China Confirms New Hypersonic Nuclear Missile On 70th Anniversary (aljazeera.com) 187
hackingbear writes: In a large military parade led by President Xi Jinping to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic, China's military has shown off a new hypersonic ballistic nuclear missile believed capable of breaching all existing anti-missile shields deployed by the United States and its allies. The DF-17, as the new missile is known, uses hypersonic glide vehicle technology also permits it to fly on a highly manoeuvrable trajectory, at extremely fast speed, at a much lower altitude just before delivering its warhead, defeating attempts to detect and intercept the weapon. The DF-17 is believed to be the first of its kind to reach operation status. In addition to DF-17, China also showed off a number of new weapons including the first official revealing of DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile, with a reach of between 12,000 and 15,000 kilometers (7,400-9,320 miles), reportedly the longest in the world.
Great (Score:3, Insightful)
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It's not especially terrifying because existing missiles can already get "through" the "missile shield", at least some of the time, and there's more than enough missiles out there to get in already. Nukes aren't stopped by SDI, they're stopped by MAD.
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throw enough of them out fast enough that we never get off that retaliatory shot
They don't have the military spending level to do anything like that, or to make anybody think they might.
And also, we have too many launch sites for anybody to have a plan that stupid. That's before even considering the submarines and stealth bombers.
More likely it is intended to be taken as a threat to carrier battle groups.
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buy hurricanes (Score:5, Informative)
Back in the '40s they let Stalin buy hurricanes. He wanted to buy Spitfires too, but the British kept them for their own defense.
Re:buy hurricanes (Score:5, Funny)
Back in the '40s they let Stalin buy hurricanes.
Still better than the F-35...
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That unhinged leader should get together with a different unhinged leader who wants to ignore hurricanes and buy Greenland.
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Not as terrifying as an unhinged leader that wants to buy hurricanes and nuke Greenland.
It's only acceptable as a man to buy hurricanes if you're on a bar at the beach. Otherwise stick to beer, gin and whiskey.
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They make a pill for that now. Talk to your doctor, Bob.
First strike weapon (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a first strike weapon and it's use should be considered accordingly. This is not a defensive weapon and has no place is a civilized world. It should be policy to respond to any launch of this weapon with our own nuclear arsenal.
Re:First strike weapon (Score:4, Insightful)
Umm.. duh? I would assume that anyone who launches a nuke at us will get a response from our own arsenal. That's kind of how these things work.
And it's not just offensive, it's part of a MAD policy. If your enemy thinks he can't knock down your missiles he's less likely to attack you. It's perfectly valid and not just first strike.
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And it's not just offensive, it's part of a MAD policy. If your enemy thinks he can't knock down your missiles he's less likely to attack you. It's perfectly valid and not just first strike.
Or he just tries to put his own missiles so close to you that he can pull off his own first strike before you have a chance to react and launch your own.
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That only works if they can be sure that they'll knock out all C&C and be able to keep it offline. For a good percentage of countries with nukes, that's not a safe gamble, and thus MAD still works.
For the US and Russian in particular, this is not an effective strategy. For other countries it might be, but only if they don't have allies who are also nuclear capable. So....North Korea.
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The US, UK and France all have submarine launched nuclear ICBMs. There are missile shields but they can't guarantee to get all the warheads. So MAD is preserved.
This is a tactical weapon. It can take a conventional warhead, but for things like ships it's hard to guide such a fast missile to a moving target so a tactical nuke can be used instead.
Russia already has them, and worse. India may have them, or will soon. The US is certainly developing them. Can't put that genie back in the bottle.
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If you compare the speed of a ship to the speed of a missile, the ship represents a stationary target. And yet, a high speed warhead still has a hard time hitting it because the ocean is large and electronic counter-measures are a thing. Even a "tactical" nuke is going to have a hard time sinking an aircraft carrier. You'd have to use a full-size one, and what good is it? The whole world still burns down.
The US spent over 20 years developing similar technology, and didn't actually build it.
The Chinese are n
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That's why we have ballistic missile submarines.
It's pretty fucking tough for a well equipped peer navy to track them, let alone track them well enough to neutralize them.
