The M.I.D. is mid

mrs_cms · 3/10/2025, 1:23:20 PM · permalink

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mr.t · 3/11/2025, 6:37:59 AM · permalink

Thank you for your questions!  
1\. The Texas National Security Review figures I cited were market rates. So 'official'.  
If you want some other figures...  
China's $333 Billion is equivalent to 1.78% of GDP. China's national budget deficit was 3% of GDP.  
The United State's $1319 Billion is equivalent to 4.52% of GDP. The US Federal budget deficit was 6.27% of GDP.  
  
2\. Yeah cost of living is pretty different and the benefits aren't as good with the PLA, and of course they don't have overseas logistics to fund, or recently wounded warriors to look out for. That budget reflects a much high proportion of acquisitions than the US budget does.  
  
3\. They added up Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs and Department of Homeland Security for the $1319 Billion figure.  
My understanding is that the National Intelligence Program (NIP) and the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) cover all US Intel (official) funding and they are in the DoD budget.  
For FY2025, funding requested for the NIP and MIP totaled $101.6 billion, including $73.4 billion for NIP and $28.2 billion for MIP.  
  
4\. That's a big question. The simple answer is no. The Congress doesn't know anything (atleast that lobbyists don't tell them), and they have the power of the purse.  
And the Pentagon... has problems.  
A reform of the Pentagon/DoD, acquisitions, and better congressional representation would go a long way.  
  
5\. Military power is a relative scale. America's military power since the end of the Cold War has declined enormously. America's power relative to Russia is probably similar to what it was relative to the USSR, since the USSR was a larger country with a larger fighting force.  
And Russia does not have a competitive domestic electronics industry, so they struggle with sourcing radars, computer systems, and the like.  
But China is different. Even a Pentagon spokesman said that the Chinese air force is "quickly approaching US standards".  
My opinion is that it would likely require a significant increasing in spending, perhaps a doubling of the defense budget, to turn the tables around and to really get a firm leg up over the PLA, or God forbid, the PLA + the Russians combined. Without that, "Full Spectrum Dominance" is already over and is never coming back.  
  
6\. The US is seriously considering fighting China. Perhaps not in the sense of dethroning Saddam Operation Iraqi Liberation-style, but in the sense of how the US was very concerned about the Soviet Union during the Cold War.  
It informs acquisitions in every branch of the service, from the Marines to the Space Force.  
In particular the problem is this obsession with 'defending Taiwan'.  
I think if you asked a PLA spokesman, even he would have to admit that the Chinese would stand no chance against the United States on the ground in Canada or even on the African continent. And I don't think any serious analysts are presently concerned about the ability of the PLA to seize Hawaii, Australia, or even Japan.  
When we talk about war with China, the default assumption is that it's going to be Taiwan, the South China Sea, or the Philippines. But it's Taiwan that is the sensitive issue for them.  
And Joe Biden said repeatedly that the US would go to war over Taiwan.  
Donald Trump has returned the US to its previous policy of 'Strategic Ambiguity', not wanting to say either way, while also shipping more weapons and removing language distancing the US from Taiwanese 'independence' in routine diplomatic correspondence, with Taiwan's formal, official, "independence" being a red line for the CPC.  
I am skeptical of the US Military's ability to win a war right off the Chinese shoreline, thousands of miles away from the continental US, and unclassified (and classified) Pentagon wargames have basically confirmed that it can't be done. But US policymakers can't stop thinking or talking about it.  
I think the only real solution is for us as citizens to continue talking about it, learning about it, and spreading the word, hoping that truth will prevail and WW3 doesn't blow up over it.  
  
Fun Fact: Taiwan spends 1.3% of GDP on defense - because it would be crazy for them to think they can militarily fend off China, half their population is sympathetic to China, defection is a large concern in their armed forces, and the general feeling is supposedly that either the United States will protect them and fight for them, or they will just give in to China.  
They certainly don't take their military defense against PLA invasion very seriously.

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mrs_cms · 3/14/2025, 1:26:41 PM · permalink

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mr.t · 3/15/2025, 7:33:16 AM · permalink

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sacredcow · 3/11/2025, 8:47:46 AM · permalink

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mr.t · 3/11/2025, 11:19:40 AM · permalink

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sacredcow · 3/11/2025, 8:45:07 AM · permalink

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mr.t · 3/11/2025, 11:04:00 AM · permalink

Yes. They are somewhere close.  
  
They went to the dark side of the moon. Bill Nelson doesn't even know what that is.  
NASA landed men on the moon with the Apollo program and can't figure out how to get back.  
Like Niall Ferguson says (usually wrong, but right here), we are the Soviets this time around.  
Which country is the one dominated by state-backed monopolies?  
  
China has hypersonic missiles that America can't produce.  
America has superior submarines.  
The next gen destroyer (DDGX) is a mock-up of the Chinese Type 55.  
The Chinese J-35 is a mock-up of the F-35.  
China was first to 5G communications and 6G aircraft.  
China is dumb enough to invest in carriers like the USN does, being the only nation outside of the United States to have an operational fleet carrier (Queen Elizabeth is 80,000 tons but has no catapult)... even though as per Admiral Rickover (father of the Nuclear Navy), they've been essentially obsolete for peer-conflict since atleast 1980 (look up ECONOMICS OF DEFENSE POLICY: ADM. H. G. RICKOVER for a fascinating read/testimony).  
China is the world's arsenal in drones.  
And they test more ballistic missiles than the rest of the world put together, year after year, implying that they are also the world's arsenal in ballistic missiles (like everything else). The Pentagon said they built 500 DF-21 missiles in 2021 alone.  
  
