Frosted Flake posted:

"In the 30 years since the Gulf War, PLA innovation has been all about adaptation and improvement, with little in the way of originality."

Who loving cares?!

What a loving asinine argument. An adapted and improved weapon kills you just as a dead as an original one, probably more often since it's been proved to work and likely has been produced in quantity.

quote:

Given the PLA’s status as a “near-peer competitor” of the U.S. military today, the backwardness of China’s military in 1991 is striking. Even Chinese assessments put the PLA 30 to 40 years behind Western militaries. Most Chinese equipment at the time was based on 1960s-era Soviet technology. In the 1980s, Chinese defense industries were known for producing large volumes of low-tech Soviet knock-offs that were sold across the developing world. The Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) had been particularly lucrative. China supplied more than $7 billion in arms to Iraq and Iran, some of which Iraqi forces employed during the Gulf War, but with little effect.4

The PLA had a decidedly “brown-water” navy in 1991. The PLA Navy (PLAN) consisted of hundreds of patrol boats and a handful of destroyers and frigates based on 1950s Soviet designs. Chinese shipyards built dozens of antiquated diesel-electric submarines and a small number of noisy, indigenously produced nuclear-powered submarines. Virtually all PLA Air Force (PLAAF) aircraft were copies of Soviet MiG-19s and MiG-21s. A Chinese version of the Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile provided what passed for strategic air defense. PLA ground forces were built around antiquated Soviet-designed armor and were only beginning to experiment with combined-arms operations. PLAN marines offered few expeditionary capabilities.

Any advanced military technology found in China in 1991 had likely come from the West. Near the end of the Cold War, the United States and Western Europe sold military technology to the PLA as an “enemy-of-my-enemy” hedge against the Soviets. In 1985, the United States supplied China with 24 Sikorsky S-70/H-60 Blackhawk helicopters. Other helicopters were French designs. China’s YJ-8 antiship cruise missile bore a strong resemblance to France’s Exocet.5 A late-1980s U.S. initiative proposed outfitting 50 Chinese J-8 air-superiority fighters with advanced avionics, including the F-16 AN/APG-66 radar.

Most Western arms sales were suspended in June 1989, however, when the PLA violently put down protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The Chinese kept what they had acquired pre-sanctions, of course, including Western technology to outfit a Type 052 Luhu-class destroyer commissioned in 1994—U.S. gas turbines, German diesel engines, French sonar and electronics, and an Italian torpedo system. Interestingly, the United States issued a waiver from the Tiananmen sanctions to continue the J-8 upgrades. [...]

quote:

In applying lessons from the Gulf War, the PLA focused on developing joint capabilities, which necessarily meant drawing down its two-million-man army while building up a technologically advanced navy and air force. The PLA also realized that it required significant long-range precision-strike capabilities to enable greater defense in depth and to support offensive operations. To locate enemy targets and coordinate the joint force, the Gulf War demonstrated that the PLA required robust, survivable C4ISR networks.

Acquiring high-technology platforms, weapons, and C4ISR became an urgent priority, and China’s defense industrial base in the early 1990s was not up to the task of originating such equipment. Indigenous Chinese design is not how the PLA first evolved following the Gulf War. China instead pursued a strategy to reverse engineer technology acquired from foreign sources, principally from a defanged and cash-strapped Russia. Overt arms purchases from Russian, European, and Israeli sources were supplemented by aggressive covert actions to acquire military technology from the United States and elsewhere.7

Frosted Flake posted:

Was that the one the Ukrainian Navy sold off?

quote:

The ship was laid down as Riga at Shipyard 444 (now Mykolaiv South) in Mykolaiv, Ukrainian SSR, on 6 December 1985.[14][15] Design work was undertaken by the Nevskoye Planning and Design Bureau.[16] Launched on 4 December 1988, the carrier was renamed Varyag in late 1990, after a previous similarly named cruiser launched in 1899. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the ship was only 68% complete.[1] Construction was halted, and the ship was put up for sale. The name Varyag was then adopted by another cruiser launched in 1983.
Sale

Ukraine approached China, India, and Russia as potential buyers.[1] China sent a high-level delegation in 1992, which reported that the ship was in good condition and recommended a purchase. However, the Chinese government declined to purchase the ship because of the international diplomatic situation at the time.[17] Unable to find a buyer, Ukraine left the ship to deteriorate in the elements.[18]

In 1998, the rusting hulk was sold at auction for $20 million to Agencia Turistica E Diversões Chong Lot Limitada, a company from Macau. Chong Lot proposed to tow Varyag to Macau under pretenses of conversion into a $200 million floating hotel and casino;[19] Western observers were suspicious of the deal since Chong Lot had no listed telephone number, was not located at its listed address, and was run by former officers in the Chinese Navy. Officials in Macau also denied Chong Lot's application to operate a casino. However, analysts noted that Varyag had deteriorated too much to be used as an operational warship and pointed out that the Chinese Navy was concentrating on submarines.[15][18] The Soviet carriers Kiev and Minsk had also been sold to China as tourist attractions.