I'd wager the Chinese basically have no defense against that.
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Re: First strike weapon (Score:2)
I'd wager that the crew is somehow authorized to do so without the need for any kind of launch codes from Washington.
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It has widely been reported that all the US launch codes are all-zeros.
Numerous Presidents have reportedly attempted to correct this matter, but none have succeeded.
The military maintains the ability to fight. Being at the top of the chain of command isn't always good enough to get orders all the way to the bottom where they would finally be executed.
It is part of the job of the nuclear submarines to avenge the nation if we're hit with a successful first strike, so don't expect actual "launch codes" that th
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Clearly, you didn't you watch "Crimson Tide"?
Despite having served in the Navy, I am not familiar with the launch protocols of subs as I was surface navy. Our ship was not nuke-capable (either to carry or launch).
However, I would think that if a sub loses contact with C&C on all channels, that bad thing would surely follow.
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I'm pretty sure I've read that there is a process for SSBNs to self-launch missiles. It's obviously convoluted to prevent accidental or rogue launches.
I suspect there's some kind of system that won't decrypt local launch codes unless it fails some consecutive days of affirmative contact with command, and I'm also sure it requires active participation of several senior crew members.
It wouldn't make sense to have a leg of the nuclear triad neutered by loss of remote command authority.
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As a former submariner on one of those boats...
Yes.
subs potentially compromised (Score:2)
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Sounds like a great system for tracking where we want them to think our submarines are.
It isn't like you can do that at a distance.
I don't doubt that there is a true story nearby, where they have some sort of sensor data from ships that they believe was a submarine. But it isn't the same thing.
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Yes. But China was not that successful in building their own ballistic missile submarines.
This DF-17, when combined with the DF-ZF gives them the deterrent that they want against the US and Russia. It will give them confidence that no one will interfere if they do other countries what Russia did to the Ukraine.
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And it's not just offensive, it's part of a MAD policy. If your enemy thinks he can't knock down your missiles he's less likely to attack you. It's perfectly valid and not just first strike.
Or he just tries to put his own missiles so close to you that he can pull off his own first strike before you have a chance to react and launch your own.
That's silly, we have stealth bombers and of course we could pull off a first strike before anybody launched anything. But it is a silly checkbox statement; they still launch their counter-strike, the world still burns the same. If the US was going to do a nuclear first strike it would have happened in the 1950s.
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This is a first strike weapon and it's use should be considered accordingly. This is not a defensive weapon and has no place is a civilized world. It should be policy to respond to any launch of this weapon with our own nuclear arsenal.
That's....kind of why people are worried about technology like this. It makes it harder to determine, in the case of a launch, if it was a real launch or accidental (and less time to communicate if accidental), and also makes it harder to defend against. If you know you can defend against a nuclear attack you might not launch your own because you don't want a nuclear war or to destroy half the planet, but if you know you can't defend against it then fuck it, launch them sumbitches, we're dead anyway. Big
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Big, slow, dumb, single warhead missiles are much "safer" than small, fast, MRV-carrying missiles that can fly at low altitudes.
You mean safer for the enemy, which, I do not think is a good quality for a weapon.
If the enemy can defend against your nuclear attack, then it's like you do not have nuclear weapons at all, what's stopping them from invading your country?
I agree about the time in case the launch is an accident - a faster missile leaves less time to react. However, I do not see the development stopping, unless there is some sort of international agreement to not have defenses against the "fastest acceptable" missiles.
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Big, slow, dumb, single warhead missiles are much "safer" than small, fast, MRV-carrying missiles that can fly at low altitudes.
You mean safer for the enemy, which, I do not think is a good quality for a weapon.
Wait, you're commenting on this and you never even heard of MAD? Durrrrrr
Safer for the enemy is not distinguishable from safer for you, or safer for Switzerland, or safer for your mom.
...but not in a useful way (Score:2)
This is a first strike weapon
Technically true but even it will not be fast enough to knock out US missiles before they could be launched. So that would just allow China to be the "winner" for all of a few minutes before the retaliatory strike wiped them out too and the rest of the world died more slowly under a radioactive cloud of a nuclear winter. Nobody can win a global, nuclear war and even those not taking part will lose.
