Difference in US and China's arms purchases, production and defense budgets

[NeilChapman]

\While it's possible that China's warhead stockpile might be 1,000 instead of 300; there's no way they can have a significant order of magnitude more, given all the other modernization efforts going on at the same time.

Why not? Especially if they just focused on two or three warhead models. We built thousands of W80s over the space of a few years, and there's no reason they couldn't have been gradually increasing their stockpile for the last decade.

Whatever the number are it would be a classic mistake to underestimate the...

1. aggression,
2. technical capabilities and the
3. use of merchant ships as paramilitary force

by the PRC.

All three resulted in the retreat and reduction of the British Eastern Fleet to little more than a convoy escort.

Prior to WWII, British assumptions included the US as an ally in the western Pacific with a fleet based at Manila where British ships could forward base. The technical capabilities and aggression of the Japanese Navy were completely underestimated. Pearl Harbor eliminated USN support of the "Malay barrier". Further, the Nazi Kriegsmarine used converted merchant ships to threaten sea lanes and tie down the Royal Navy.

Pretty effective A2AD. Sound familiar?

I'm not in the mood for the adolescents running the PRC to misjudge the resolve of the United States. How many died in WWII? If we don't think recent events are very real and severe and that it can't happen again we're completely ignorant of history. Perhaps the next target is Taiwan but who knows what will set them off. It could just as easily be an internal problem that threatens party control.

Now is the time for all the countries in the area to step up and prepare for the unthinkable.

 

[bobbymike]

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-worn-out-arsenal-democracy-looks-more-antiques-16542

 

[sferrin]

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-worn-out-arsenal-democracy-looks-more-antiques-16542

The fruits of the "Peace Dividend".

 

[NeilChapman]

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-worn-out-arsenal-democracy-looks-more-antiques-16542

The fruits of the "Peace Dividend".

It's a Loren Thompson article. But even a broken clock is right twice a day.

 

[sferrin]

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-worn-out-arsenal-democracy-looks-more-antiques-16542

The fruits of the "Peace Dividend".

It's a Loren Thompson article. But even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Yeah, I saw the author and thought, "what, LM wants to sell F-16s too?"

 

[jsport]

China’s Roadblocks to Becoming A Science Superpower

Historical and structural problems complicate Beijing’s vision of tech leadership.

www.defenseone.com

 

[bobbymike]

And yes, China is also putting additional nukes/icbms in service while US is not. But the difference there is so huge that US can wait another decade or two, start increasing its arsenal only then and still be ahead of China.

Doesn't work that way. In ten, twenty years... who is the US going to have who knows how to manufacture nukes? What companies are we going to have that have the expertise, knowledge and *equipment* to manufacture nukes?

Complex items like nukes and ICBMs *must* be kept in more or less constant production or you lose the tribal knowledge and *tools* to make them, and you have to start from scratch. And if you start from scratch, how do you know the things will actually work? It's not like we're actually *testing* nukes anymore.

In a nation of 330 million we are literally down to about ten people still alive who designed, built and tested a nuclear warhead.

 

[Hydroman]

China's got lots of money now (along with an economy), they want to build up their military machine and they have intentions. Got a three-way cold war going on now, US-China-Russia with a new era/generation of weapons platforms being developed globally.