China is top 3 in everything except...

Kurt said:

Comparing China to the "small" UK or France.
Let's look at per capita PPP. Wikipedia says China is around 8,382$ (rough estimate).
France has 35,613 per capita PPP and the UK has 36,605$ per capita PPP.
Food is about 20% of expenditure in Europe, but can be significantly lower. If we assume you need 5,000$ PPP a year per capita to lead a healthy live and contribute to a war economy. Going below that ruins your health and kills you, making it impossible to contribute much to the war effort. A Chinese can now contribute 3,382$ PPP per capita, while French give 30,613$ per capita and British contribute 31,605$ per capita. that is 9-10 times the money China can raise. both have about 60 million inhabitants, thus a financial power available that compares to 600 million Chinese and both combined have the same financial war leverage as the whole of China. If you take into account that China did have a rapid growth, while the French and UK have been rich for decades, then you can deduct that both had much morer capability to build up maginificient armament, development know-how and other things in the past, then they still have quite an advantage because a decade ago they were each as wealthy as China.
The per capita disposable PPP income is even more limited for China because compareably small sums per capita have drastic standard of living repercussions that do not appear for the old industrial powers when they do raise higher amounts per capita to achieve the same sums for a similar purpose. The expected reply is now that Europeans are whimps and Chinese are tough. Well, read more about disposable income PPP per capita before you fall for that hybris.

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do you really understand what GDP is ?

Helicopters are tactical weapons. Useless for turning the tide of a war. They are useful when you are already winning and dominating to further win and dominate

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I'd disagree with this statement. Both sides used attack helicopters - both American and Russian made, to great effect at the height of the Iran-Iraq war, regardless of fighters and modern SAM systems. The UK also used ATGM armed Scout helicopters with considerable success (though there were losses to Pucaras) during the Falklands war, likewise in a very high threat environment.

I think he is talking about full-scale wars. Helicopters are extremely vulnerable and easily countered with simple shoulder launch anti-air weapons. Just look at the Soviet-Afghan war, where USSR had complete dominance in land and air but lost a huge number of helicopters due to mobile ant-air weapons.

below_freezing said:

You are wrong, sorry. Where was the J-20 developed? Chengdu, 3000 km away from Shanghai in the middle of the mountains. Does the UK or France have anything that compares? No. The difference between the J-20 and any 4th gen like Eurofighter, is just like that between F-22 and F-15: 1 to 100 ratio. In a war scenario, the J-20 developed in 5000 USD gdp/capita Chengdu is still leagues ahead of an Eurofighter developed in 40000 GDP/capita Paris/London.

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I kind of agree and disagree. J-20 for sure will be more advanced than the Rafael and Typhoon due to its time-frame advantage, being developed a decade or two later. Its stealthy air-frame, radar wave absorbent material, and fly-by-wire systems are obviously better.

This is like comparing a 2012 AMD CPU to a 2010 Intel CPU. Although Intel is always ahead of AMD in the same generation of platforms, but the newer generation of AMD chip will always be better than the older Intel counterpart.

Drifting off course, back to topic. But this time J-20 came out ahead of the European's counterpart, which doesn't even exist yet. Even if it comes out in 10 years from now, the J-20 will already be far ahead, already in service and being upgraded.

However, we have to acknowledge the existing inferiority of Chinese military industry. The avionics and engines are their Achilles heels. Although China did make countless improvements in those areas, they are still inferior to European counterparts. French and British radars are still much smaller with comparable performances, or better ranges and resolution with the same size. SNECMA and Rolls Royce are still decades ahead in terms of power, agility and fuel efficiency.

Yes, J-20 is ahead of Typhoon and Rafael, but we have to acknowledge it's developed 20 years after the previous two. On top of that, These Achilles Heels will continue to bother the Chinese jets. We still have no proof whether WS-15 will come into fruition soon enough to be put on J-20 when it enters service, or even worse, delaying the fielding of J-20. My personal estimation is that WS-15 will meet 80%-90% of the design expectation, but enough to enter service. But it will be continuously improved with each newly produced batch.