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and the rest of the world died more slowly under a radioactive cloud of a nuclear winter
Don't be such a downer, Russia would be launching too, even if the French wuss out it is still going to be pretty good international coverage.
This seems familiar.. (Score:3)
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I'm pretty sure that the Trump Presidency is what led up to the fall of the US government before SnowCrash, just remember to save your Kongbucks
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I feel like we're living in a Tom Clancy novel now.
I suspect the current events in America was co-written by Carl Hiaasen. Tom Clancy wrote the part about Chinese nukes, Hiaasen wrote in some of the parts about the politicians getting elected in the West recently.
Re: This seems familiar.. (Score:2)
If that's true, then only Clive Cussler could save us.
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If you really want to understand how politicians in the West are elected these days you'll have to read Interface by Neal Stephenson and some other guy.
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Welcome back to the surface.
No, it was already like this before you went down there. You simply forgot.
But the climate! (Score:5, Insightful)
While China showcases these weapons of mass destruction, remember that the bag of chips you're eating is literally killing the planet!
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Nevermind the CONSTANT droning from Fundies about the end of the world, that plays a more abusive role on children than any concerns about good climate management
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Strike a nerve?
I remember a classmate inviting me to a 'carnival' at their church, which turned into an all-day indoctrination with everything except baptisms going on
I realized it was bunk, and spent me time misquoting the highlighted sections of the bible that we were expected to read and trying to avoid getting my friend in trouble.
When I got home, my Mom asked what had happened, then let me know that she had been put through the same BS in the 1940's, and when that happened, her mother (my grandmother)
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And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
"Because they are delicious." Amen.
Tarrif (Score:5, Funny)
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We tried that on the French, and it kinda worked.
Cold war is on again (Score:2)
Plastic Junk for ICBM's (Score:5, Insightful)
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You mean the Chinese junk that our esteemed political class let flood into the country while dressing themselves with the flag and holding 10k per plate dinners for the robber barons?
Yeah, some of us saw this coming and were called racist xenophobes for pointing it out.
Who cares (Score:5, Interesting)
Submarine launched missiles have been so capable for so long that anything else is close to irrelevant.
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Yeah I was just thinking that in a nuclear war the only missiles that really matter are the submarine launched ones because they really cannot be pre-targeted. Presumably this is what North Korea is thinking too. But maybe they have variants of these missiles for their submarines too. Whatever. Ultimately it's hard to say who would 'win' in an all out nuclear war. The more interesting question is whether there would be anyone who would not lose. Unless the Chinese have also developed a 100% effective ICBM d
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China is still quite lacking in their ballistic missile submarine fleet.
The DF-17 + DF-ZF can fill a similar role when launched from mainland China. The DF-ZF glider makes it very hard to intercept, the DF-17 gives it long range. The mobile launchers make it a second-strike cpability.
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The nuclear angle is a red herring. These are designed to deliver conventional weapons and smaller tactical nukes.
China has submarines and ICBMs. What it doesn't have is a powerful modern navy with a large fleet of aircraft carriers. These are highly effective against large ships and protect Chinese airspace.
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The nuclear angle is a red herring. These are designed to deliver conventional weapons and smaller tactical nukes.
They're not the first and won't be the last to realise that's a terrible idea. Both the USA and USSR (probably now Russia, I don't know if they've repeated the loop) realised that their ICBMs could equally well deliver conventional warheads and looked at dual mode unstoppable delivery platforms.
Both backed away because by the time you fire an unstoppable potentially nuclear warhead, there's a go
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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yeah for the absolutely insane amount of money we spend on defense we really don't end up with a lot to show for it.
Maybe.... just maybe... it has something to do the the "cost plus" contracts we keep giving out to a few companies to light huge bonfires of cash while they develop lousy tech.
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It's not as if the US suddenly lost its deterrence suddenly. Just its ability to force China and Russia into an arms race. The US can't get its first strike capacity anymore the pressure for an arms race has decreased, despite the , what was it again ,1 trillion budget for new nukes which Obama approved.