What is your analysis in the J-20/F-35 matchup. Or J-20/F-22 matchup over the skies of Taiwan?  
And what about the dorito, the J-36?  
  
The problem isn't that the PLA is in a position to threaten the continental United States with invasion, or that they might take over Mexico... the problem is that lots of dumb US politicians want to fight them in Taiwan, where even the Pentagon thinks it's a hopeless cause.  
  
  
You brought up surface forces, so let's make a comparison.  
China builds over 50% of the worlds civilian tonnage. The US builds 0.2%.  
The United States has 9 Active (soon to be retired, by FY2027) Ticonderoga-class Cruisers in service.  
The United States has 3 Zumwalt-class Destroyers. A disaster, the less said about them the better.  
The United States has 74 Arleigh Burke-class Destroyers (10 under construction). USS Arleigh Burke was commissioned 34 years ago, was originally scheduled for retirement in 2026, and had her service extended by the Navy in 2023 for 5 years until FY2031.  
0 Constellation Class Frigates in service (1 under construction).  
  
The PLAN has 8 Active Type 055 Destroyers, NATO designation: Renhai-class Cruiser (4 under construction).  
The PLAN has 25 Type 052D Destroyers, NATO designation: Luyang III-class Destroyers (6 under construction).  
The PLAN has 6 Type 052C Destroyers, NATO designation: Luyang II-class Destroyers.  
The PLAN has 2 Type 051C Destroyers, NATO designation: Luzhou-class Destroyers.  
The PLAN has 2 Type 052B Destroyers, NATO designation: Luyang I-class Destroyers.  
The PLAN has 1 Type 051B Destroyer, 2 Type 052 Destroyers, and 4 Sovremenny class Destroyers built before the 21st Century.  
The PLAN has 2 Type 054B Frigates, NATO designation: Jiankai III-class Frigates.  
The PLAN has 33 Type 054A Frigates, NATO designation: Jiankai II-class Frigates.  
The PLAN has 2 Type 054 Frigates, NATO designation: Jiankai I-class Frigates.  
The PLAN has 7 Type 053H3 Frigates, NATO designation: Jiangwei II-class Frigates.  
  
The Type 055 and 052D are roughly on par with Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, with the 055s being slightly more formidable and 052Ds being slightly less.  
The Type 054A and Type 054B especially are roughly on par with FREMM frigates, of which the Constellation is a derivative.

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sacredcow · 3/11/2025, 11:20:58 AM · permalink

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mr.t · 3/11/2025, 11:32:14 AM · permalink

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sacredcow · 3/11/2025, 1:47:56 PM · permalink

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mr.t · 3/12/2025, 5:14:12 AM · permalink

The US Government and many others attest to it.  
  
November 2021  
"""  
Gen. John Hyten, outgoing vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CBS News about the test during an interview. The test reportedly occurred in July, according to the Financial Times.  
  
China “launched a long-range missile,” Hyten told CBS. “It went around the world, dropped off a hypersonic glide vehicle that glided all the way back to China, that impacted the target in China.”  
  
When asked if the missile hit the target, Hyten said, “Close enough.”  
"""  
  
From VoA  
"""  
"While both China and Russia have conducted numerous successful tests of hypersonic weapons and have likely fielded operational systems, China is leading Russia in both supporting infrastructure and numbers of systems,” the Defense Intelligence Agency’s chief scientist for science and technology told U.S. lawmakers Friday.  
  
“Over the past two decades, China has dramatically advanced its development of conventional and nuclear-armed hypersonic missile technologies and capabilities through intense and focused investment, development, testing and deployment,” said the DIA’s Paul Freisthler, testifying in front of the House Armed Services Committee.  
"""  
  
BEIJING, June 2, 2024 (Reuters)  
"""  
China landed an uncrewed spacecraft on the far side of the moon on Sunday, overcoming a key hurdle in its landmark mission to retrieve the world's first rock and soil samples from the dark lunar hemisphere.  
The landing elevates China's space power status in a global rush to the moon, where countries including the United States are hoping to exploit lunar minerals to sustain long-term astronaut missions and moon bases within the next decade.  
The Chang'e-6 craft, equipped with an array of tools and its own launcher, touched down in a gigantic impact crater called the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the moon's space-facing side at 6:23 a.m. Beijing time (2223 GMT), the China National Space Administration said.  
"""  
  
  
  
"""  
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson is being mocked for suggesting the far side of the moon is always "dark" and can't explain why China is interested in exploring that part of the moon.  
  
"What do you think the Chinese are trying to get at, at the back side of the moon?" Rep. David Trone (D-MD) asked Nelson at a congressional hearing last week.  
  
"They are going to have a lander on the far side of the moon, which is the side which is always in dark. Uh, we're not planning to go there," he said.  
  
Trone followed up by asking, "And why not? What's the benefit of doing so?"  
  
"We don't know what's on the back side of the moon, so, uh, that would be something that they would discover," the NASA administrator told lawmakers on Capitol Hill.  
  
"But our decision is that it's more profitable for us to go to the South Pole of the moon because that's where we think the water is," he added.  
  
The Maryland congressman pressed Nelson on why China chose to go to the far side of the moon.  
  
"Why do you think they made that decision? I'm curious," Trone said.  
  
"I have no idea," Nelson said.  
"""

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sacredcow · 3/12/2025, 12:16:38 PM · permalink

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mr.t · 3/12/2025, 12:36:24 PM · permalink

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sacredcow · 3/12/2025, 1:21:28 PM · permalink

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mr.t · 3/13/2025, 4:46:52 AM · permalink

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