^Yes, I'm aware of the present population disbalance. I'm just saying the origins of the mass approach date from WW2 (and probably all the way to the Napoleonic War) when the Soviets did have a considerable population advantage over Germany. During the Cold War, the Soviets and other Warsaw Pact states practiced extensive conscription which made for large armies. I'm sure the Warsaw Pact always had a higher proportion of the population in arms than the West. Of course, China dwarfs everyone. These days, China's got a real opportunity to have both quantity and quality which would be formidable.
Ask anything Thread (Air Force)
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
China quantity over quality for me has always been something I suspect to be a myth, even back in the Korean War. Red Army got by with with battle hardened troops with excellent squad level tactics. Think successful guerrilla war. China practices war closer to what its traditional military classics has thought. I don't think its the Chinese strategy to match its opponent on an even chess board. Rather, war is viewed like Go, you are out positioning and out strategizing your opponent with each small step gaining you an upper hand in the long run.
That's why instead of focusing on building better arms, focus on building a better arms industry. Want to build an better arms industry? Find what it takes, better infrastructure, better education, better technological development and so on. When you have a better economy and educated populace, you will have a better arms industry, and when you have a better arms industry, better weapons will come out of it naturally.
The Napoleonic War really. Even back in the First World War they nicknamed the Russian Army the Steamroller.
With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the high death rates in the 1990s, etc they lost any population advantage they had vs the US. The US kept growing and if you add the migrants has grown to have more population today than even if you add together all the nations in the former USSR together. Russia still has like twice the population of Germany but even in WWII the Soviets were outnumbered if you account for all Axis forces. Thus Russia has had to push for quality even more. Even back in WW2 the Soviets had a technological lead over the Axis in lots of fields including armor. The Russian population today is more close to Japan than the US in size and they have a lot of territory they need to protect. The only way to do that is with technology. Put together France, Germany, and Italy have more population and industrial might than Russia. But if you know the history of Russia you would know that Russia has faced terrible odds and survived before.
Just look into the history of Russia back when it was still called the Duchy of Muscovy. Much like Prussia the modern Russian state evolved through a series of attritional wars against much larger and richer neighbors and kept coming on top for centuries. They even fought battles on two fronts against larger armies and won. The one thing which comes through in all these instances across Russia's history is the highly centralized government with a charismatic leader and a population with a high degree of endurance for pain and suffering to be honest.
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How many fighters is PLA producing each year? Assuming a 30 year life for a fighter, Can we expect China to have a fighter fleet equal to US aka 2400 modern 4th Gen+ planes by 2035? I know that right now they have 1200 modern 4th gen+ fighters.
PiSigma
"the engineer"
30 year life is way too long for some planes. It depends on quality of build, maintenance and flight hours. Most modern American jets got 8000 hours lifespan and flies 200 hours. But this is dependent on a good maintenance crew. So use this as a baseline.
Back in the day, the original j10a were not built very well, and the maintenance teams were not experienced so the lifespan of the original j10a is going to be lower. The original j10a were also used more extensively, probably 500-600 hours a year to train up pilots, once planes become available the hours went down. This means that the originals probably can last 15 years, and you can see this because some j10a are retiring. Just like the original su27s China bought are in the same boat.
The newer planes will probably last a bit longer.
emm, it's never the jet life-time that limits the size of a major airforce.
Currently, SAC and CAC are producing about 50+ new jets each every year, totally 100-120? annually, and since 2016~2017 we keep getting the news that they are expending, so maybe 200+ in total by 2030. By this rate, all the J-7 and J-8 should get retailed by around 2025 and maybe half jh-7 replaces by newer jets like j-16. So by 2030, if they remain in the same size, we may be looking at a total 1800-1900 4th gen+ fleet, with 500-600 J-20 in the stocks.
That's not counting the UAVs, but I think they mostly add new units for UAVs instead of replacing the old fighter units
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I just realize I overlooked this for a long time, but do we know how many “dadui” are there in the 9th brigade? And also the rumored upcoming 1st brigade? And the likely following candidate 4th brigade as well?