Re: Im not surprised. (Score:2)
Pretty much the same can be said about the m16. Sure, it doesn't have the stopping power of an ak47 and costs a lot more, but it has a much longer effective range and fires more accurately.
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Anyone who sinks a US aircraft carrier had better be prepared for full on war. I don't think even China would risk that. Ultimately it is manufacturing capacity that wins real wars though and that is where China is king. So I am not sure anyone can actually win a war against China. They can out-manufacture ANYONE at least as things are currently.
The US, UK, Germany, Japan, and Korea can still out-tech them, but we can't beat them at manufacturing. Of course as soon as one side launches nukes the war is basi
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All China has to do is wait the US out. It doesn't need to do something as rash as use nukes.
The US and the world market is massive house of cards waiting for the stabilizing effects of the petrodollar to wane completely.
For China, it will have the infrastructure, the manufacturing base and the knowledge economy that comes with it, millions of men who will never have wives, and a highly censored society with no civil liberties. The perfect tool for conquest. Would the US really risk nuking China to prevent
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The best use of a weapons system is never to need to use it. Of all the complaints about the F35, "we didn't get into a peer conflict where it was deployed" seems the most absurd.
Only for humanitarian purposes, of course! (Score:2)
time is ticking (Score:2)
They will use it on their own people first (Score:2)
Mao murdered or caused the death of over 30mil Chinese people, due to starvation and oppression. Xi wants to be Mao2, but wants to beat the record for total murdered.
Re:DF-17 (Score:5, Funny)
Do they not have their own alphabet ?
Yes, but "DF" nicely abbreviates as "Deadly F---er"
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DF is supposed to stand for "dumb fire", as in, unguided once it's launched.
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DF is supposed to stand for "dumb fire", as in, unguided once it's launched.
Wishful thinking. It is a clone of the Russian Avanguard which is guided, just moved to a short/medium range launcher.
This is a carrier group killer. No known defence and if it is armed with a 300Kt warhead it does not need to be precise.
The chinese also showed a supersonic reconnaissance drone which fits the puzzle of providing "spotter" services on where to point the glide missiles.
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You were hoping it was something cool like that, but it just means "East Wind." As in, fart missile.
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It's likely not their own tech, so why should they use their own alphabet?
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These types of parades serve both domestic and international functions. They want people to talk about these weapons, to know they have them. That means something easy to pronounce and remember. DF-17 is a lot easier to say than Shan liàng de róngyào dengta-12 or "shining beacon of glory-12"(Made up name phrase w/ google translate) or whatever they would actually name it.
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They want people to talk about these weapons, to know they have them. That means something easy to pronounce and remember.
The Iranians felt the same way.
https://cdnph.upi.com/collecti... [upi.com]
To confuse the potential adversary (Score:2)
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Unfortunately, Slashdot does not support Unicode. So we have to call this missile DF-17 here.
However, Wikipdia also has the Chinese name:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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WTF? China has had nukes for decades, why do you think that they designed the Long March missile series that they now use for sat launches?
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My point is when they are the greatest existential threat we face why does anyone think its okay to tie our hands in arms race without shackling theirs as well.
The left in this country is irresponsible
Re:Russia Russia Russia (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny how you use emotional language that does nothing to advance either communication of issues or actual thought, i.e. nobody's hands are tied.
The US has out spent every other country on the planet (combined) and has real capabilities while very other country tries to sell smoke and mirrors.
China is the US's number one trading partner, they will only become a threat if their ability to grow through trade is cut off...
Um, how's the dumb fucking trade war going?
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China is the US's number one trading partner, they will only become a threat if their ability to grow through trade is cut off...
Tell that to the freedom loving people of Hong Kong, who don't prospect the idea of being dragged off to chinese reeducation camps.
Um, how's the dumb fucking trade war going?
Too little, too late. But the people who jump for joy and cheer fanatically at the prospect of gun confiscations probably wouldn't appreciate the idea of preserving liberty anyway.
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I'm not the NPC you're looking for.
