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PaperclipPerfector  21d ago (text post)   32321 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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other than warhead count, Soviets had nothing on modern China.

The warheads counted for a lot.

But I think the Soviets leapfrogged or sidestepped the US on military tech more often than China has – maybe that's just vibes.

I'm not making a "China can't innovate" argument (in fact my understanding is for some period, perhaps continuing to this day, they were building iterative designs of major warships to keep pace with their evolving mastery of technology and technique, which certainly is not blind adherence to formula), but the impression that I have gotten is that China has for the last oh 20ish years focused on building out its tech base, bringing it in-house, and bringing its designs up to a modern standard. Their approach has been good and pragmatic but they have been pushing the limits of American military capability by sheer quantity and by exploiting hideous blind spots in American post-Cold War defense drawdowns, not by cutting edge or even funky designs, with maybe a few exceptions.

Nevertheless I tend to find that I am more impressed and amused by Soviet and later Russian engineering than Chinese engineering – perhaps because I have a tendency towards mild Russophilia, perhaps because I pay less attention to Chinese systems, perhaps because their innovations are still classified, but I find Soviet/Russians designs unusual and capable of solving problems in ways that are elegant even in their brutality.

American designs in my opinion are often overly perfectionistic [which I think is tolerable for some high-end systems but the tendency has begun to wag the dog after the Cold War] and Chinese designs lend themselves towards being calmly pragmatic. They are, I think, just now in the past decade or two beginning to feel increasingly confident in many areas of stepping out of the shadow of Russian engineering, and one of the most interesting things about the recent aircraft reveals from China is the chance to see truly unusual airframes that are likely to be very different from their American, European, or Russian counterparts.

But I think the Soviets leapfrogged or sidestepped the US on military tech more often than China has – maybe that's just vibes.

China has made the supercarrier obsolete. Is that not impressive? You know those Iskander missiles that have never been intercepted yet because they evade and allegedly can also drop countermeasures? Well, China has gliding anti-ship versions deliverable across half the planet. Is that not impressive?

China has made the supercarrier obsolete.

No they have not.

Iskander missiles that have never been intercepted

I probably would not take either side of this bet.

China has gliding anti-ship versions deliverable across half the planet. Is that not impressive?

I think the most impressive part of ballistic missiles (which are fairly simple) is the glide vehicle (as you mention) and also getting the guidance systems necessary for an anti-ship version to withstand the stress and heat of high-speed travel. Definitely very impressive, but essentially just pairing an antiship seeker with a ballistic missile. I tend to find the P-700 (fielded in the 1980s by the Soviet Union, designed to operate as part of a swarm targeting carriers) more conceptually interesting, although Dase may very well be correct that it is too clever by half.

Personally, I think more about torpedoes. Some are very long range, with impressively hard to defeat terminal guidance, and they are absolutely ship-killers in terms of payload/mechanism, rather than just mission-killers.

Yes, apparently wake homing torpedoes keep the US Navy up at night long enough that they tried to field anti-torpedo torpedoes onto our carriers before withdrawing them because checks notes they couldn't get them to work.

I am not sure how effective they are, but I also like supercavitating torpedoes because I have not put my inner eight-year-old to death.

However, I am not sure China has gotten their submarine force in good enough shape for it to be a solid option for them.

I also like supercavitating torpedoes because I have not put my inner eight-year-old to death.

The trick is to age up to an inner 18-year-old, and enjoy Arpeggio of Blue Steel.

However, I am not sure China has gotten their submarine force in good enough shape for it to be a solid option for them.

Which, I think, is a big part of why the USN is more concerned with Russian submarines, and why they're still confident the death of the carrier is yet again over-predicted: as long as they can avoid being torpedoed, everything else they can figure out some way to deal with, even if that's just limping back to port after taking a hit.

Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually keep the carriers out of a Taiwan Strait scenario, though, and detail them to doing interdiction/blockade work outside of DF-26 range. Although the Navy has a lot of pride and a long time to work on the problem, so maybe they feel pretty confident by now.

I liked the way Admiral Richardson discussed it:

the term “denial,” as in “anti-access/area denial” is too often taken as a fait accompli, when it is, more accurately, an aspiration. Often, I get into A2AD discussions accompanied by maps with red arcs extending off the coastlines of countries like China or Iran. The images imply that any military force that enters the red area faces certain defeat – it’s a “no-go” zone! But the reality is much more complex. Achieving a successful engagement requires completion of a complex chain of events, each link of which is vulnerable and can be interrupted. Those arcs represent danger, to be sure, and the Navy is going to be very thoughtful and well prepared as we address them, but the threats are not insurmountable.

And as we've learned, "anti-ship ballistic missiles backed by Chinese spy satellites" are not in fact an insurmountable obstacle for carrier battle groups.

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