Air war is about destroying fighters. There's no need to that in the air. Attack and transport helicopters provide convenient tools for doing it on the ground and have much easier in flight refueling options.

Can you explain, why you think I don't understand GDP?
It's possibly misleading you that I calculated expenditure capability based on GDP. I made an intellectual jump by saying that the same per capita GDP PPP will be capable of providing the same means for basic nourishment necessary per capita of the population. From an autark war-economy perspective under stress this doesn't work, from a still interconnected war-economy perspective this is a reasonable approximation. If the interconnection of one side breaks down to a level much closer to enforced autarky, then the costs per capita of nourishment will likely exceed that of the interconnected, further decreasing war-effort capability.
The GDP is available financial power based on the external, international, reflection of estimated total buying power or in PPP on the internal buying power with buying power in turn being due to esteem of available goods and services. It does not readily translate into money available for investments such as a war effort. The necessary liquidity is achieved by collecting more money, war-taxes, and printing more money. In order to limit inflation by devaluation of buying power per available monetary unit due to the increased total number, the debt needs to be sold on a sufficient level on the national or international market in exchange for required goods/buying power to acquire these.

It does make more sense now ....

Greece GDP is higher than the Beijingers ..... do you really believe the buying/purchasing power of Greece is 2x of Beijingers ? .. you see my point .. hopefully

One can think of it this way. US$8,382 x 6.4 = 53,645 yuan would make a rural Chinese citizen quite rich, perhaps as comparable as any average Westerners if big items like imported cars are not included. They could opt for local made cars, for example. That's about 50% of the populations. Of course the reality is wealth is not equally distributed and China is soon to become the largest luxury market in the world.

Vini_Vidi_Vici said:

I kind of agree and disagree. J-20 for sure will be more advanced than the Rafael and Typhoon due to its time-frame advantage, being developed a decade or two later. Its stealthy air-frame, radar wave absorbent material, and fly-by-wire systems are obviously better.

This is like comparing a 2012 AMD CPU to a 2010 Intel CPU. Although Intel is always ahead of AMD in the same generation of platforms, but the newer generation of AMD chip will always be better than the older Intel counterpart.

Drifting off course, back to topic. But this time J-20 came out ahead of the European's counterpart, which doesn't even exist yet. Even if it comes out in 10 years from now, the J-20 will already be far ahead, already in service and being upgraded.

However, we have to acknowledge the existing inferiority of Chinese military industry. The avionics and engines are their Achilles heels. Although China did make countless improvements in those areas, they are still inferior to European counterparts. French and British radars are still much smaller with comparable performances, or better ranges and resolution with the same size. SNECMA and Rolls Royce are still decades ahead in terms of power, agility and fuel efficiency.

Yes, J-20 is ahead of Typhoon and Rafael, but we have to acknowledge it's developed 20 years after the previous two. On top of that, These Achilles Heels will continue to bother the Chinese jets. We still have no proof whether WS-15 will come into fruition soon enough to be put on J-20 when it enters service, or even worse, delaying the fielding of J-20. My personal estimation is that WS-15 will meet 80%-90% of the design expectation, but enough to enter service. But it will be continuously improved with each newly produced batch.

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but that doesn't matter. If there is no other counterpart you win anyways. If you fall behind you lose. That's it. Doesn't matter "why" there's no other counterpart.

I don't know about French and British fighter radars compared to ours. However, I do know 2 facts: the KJ-2000 has a maximum detection radius competitive with the Phalcon (a bit higher), and the 052C destroyer has a radar comparable with the air search radar on the Ticonderoga (this radar is not mounted on the Arleigh Burke which has the AN/SPY-1 with an average 100 nm detection radius).

