation that would inevitably lead to WWIII and a likely defeat of the PLA at large if US brought all its forces to bear — while simultaneously planting the seeds for greater power projection to protect interests in the indian ocean and africa, in the form of a blue water navy and its carriers, along with strategic transports. Their deterrence includes their large array of area denial weapons, and the much vaunted AShBM, which, regardless of how well it actually ends up working, may end up scaring the US from deploying their carriers in full force as the notion of losing one or even having one significantly damaged may be too much to stomach.
If PLA can score a few early punches early (with their own casualties of course, but they need to retain fighting capability), sink a few surface combatants or an LPD or two, will the US keep on fighting? The scenario in question is also important — if it was some sh*tty clancy-esque scenario where China ends up attacking taiwan or invading some islands to distract from internal problems (lol) then US may have a greater incentive to stick around longer, because one can assign blame easier, paint one the villain. If it was a spark from a conflict where the other side fired the first shot in a naval to coast guard exchange (think phillippines or japan firing against a CG cutter), and PLA launches a retaliation, then it will be harder to spin for a US intervention. There’s also various inbetween scenarios too.

At the end of the day, continued economic and political stability is actually the ultimate medium to long term goal for China, as military confrontation may quickly spin out of control into military defeat — the caveat is of regional territorial disputes, which China does not seem willing to relinquish, and may lead to increased chance of a spark that will involve Japan or US. In that sense, if the US is hellbent on keeping its hegemony in asia, it may be wiser for it to seek a fight in coming years when its still decisively more powerful, before we reach the tipping point where a military confrontation can flip either way. Of course such a fight will cause global reverberations, and probably destroy a few regional economies, badly impact the US, and probably cause a massive humanitarian disaster in China itself, and may even rope in Russia… but it’s not like we haven’t seen that happen when one new power challenges another.

So there are three options:
1: China’s economy falters a little and has less money to focus on military, thus ending its role in the world as a challenge to the US (probably end up with some regional economic shocks that will be hard to recover from, though)
2: China and US enter conflict in coming decades due to rising tension, which may either be a limited conflict (which may lead to a new cold war), or a regional/world spanning conflict that may turn nuclear (economy is irrelevant here as everyone will be too busy fighting to really care about markets. Chances are everyone ends up using their banks and reserves as economic weapons too)
3: China slowly catches up to US economic and military reach and a peaceful transition of power occurs (everyone continues to live peacefully, with no economic setbacks save for the cyclical economic shocks of the global system. The sacrifice of course, is US global power and prestige).

^ CHOOSE YOUR SIN, lol

Cheers for update.

The website you posted a link for states Air Force JH-7As are scheduled to be replaced by J-16 (Su-30MK equivalent). Doesn’t seem PLAAF are too enamoured with JH-7A. PLANAF is looking at new JH-7Bs to replace JH-7/JH-7A as well as some H-6 Badgers.

Interesting thing is, JH-7As are still in production.

I suspect Q-5s will be replaced with JH-7As, while J-16s will replace earlier Su-30s (which have probably racked up high flight hours by now), and earlier JH-7As.
JH-7B is supposedly just a JH-7A with newer avionics, and may supplement J-16 (the latter of which will act as the PLA’s high end long range strike fighter)

China can build 10,000 HQ-9 long range air defense missiles. Coupled with HT-233 phased array air defense radars, these missiles can kill F-22 fighter jets and B-2 bomber jets. Now that’s force multiplier. :eagerness: It’s like Syria has 72 Bastion-P anti ship missiles which can kill the 5 American destroyers in Syrian waters.

… “can build” is another way of saying “they don’t have”.

China’s IADS is formidable, but far from impregnable, and a concerted attack via stealth bombers, SSGNs, and F-35, along with 4th generation SEAD fighters will make life tough for the PLA.
Besides, IADS cannot project power, which is more or less what thobbes has been saying this whole time — that PLAAF/NAF do not have the assets to meaningfully project power consistent with its aircraft number.

Can’t we all just ignore palembang?

It’s a case of not sure if troll or actually deluded

5000 aircraft a year…. Lala land.