gradenko_2000 posted:

lmfao

quote:

Naval acquisitions in the 1990s and early 2000s included four Russian Sovremenny-class destroyers and 12 Kilo-class diesel-electric attack submarines. The purchases offered a trove of weapons, electronics, and propulsion technology to improve indigenous Chinese development. PLAN leaders had been impressed by the U.S. Navy’s “high-speed mobility and multidimensional combat capability” supporting air and ground operations in the Gulf War.10 In 1992, eager to emulate aircraft carrier battle groups, the PLAN initiated discussions to purchase an unfinished Soviet aircraft carrier (the Varyag, an Admiral Kuznetsov–class carrier built in Ukraine).11 Following a painful and expensive refit in China, the ship eventually was commissioned as the Type 001 aircraft carrier Liaoning in 2012. China’s burgeoning commercial shipyards have produced a number of PLAN ship classes, especially smaller patrol boats and corvettes.12 China commissioned more than 300 ships and submarines between 2000 and 2020, making the PLAN the world’s largest navy.

BearsBearsBears posted:

The Chinese were able to figure out how to de-rust a warship, I wonder if the USN will be able to figure out how to "adapt and improve" this technique.

Gresh posted:

I don't know where to post this but Pakistan and Iran have both bombed each other in the last 24 hours lol

Morbus posted:

it's more of a team-building missile exchange program

gradenko_2000 posted:

Baloch separatists are one of those proxy groups that the US funds to destabilize its enemies - they were attacking B&R projects in Pakistan in recent years, killing Chinese nationals, and apparently they've also attacked over the border into Iran

Hubbert posted:

Complications posted:

Derusting warships is old technology. It just takes a lot of personnel with time to sweat for it. What a forward thinking military looks for is derusting robots, preferably machine learning AI enhanced LLM guided robots that are a billion dollars each and don't work even a quarter of the time until the three billion dollar DLC package is installed.

FuzzySlippers posted:

PLA being thirty or forty years behind the West would place them back when the West had functional weapons lol

gradenko_2000 posted:

wanna see that time lapse restoration vid

FuzzySlippers posted:

PLA being thirty or forty years behind the West would place them back when the West had functional weapons lol

gradenko_2000 posted:

Baloch separatists are one of those proxy groups that the US funds to destabilize its enemies - they were attacking B&R projects in Pakistan in recent years, killing Chinese nationals, and apparently they've also attacked over the border into Iran

Complications posted:

Derusting warships is old technology. It just takes a lot of personnel with time to sweat for it. What a forward thinking military looks for is derusting robots, preferably machine learning AI enhanced LLM guided robots that are a billion dollars each and don't work even a quarter of the time until the three billion dollar DLC package is installed.

DancingShade posted:

The USA can't even make a pair of leather boots using entirely domestic sourced products / components. I can only imagine how much of everything stamped with "Made in USA" comes from China or some other 3rd party.

I've got boots made in Australia, Mexico and China. The Chinese ones are the best by miles.

Weka posted:

What brand are your Chinese boots?

gradenko_2000 posted:

holy poo poo

it really will buff out

Pistol_Pete posted:

Yeah, our main development in the last 3 decades is drones and it's China who builds most of them anyway.

Weka posted:

Thank you

DancingShade posted:

The USA can't even make a pair of leather boots using entirely domestic sourced products / components.

DancingShade posted:

Grant Stone.

Admiral Bosch posted:

Woke up thinking about something. Several pages back we were talking about sortie tempo on American carriers and how, at least on the shiny new Gerald Ford, it was like... Less than half of what it was during the cold war or something like that. I can't find a good average, so let's say it's like... 60 launches a day(someone feel free to correct me). What is the Liaoning averaging?

Complications posted:

The US navy is infamous for running shifts way too long for its sailors in addition to not having enough of anyone. It'd just take one undermanned shift of overworked and exhausted plane maintenance guys cutting corners to fill quota on turnaround and poof goes the carrier.

gradenko_2000 posted:

wanna see that time lapse restoration vid

fanfic insert posted:

lol

"Interestingly, the United States issued a waiver from the Tiananmen sanctions to continue the J-8 upgrades. However, $200 million in U.S. defense contractor cost overruns achieved what international condemnation of the PLA could not. Beijing unilaterally canceled the so-called Peace Pearl contract in 1990.6 The PLA would need to look elsewhere for 21st-century military technology."

Facehammer posted:

You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about.

War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it … Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors.

You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.