Re:Thanks, Bill! (Score:4, Informative)
FYI, it was Nixon who started allowing manufacturing infrastructure to be sold to China, the Clinton Admin prosecuted numerous spies who were trying to steal missile tech
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Like the Vulcans say - "Only Nixon could go to China".
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They build missiles instead of feeding their people.
US: 3.2% GDP spent on military.
China: 1.9% of GDP spent on military.
It's not just communists spending on the military!
Re: Communists love death (Score:2)
Re: Communists love death (Score:2)
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> They build missiles instead of feeding their people.
Have you uh, had a look at the US in the last 70 years or so? I believe some spunky fellow named Eisenhower warned everyone about it?
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I believe some spunky fellow named Eisenhower warned everyone about it?
What, that pacifist leftist peacenik? ;-)
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Xi believes that the current US President is ignorant enough to not know about Star Wars
Of course he knows about Star Wars he IS Emperor Palpatine and his buddy Lindsay Graham is Jar Jar Binks!
Re: Communists love death (Score:2)
No, Jar Jar is Joe Biden.
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I thought it was "Turtle" McConnell. Or, is he just a Gungan?
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In all seriousness, Mitch McConnell looks a *lot* like a Koopa Troopa from the Mario games.
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Xi believes that the current US President is ignorant enough to not know about Star Wars and sucker enough to take the bait
It wouldn't surprise me at all if Xi is stupid enough to think that the US President is involved in selecting projects for military spending.
And the "Star Wars" space-based laser shark might have just been a cover for the early stages of the missile defense system that we actually built and deployed.
There are also (unconfirmed) reports that many common US air-to-air missiles can target ICBMs when launched from the max altitude of common US fighter jets. If true, this could be targeted at avoiding those.
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Maybe you are too young to know better, but the GOP has been screaming PINKO PINKO PINKO since the 1950's and didn't really cozy up to Russia until Putin started throwing his oligarchy money at them and offering to use the FSB to throw US elections
It's called hypocrisy, look it up
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Even during the 2000 election I had a red-faced Republican scream PINKO in my face for supporting Al Gore.
They were still calling me a "commie" as shorthand for Democrat even in 2012.
They used to never even use the word "Socialist," they always said "Communist" because it sounded worse. They still say socialist, because Bernie, but they don't shout about Communists anymore. That's new. Very new.
Many of them seem to think we've forgoten being shouted at.
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The DF-17 by itself is indeed not that notable.
What however, is significant, is that the payload the DF-17 carries is the DF-ZF (aka WU-14) Mach 45 to Mach 10 hypersonic glider (which has a ramjet for propulsion below 100 km altitude) which itself carries nuclear warheads or anti-ship missiles (e.g. the DF-21D) as payloads.
This combination should be able to easily sink any aircraft carrier on earth from mainland China within one hour, making it an excellent deterrent against the US (which relies heavily on
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The US relies on aircraft carriers only as a deterrent to conventional conflict, though.
I agree the purpose is saber-rattling regarding carrier battle groups, but it is not in any way an actual deterrent.
Also, the US has spent a lot more money over a much longer period of time on similar vehicles, and has chosen not to actually deploy any. The Chinese are pretending to deploy one, but where the glider part that would make it interesting hasn't even undergone serious testing. That indicates various things.
no we don't have this tech (Score:2)
What a re-entry vehicle does now: it spins and falls and survives a few seconds of extreme heat so it can commit genocide. The traversal through the thick part of atmosphere is maybe 3-5 seconds. It has no communication, sensors (would be pointless with massively ionized gas surrounding you), flight controls or targeting.
The ballistic part of of
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I bet Chinese get much better value from their money and in absolute terms are buying substantially more equipment and nearly of the same quality and technology level as USA.
If that was true it would show up in exports. But actually they're still behind France and Germany. Pretty much only close Chinese allies will buy their stuff. Pakistan buys some, but they buy more from Russia.
China not only spends a lot less than the US on arms, they also maintain a larger standing army. And they don't have any history of deployments that would give their military industry the sort of knowledge about design that the US and Russia have.
In areas that are more important to them, like factory