All this Russia asking China for arms media storm seems like it’s a load of BS.
Any new complex systems will take weeks or even months just for the Russians to be trained on them. And as western Javelin spam showed, even sending in comparative simple systems is going to be massively wasteful and very likely ineffective, not to mention easily detected.
As such, there is minimal chance China can transfer weapons in secret and keep it secret. As such, without official Chinese government announcements, it’s almost certainly BS nonsense.
Similarly, it will take months or even years to set up production of Russian weapons in China before the first batches can reach the frontline.
Timeframe wise, it doesn’t make much sense.
Maybe China can transfer back some of the Russian made PGMs it purchased. But to be frank, i don’t think China has much of it left by now since the bulk of those stocks would have been purchased with the first batches of MKKs and would have reach the end of their useful lives long before now. With the PLA being notoriously cost efficient, they would have been used up in training before expiring, and any safety stocks held and expired would have been disposed off shortly after expiring anyways.
The only things that might be supplied in short time and have significant battlefield impact would be combat optics and night vision. We are already seeming Holosun optics showing up in some pictures, so it’s one thing I’m keeping an eye on. But such optics are commercially available so even if they start showing up en mass, it’s hardly going to be proof positive of anything other than maybe somebody making big AliExpress orders. Indeed, the Ukrainians have been buying Holosuns en mass themselves, so the Russians could just be using battlefield pick ups themselves.
