U.S Military encirclement of China

Imagine having to explain to all of thoes anti war groups and angry citizens why your silly plan got some of thier country's most important cities cratered.

But that is the problem.... there are no anti war groups in the US any more... it just earns too much money...

China has huge tunnel network to hide her BMs, warheads, BM trains, road mobile ICBMs, SSBNs, & works on an intercontinental strategic bomber. With such a full nuclear triad, disarming her with a 1st, 2nd & 3rd strikes is already impossible.

Good, I am glad to hear that... but unfortunately that doesn't help if US politicians think they can do it it might be attempted.

The fact that it will fail and get lots of people killed is little compensation... you can bet the US politicians and their families will be in safe places...

"Given the growing degree of military technical cooperation and military-political coordination between Beijing and Moscow, we have to consider that eventually Russia and China could combine their nuclear weapons in a ‘tilt’ to coerce the United States, lets say in a military crisis over the future of democratic Taiwan," he said.

Like Russia or the US should have any say in relations between China and Taiwan... what a dick.

IMO only Japan & perhaps Taiwan will allow US IRB/CM on its territory.

Australia would be keen as well...

You could have a squadron of 6 of those in a carrier and have always 4 of them orbiting 24h at more than 500 km of the ship, 10 km altitude for a radar horizon of almost 500 km and not leaving gaps between them, something that today is not possible.

But that is teh thing about the Russians.... they will be open to different solutions, and wont just say... this is the best I will only have this solution... a mix of drones and helicopters and fixed wing aircraft could be used... I mean imagine a float plane model of the new upgraded An-2 with fuselage mounted sideways looking antenna arrays... the stall speed of the plane is about 40km/h so it wouldn't even need to be a float plane.... sitting on the deck with the ship running at 20 knots and it would probably take off on its own... it wont be able to fly at enormous altitudes but it could be made to cruise for very long periods.

There was an old design from WWII I think that had a biplane whose bottom wing folded up into the top wing when the undercarriage retracted... so it was a low speed biplane for takeoff and landing with low flight speeds, but a relatively lower drag monoplane during normal flight... that sort of clever design could make even quite a heavy aircraft able to operate from a carrier without cats.

But keep in mind no current aircraft on the Kuznetsov needs cats to get airborne... so why are they talking about them?

They have a few drones that can take off vertically and therefore would not need cats either....

Personally I still think the best solution for AWACS is an airship...

They just want a cheap excuse to ditch START too, China should make them regret by accepting, using the opportunity to raise their nuclear stock and besides stealing US' argument... not that US needs any rational one of course, but it would be fun to watch them scrambling to explain why they withdraw from START even when China accepted

Even if China said yet it is not mentioned in the treaty so it could not be just extended because it would not actually include China.

The only way it could go into effect would be if China either accepted the same terms as Russia and the US have.... which means they can have 1,500 warheads too, which the US wont approve or Russia and China share Russian totals which would mean Russia does not comply because it does but with all Chinese weapons added they don't.

They have until about feb 2021... there is not even enough time for Russia to ratify it if nothing is changed.... they need to adapt their laws to allow for the extended treaty.

It is dead already.

Rewriting it to actually include China could not be done in 2 years anyway.

Even if the US got everything it wanted it would still likely say the new Russian weapons developed since they withdrew from the ABM treaty are unacceptable too... like the un-limited range nuke cruise missile and Poseidon etc etc etc.

Any runaway arms race is exceptionally good for MAD.

X2

China won't formally ally with any1, & therefore won't sign a treaty limiting her nukes by combining the total of hers with Russia's, or counting her own to be equal to other parties. Being a proverbial monkey watching the 2 tigers fight, she won't disclose the exact # of her nukes. That's also in keeping what Sun Tzu wrote: being weak, appear to be strong; being strong, appear to be weak.

Which is sensible. Cooperate with Russia against the US when it is in Chinas interests to do so, but there is no need for them to be joined at the hip.

If they think they can produce more nukes than the nuclear technology of Russia + economic might of China combined then they are indeed mental. It is them that don't have enough plutonium pits and who lag badly behind Russia in nuclear technology.

Which means any solution they do come up with will have to be very expensive... good.

Like France & UK that refused to be included in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, China wants to maintain her independence by not joining any trilateral treaty.

The Soviets had to sign something because US missiles in Europe were just too close and therefore very destabilising.

In a sense it was good sense for the Soviets because being able to base their missiles in Europe meant for the US their smaller intermediate range ballistic and cruise missiles were effectively small light and cheap strategic missiles because of where they were placed... the short warning time was an added bonus... though the risk of the Soviets accidentally launching a full counter strike because they mistook a missile launch for a real attack was not ideal...

For the Soviets it meant all the targets they wanted to hit in Europe and Asia and the Middle East would now need to be covered by much bigger much heavier ICBM missiles... so it did make WWIII more expensive for both sides.

Now however, they can make all sorts of scramjet powered missiles much cheaper than any rocket and faster than most solid rockets of that size for the job...

(Note the 6 ton Kh-32 moves at about mach 4.5-5 in level flight at 40km altitude... the Zircon is probably going to be one third that weight, but with greater range and double the speed...)

For China it does not make sense to limit its nuclear weapons capacity because that would require it to reveal to the US its current inventory of nuclear weapons and weapon making plants from which the US will be able to work out future production potential and all sorts of other details they will want solid information on before they attack and invade...

If they only flew to within 90km of China then they were flying in international airspace... why did they think they needed to pretend to be anyone else?

BTW KAL007 was shot down after flying over several very sensitive Soviet military areas... I wonder if they still would have shot it down if the US observed international law like other countries do and did not have its spy planes pretend to be civilian airliners?

South Korean airlines liked to hire ex military pilots and often they would cut into Soviet airspace to save time and fuel.

When challanged by Soviet air defence these ex military pilots would often try to run or pretend they were not contacted by Soviet air defence.

Brutal way to risk human lives that the west pretends to care about.

I remember the KAL007 shoot down... even if you believe the western story that the Korean plane accidentally strayed deep into Soviet airspace the west had spy planes in the air at the time and were tracking it from various radar stations in Japan and South Korea, but also military platforms were listening in for all that valuable radio traffic and radar signals, detected by ship and sub and air and even satellite platforms... but strangely none of those platforms felt the need to warn the aircraft it was an enormous distance off course and was at risk of being intercepted... they just didn't care.

in order not to spook Chinese into changing their routines.

The whole point of flying an aircraft full of electronics and directing all your land and space based instruments on the target country is to listen for radio communication and radar frequencies and locations and track enemy aircraft and SAM site locations etc etc... to time how long it takes for them to get planes to you, to work out the shape and extent of their radar coverage... how low can you fly, how high...

If they look like a civilian aircraft then they might send one plane to get it to correct its course and remain in international airspace.

With military targets it would be more aircraft with a lot more tracking and more realistic for the attacker to measure the response for their planning of future attacks...

With the Soviets they used to take ex bomber aircraft and fill them full of electronics and flying the near the border with the SU to get responses. Well pretty soon the Soviets realised what they were doing and stopped doing more than the bare minimum, so the americans started flying closer and closer to Soviet airspace and would occasionally fly into it where it bulged out or clipped a corner, but eventually even that stopped working so they flew directly at the border like they were going in and then turn away at the last second... and when that stopped working they didn't turn away...

I seem to remember they lost about 140 odd men in hundreds of separate incidents doing this sort of shit...