That’s exactly why mass media are for. People want “fast food” news and simple stories. People like stereotypes and slogans. Things they can grasp easily and quickly…

The truth behind all this, lies on politicians’ desks. Nobody really wants to intervene, everyone would like for a faction to win quickly. Even if it’s Gaddafi. The catalyst to intervene won’t be the “humanitarian crisis”, but the fact that the interruption……. Otherwise, if this continues to be a military crisis that goes on and seems a stalemate, i think the US will do something about it. Because i don’t think Obama will like the US to fall into recession again… Nor will the British enjoy more cuts.

exactly!

reply in blue

Range!

The whole problem is that the US is limited to operating aircraft from a mere handful of carriers and airbases, the latter much further away from the action than the dozens of PLAAF bases and all of which will undoubtedly be priority one targets for destruction from the word go. What this proposal offers is the potential for the United States to disrupt Chinese air activity over Taiwan even after NAVAIR and TACAIR have been rolled back out of the picture, as will inevitably happen in any post-2020 confrontation.

Right! they are not expecting to win a war from fighter 2 fighter. their fighters would prob sit behind a screen of long range SAMs and backed up by AWACS and EW and Satellites. to crack that while the launching points for your offensive are under bombardment is pretty tough.

Of course there are other solutions to the problem (besides going nuclear) and the one USAF appears to be favouring is wiping out China’s air infrastructure via B-2s/NGBs and SSGNs. That’s certainly a good ‘Plan A’, and it may well be that the B-1R is too little, too late to fulfil the role of mass AAM carrier proposed here, but I’d put good money on at least this: that NGB is cleared for JDRADM.

ditto for china, their game plan too is to wipe out US western pacfic’s air /naval infrastructure. The problem is bases in China are more numerous, much more hardened, and has better regeneration capability.( most stuff for US bases has to be shipped in via boat or airplane. )
B-1R is just a bigger target for the aforementioned air defense screen.

NGB/B-2 doesn’t concern me as a big problem for chinese.
SSGN could be a problem. as their MPA/ASW assets right now is really lacking. then again their calculation could be that if their MPAs don;t have fighter cover they would be sitting ducks anyways.
balance of terror.

I really wish no one is stupid enough to go down this path.

see my reply in blue

I could buy that. But what happens when the first 100 PLAAF planes are blown out of the sky in the first day? What will China’s appetite be for wasting its entire air force in a turkey shoot? My opinion is that wasting time on a specialized solution for a threat that isn’t really there, is a bit panicky.

They will not send their fighters in on the first day. or even first 48 hrs.

Does a J-7 even have the range to fly to Taiwan, fight, and make it back to base? How many aircraft could China mass in the airbases nearby Taiwan? And how vulnerable would those airbases be to strikes from Taiwan or the USN? What could 5 Aegis cruisers or destroyers off the coast of Taiwan mean for any Chinese aerial assault? Thats about 500 ready to fire Standard missiles. No one would be crazy enough to face that.

J-7 have the range to contest for mid-straight airspace, if appropriately guided by GCIs. the airbases opposing TW is usually built on the back side of a mountain and heavily tunneled. the 5 Aegis ship will face some interesting challenges themselves. PLA/AF/N has plenty of stand-off munitions to make it interesting, and that’s not counting the shore batteries.

Just a quick one, could the older Chinese fighters carry longer range AAM that are cued by another a/c?

Many Thanks

Actually lately one of the Chinese Magazine interviewed the designer for the AWACS project on the J-20 topic and stealth fighter in general. In it, he talked about the engagement scenario where their own AWACS(presumably KJ-2000) can pass target data onto fighter that has turned their radars off. the fighters then automatically uses the received data for long range AAM launch. But, to be able to hit anything with high probability looks like the mid-course/terminal phase update still has to be be done with a dedicated fighter radar.

expound up on further:
I am no expert in this field but isn’t that traditionally the inertial guidance unit on these LR missiles (that has AP) has to be aligned with the launcher/guidance platform?
I am not sure but a quick rummage of head makes me think that if “mid-course-updater” can use its radar to pick up the missile’s position and speed relative to it, then “mid-course-updater” can be separate from the “the-launcher”.

see my reply in blue

Yes, it was and is very un-even in the case of your examples. The increase in living standard for most of the people was compared to the economic rise very low – and still is very low.

China grew around 10% a year for the last 30 years.
average wage 30 years ago for a colleage grad start working in Shanghai was 60 yuan/mo. today the minimum wage in Shanghai is around 1300 yuan/mo.
Working people on average gets a 8% raise every year for the last couple of years. and that’s when wage as a % of GDP shrank.

Actually, the constant parameter of politics in Europa and US is raising taxes and benefit cuts – contributing strongly to the decreasing living standards.

what you described is a short term phenomenom, a post crash phenomenom,. the governments has ran out of $$$, the economy tanked. why? shear lack of foresight and incompetence on the part of political-economic leadership to prepare the countries for the long term organic growth based on productivity growth. Instead of invest heavily in over all productivity of the economy (infrastructure, education, R&D), they used the temporary windfall money for 1) tax cuts (US/Bush) 2) benefits (UK/Blaire-US/Bush’s medicare part D)
This is pure lack of fore-sight / Incompetence on the part of the elected leaders, who were reasonablly popular when the good times rolled.

