Skywatcher
Captain
Or our reality is actually an elaborate computer simulation, and Deng Xiaoping in 1979 discovered the cheat code/hacked the program.
China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread
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You know how it is with the US defense analysts. The Russians don't have money for anything and need to beg India or the UAE to fund their military aircraft which will never be built. When they are fully funded by the Russian Federal budget. While the Chinese can't develop anything on their own without copying. Yet they come up with the J-20.
But if you look at their own US weapons programs you will find that the US themselves use a lot of money buying foreign expertise. They bought the Yak-141 patent on the VTOL scheme for the F-35B. They cooperated with Rolls-Royce to make the LiftFan for the F-35B. The Constellation class frigate design will be bought from Italy. So, even the "mighty" US military industrial complex can't do everything on its own.
Ignorance, arrogance and complacency. These are the reasons why the US is losing its clear military edge over China and Russia in just over twenty years. The US has hardly developed any innovative systems during the time period while China has made huge strides closing the gaps. On the surface, it might not look very obvious, but that's largely because it is overshadowed by the US's large existing stock and huge quantity lead. But if you look deeper and examine the capability and quality gaps, it's clear the gaps are significantly narrowed. In some cases, the US is even behind.
Still, there are people who have noticed it. For example, this video blogger asked why the US is falling behind China in all kinds of missiles: ASBM, hypersonic missiles, air-to-air missiles, etc.
Traditionally, the US has relied on air dominance over its adversaries to fight the war. But it's hard to argue today or in the near future the US still has that clear air superiority over China, at least in terms of aircraft capability. On the other side of the equation, the US doesn't really have advantages over China or Russia in air defense systems. Its carrier-centric navy is also facing challenges from ASBMs and hypersonic anti-ship cruise missiles. In other words, the challenges to the US military is not just platforms, but potentially also doctrines.
The only area that the US still has clear dominance over China is in nuclear submarines.
There's a scene in the British propaganda film "The Opium War" made just prior to the Handover where the qing officials remarked that their cannons couldn't reach the British ships whilst the British naval guns outranged what the Qing had at the time.
Years later, the descendants of the Dragon are now improving their own native invention of rocketry to outgun the anglos decadents of the Five Eyes.
Then there is the:
"We don't publish our advancements"
Well they do. Most of the time you know what the US will field 15 years later. The F-35 was a hot topic even 20 years ago. They of course don't publish detailed specs or ISR capabilities but who does?
US ground to air defense capabilities have been crap since at least the 1970s. Remember the M247 Sergeant York? The US has relied on its advantages in air power to compensate. Even artillery development took a backseat to aerial bombardment. Their artillery was stuck in a limbo for like 3 decades. All their money plowed into the Air Force and Navy. The Army gets peanuts as usual. Their Navy at least took the threat of Soviet anti ship missiles somewhat seriously and made defenses for it. But even then they made no comparable surface to surface missile systems of their own.
A lot of the US solid rocket industry has collapsed. The Trident missile had three separate contractors one for each rocket stage. They were all merged together into Thiokol which was later bought by Northrop Grumman. The only other solid rocket maker, Aerojet, was bought by Lockheed Martin. Raytheon complained about the mergers of course. They develop missiles but relied on these companies to make the actual solid rocket engine parts as subcontractors, and now they have been acquired by what are essentially their competitors.
Is it surprising their missile programs fail so hard when their military industrial base on them has collapsed just like that? Now they are developing the AIM-260 long range air to air missile supposedly to compete against Chinese long range missiles. Surprise, surprise, it is being developed by Lockheed Martin because they bought Aerojet and are muscling Raytheon out. Knowing Lockheed Martin if they do deliver it, it will neither be on time or at cost. The US might have to end up buying the Meteor missile from Europe or reverse engineering it somehow. Problem is, the Meteor is too large to fit inside internal bays in stealth fighters, and the version being developed to fit there has been delayed like heck. So they are SoL I think.
“They launched a long-range missile,” Hyten told CBS. “It went around the world, dropped off a hypersonic glide vehicle that glided all the way back to China, that impacted a target in China.” When pressed on whether the HGV hit the target, Hyten responded: “Close enough.”
A spaceplane on the other hand — such as the US Space Shuttle of the and what the Chinese Foreign Ministry claims was tested rather than a weapon system — goes up on a rocket booster and then hangs out in orbit for a while before using thrusters to re-enter the atmosphere. Spaceplanes are blunt nosed to help slow them down as they glide down to a runway for a soft landing, Lewis explained. By contrast, most HGVs are designed with sharp nose cones to reduce drag, he said.
Those who managed to get an idea of its flight path will very well be able to discern if it is a spaceplane or HGV.
Quite impressive either way. It ending up as a spaceplane or HGV should be not of a big concern to any party as China's adversaries won't be convinced that there'd NOT be a military application of the tech. China herself won't allow such a technology left unexplored or used militarily.
Until US tests a machine of the same calibre, the lead goes to China. Doesn't matter if the US has built and hid a wunderwaffe in Area51 or somewhere else ( its becoming a joke and excuse at this point).
They mentioned one of the complication of hypersonic vehicle separation is shockwave interference. Well the Teng Yun project publicly demonstrated it with a free flow separation test in hypersonic wind tunnel. This whole thing maybe a more complete test, real flight with control system.
Though Teng Yun TSTO is not supposed to separate at really high Mach number, more like M5 to M10. Right at the speed limit of it's air-breathing engine (RBCC/TBCC). Definitely not at Mach 20.
There're still a lot of confusion out there. Either the US doesn't know what it is or they're trying to confuse the public for some reason...
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