If our large radars are competitive with Israeli and US radars, is it logical to say that a large AESA has nothing to do with a miniaturized AESA? Can't post links yet, but here's from Wikipedia:

Range 3 nmi (5.6 km) to 256 nmi (474 km) (AN/SPS-49A(V)1)

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The same Kavant Design Bureau of Ukraine that had provided China with cooling technologies for the radar antenna earlier also provided technical expertise in integrating the active phased array radar with ESM and the anti-stealth radar with Yagi antenna, which in turn, is a successor to the earlier Type 517H-1 (NATO codename: Knife Rest) long-range 2D air search radar. This metre-wave radar operates in the VHF band and is designated as Type 517M by the Chinese. Like the Type 348 Radar, this radar is also totally by China, and Chinese claim that it has better performance than the similar land-based JY-27 radar, which its accuracy is 150 meters for distance, one degree for angle, and its maximum range is 330 km. Type 517M radar, in contrast, has a maximum range of 350 km, but China has not released the details of its accuracy.

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From global security (KJ-2000)

Maximum range of detection of air targets is 470 km.

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From: Delays hit homegrown AWACS, Pakistan races ahead with China help - Times Of India

The Phalcon Awacs, with a detection range over 400 km, too, have suffered from technical glitches.

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If our large radars are competitive with Israeli and US radars

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Our?? do you live in the PRC? I think not...

I have to admit, I'm having a hard time trying to follow everything that have been said. But first, I have a question : How do you guys define being in the Top 3 ? Because I personnaly believe that right now, this ranking of China is based on technology and sheer numbers. Adaptability, field experience, tactics, training and readiness should also be taken into account. Even a simple such as the command structure are huge factor in some situation. For example, do you know if the Chinese military are using mission-based tactics or order-based tactics ?


I saw a discussion about GDP earlier. Well, I think that using China's GDP is not an effective way of calculating. China main income is coming from the export in the trade balance, giving a lot of liquidity. What the central government is doing in fact, is reinvesting all this cash in new city construction, without really following the demand, so we actually have an artificial GDP growth. In a case of a war, trading could be a real problem, thus reducing the trade income and effectively reducing the capacity of investing liquidity.

below_freezing said:

but that doesn't matter. If there is no other counterpart you win anyways. If you fall behind you lose. That's it. Doesn't matter "why" there's no other counterpart.

I don't know about French and British fighter radars compared to ours. However, I do know 2 facts: the KJ-2000 has a maximum detection radius competitive with the Phalcon (a bit higher), and the 052C destroyer has a radar comparable with the air search radar on the Ticonderoga (this radar is not mounted on the Arleigh Burke which has the AN/SPY-1 with an average 100 nm detection radius).

If our large radars are competitive with Israeli and US radars, is it logical to say that a large AESA has nothing to do with a miniaturized AESA? Can't post links yet, but here's from Wikipedia:


From global security (KJ-2000)



From: Delays hit homegrown AWACS, Pakistan races ahead with China help - Times Of India

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I believe that the efficiency of a radar system is not only the range, but also the accuracy and the capability of spotting target with low RCS. The problem is, we don't have kind of information. So how do you know this is caparable ?

muddie said:

I think people kind of overlook the quantity part of the "top 3". It is true that not all of China's airforce/navy/army ect is completely modernized but numbers do count if the technology gap is not huge, therefore making it top three in terms of raw power. Perfect example would be Nazi Germany and USSR in WW2, where an army with large numbers defeated a smaller technologically advanced army.

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Vini_Vidi_Vici said:

Back then the technological gap was too small even for the US military to defeat more backwards China. However, these days it is very easy to achieve it through technological means.

The war in Afghanistan and Iraq are very extreme cases. It's not the fact that they cannot kill the enemies, but the problem finding them. Theoretically speaking, if the mission was just to kill everyone in sight, similar to that in WWII, then the war could end in a week.
Right now the challenge is an exceptional case, which the war is rather tricky than HARD. Don't forget the US military took over all of Iraq within a month or less. The rest of the turbulence that lasted until now are more similar to the cartel problem in Mexico, than a conventional all-out war.

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A recent theory by Professor Michel Fortmann of the University of Montreal explained that whenever an army gain an advantage (it could be technological, numerical, tactical, etc), this army will be dominant until the opponent find a way to counter this advantage. At that point, it will become a grinding war where the first army to wear out the opponent win. He (Pr Fortmann) was able to demonstrated this in every warfare he studied, drawing the conclusion of war will always be an affair of number and resilience at the end.