In most cased not the most popular party is elected, but the one, which is seen as lesser evil – but still as a evil.

Lesser evil – Most popular, I think those two concept are quite interchangable in the current US/UK electroal landscape.

Yes – at the expense of the majority. In the modern degenerated democracies the governments are making politics in the interest of the ruling class, which most competent experts “advice” this policies. Certainly the government is not consisting of the most competent ones – but they are doing what the most competent experts of the ruling class wants them to do. And which is strong contrast to that, what all competent experts advice to develop living standard, environment etc.

which is Why I put the focus squarely at the basic premise of “Pursuit of individual self-interest => greater good for whole system”. Under current prevailing ideological wind what they are doing is perfectly aligned with the ideological norm: they are pursuing their self interest, which is what they are suppose to do.

The basic premise must be rationally re-examined.
governance must be taken from the corruptable amatures and given to experts.

see my reply in blue.

@ i.e.
there is difference between a growing economy and growing living standards for the majority of people – your mentioned examples of fast growing economies with very poor people (e.g. Germany in the 19th century or most of China today).

Standards of livin’ in 19th Century Germany certainly went up for the entire lot. once Industrialization kicked in with its full gear and Bismarck set out to pull the rug underneath the liberals with one of the most progressive (better than England’s) worker’s benefits program of that day.
In China certainly vast swatch of people benefited. the progress may have been un-even but the divid is really between rural interior and rich urban coastal areas. The first order effect is from geography more than anything.

The problem is no lacking competence,

this I whole heartly disagree. the election cycle and democractic process is built to elect the most popular of the moment, not the most able. those only with popular policies gets elected and liked. But often best policies for a country’s long term economic wellbeing may not be popular in the short term (who likes their benefits cut and tax raised? I don’t).

but lacking power of most people to defend their rights – which is also true for most Western democracies, in which elections rarely change policies.

I agree with the part that “elections rarely change policies”. simply because the battle line is often stablized, and there is meaningful difference between political parties.

In contrast, in many Western states the governments enrich the rich (e.g. decreasing their taxes, lowering wages of the workers etc.) at the expense of the majority – in growing economies, where theoretically everyone could get more!

There is also incompetence, e.g. the destruction of the industrial base in Britain (a process, which is also to a much lesser extent visible in Germany), but this was actually not something the majority voted for, but something, which the ruling class pushed for.

you brought up an execellent point:
The ruling class if you will are simply individual pursuing their best self interest. rational pursuit of self interest is fundamental to any modern capitalist liberal economy. The rationale is deeply utilitarian in nature: that the individual’s rational pursuit of self interest brings about greatest utility, and aggregate of individual’s own material wealth is the total sum of society’s utility.

Which brings me to my point: Adam Smith was right… only to some scale. certainly if I give 10$ to a poor begger he would be much happier than If i give the same 10$ to the a billionaire who would prob shrug at it. The former certainly has much GREATER utility than the later. but to Adam smith either action would brought equal amount of utility. This is the fundamental flaw.

Repeated defeats of governments, which were responsible for this policy, in elections did not changed this policy, demonstrating the lack of influence of the majority of people.

I beg to differ, Labor was certainly popular when the good time lasted. and the conservative certainly wouldn’t dare to rock the boat. wasn’t it? this is the limit of a democratic process.

deeply OT.

The UN would be better IMHO if the general assembly had more power or at least abolish the veto right inside the SC. Right now, the UN is practically just the Security Council as far as any true power is concerned. The same members are those who had the most conflicts of interests too most of the time. So you end up with a flawed “law”…

I have mixed feelings about all this. From one side, “law is the law”, and so no matter if flawed, it should be kept (like the Romans were saying “tough law, but law”). From the other side, what do you do when someone in the SC is for political profit halting the “right decision”?

Generally speaking, i am against intervening in the interior affairs of a country without UN resolution.

But in such a case like Libya, with a civil war, if a faction was to ask it, i ‘d be in favour.

In any case, at the end, it’s all about how powerful you are. If you are powerful, you can intervene wherever you like to protect your interests. That’s even more sad, but true.

UNSC is good in that it is a relatively small body that can act as executive. thing can be done (relatively fast), this was a vast improvement over leagues of nations, which was notorious for slow and lumbering and powerless response (china found it out the hard way, when Japan made a grab for manchuria in 1933. Japan simply ignored League and got out)

Permenant Veto power was put in so to make sure the interest of major powers are aligned so UN actions can not cause another global conflagration. which I think is good.

the current expansion plan for UNSC is basically farce.

I propose this. Abolish Permenant member. make all members eligible to elect to SC as today, narrow the seats to 10, and give all 10 veto power.

and give Sec Gen power to intervene using UN troops in humanitarian emergencies. even without UNSC resolutions.