China's Defense/Military Breaking News Thread

[crobato]

Re: Chinese Military News Thread

Blame yourself for not reading the forums.

Friday, November 23, 2007 East-Asia-Intel.com

U.S. report finds U.S. intel consistently wrong on China buildup

A congressional commission on China reported last week that U.S. intelligence agencies have failed to properly assess Beijing's military buildup and capabilities and were taken by surprise on key developments, including new submarines built in secret.

点击图片欣赏原尺寸大图
(点击图片欣赏原尺寸大图)

A potentially accurate Chinese artist's projection of the new Type 093 and Type 094 SSBN from the PRC magazine Modern Ships.

“The pace and success of China’s military modernization continue to exceed U.S. government estimates,” stated the annual report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

“Indeed, on occasion the U.S. defense and intelligence communities have been taken by surprise, as in the case of the launching of the Jin class submarine by the navy of the People’s Liberation Army.”

The criticism was a slap at pro-China U.S. intelligence officials, including Thomas Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, National Intelligence Officer for East Asia Lonnie Henley, a protégé of convicted China spy Ronald Montaperto, and Dennis Wilder, a CIA official who is now the National Security Council staff senior director for Asia.
“Several Chinese advances have surprised U.S. defense and intelligence officials, and raised questions about the quality of our assessments of China’s military capabilities,” the commission report said.

“China’s defense industry is producing new generations of weapons platforms with impressive speed and quality, and these advancements are due in part to the highly effective manner in which Chinese defense companies are integrating commercial technologies into military systems,” the report said.

China also could launch up to 10 new Shang-class nuclear attack submarines by next year.

The Jin submarine, also known as the Type 094, is a new class of ballistic missile submarine. It was first photographed in the water in late 2006 moored in Xiaopingdao Submarine Base.

The submarine is believed to be equipped with 12 advanced JL-2 SLBMs with a range of about 8,000 kilometers.

“Industrial espionage provides Chinese companies an added source of new technology without the necessity of investing time or money to perform research.”


the source:

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[Norfolk]

Re: Chinese Military News Thread

Blame yourself for not reading the forums.

U.S. Intelligence seems to consistently miss important, even dramatic (especially in the areas of naval developments) PRC advances in military technology, armaments, and deployments. Admittedly, U.S. Intelligence is hardly broadcasting its knowledge to all and sundry, but in most openly published documents and in public statements a sense of detachment from, even apparent ignorance of, substantial changes in the entire PLA, seems to prevail. These appear to result in each sigificant new PLA development arriving as one surprise after another to U.S. Intelligence, which in turn gives the strong impression that it is slow and sluggish to respond, let alone to try to get ahead of the game and anticipate possible future developments.

I know that the appearance of the DDG 052C class took me by surprise, and since then I've gone out of my way at times to search for and anticipate new developments. I believe one of the long-time members of this board said it best recently when he stated that some interesting, unexpected surprises were on the way. Not to overstate the case, as the PLA cleary lags in many areas, even critical ones. But it does not detract from the fact that China has made, and is making, critical advances which have trashed many conventional, and popular, expectations.

 

[Violet Oboe]

Re: Chinese Military News Thread

Norfolk, probably there is more political ´blame game´than substance in this case. (...the Dem's though seem to have some point here!)

The IC (intelligence community) had of course solid advance knowledge about PLAN's nuclear sub projects though this knowledge was kept under wraps for ´certain´reasons. Indeed as I have posted several times the annual DoD reports to Congress about China's military power were not very informative (to say the least...) for years now and rumour has it that the classified report versions for Congress committee members (defense, foreign relations etc) were not much better anyway. Stay tuned for some kind of revelation, probably after the new administration has taken over in '09...

However this does not mean that no intelligence failures regarding China have occurred since e.g. the sub development was indeed somewhat ´incrementally underestimated´ (... I would stand corrected if PLAN would actually get 10 new SSN's in the next 2 years!).
Judging from the latest statements of senior CIA analysts about China during some Congress hearings there is much repetition and redundant recycling of old exhausted arguments (...restive peasantry, workers riots (oh, recently there were burning some buses!), internal problems could cause instability, the good old ´bad loans´myth... blah, blah, blah) being routine already 10-15 years ago.

Perhaps the current focus on the ´GWOT´has absorbed all really useful human resources...

 

[crobato]

Re: Chinese Military News Thread

U.S. Intelligence seems to consistently miss important, even dramatic (especially in the areas of naval developments) PRC advances in military technology, armaments, and deployments. Admittedly, U.S. Intelligence is hardly broadcasting its knowledge to all and sundry, but in most openly published documents and in public statements a sense of detachment from, even apparent ignorance of, substantial changes in the entire PLA, seems to prevail. These appear to result in each sigificant new PLA development arriving as one surprise after another to U.S. Intelligence, which in turn gives the strong impression that it is slow and sluggish to respond, let alone to try to get ahead of the game and anticipate possible future developments.

I know that the appearance of the DDG 052C class took me by surprise, and since then I've gone out of my way at times to search for and anticipate new developments. I believe one of the long-time members of this board said it best recently when he stated that some interesting, unexpected surprises were on the way. Not to overstate the case, as the PLA cleary lags in many areas, even critical ones. But it does not detract from the fact that China has made, and is making, critical advances which have trashed many conventional, and popular, expectations.

When i see reports like this:

"On the other hand, Japan's Sankei Shimbun reported yesterday that sinodefence.com whose headquarters is in England has for the first time openly published a photograph of China's new Type-094 "Jin-class" nuclear missile submarine, which has aroused the Japanese Defense Ministry's concern; it is now undertaking analysis and confirmation."

The Japanese Defense Ministry did not know anything at all about the 094 sub? This does not give much confidence about the intelligence establishment.

 

[Violet Oboe]

Re: Chinese Military News Thread

There are strong indications that JSDF is mainly dependent on what their US ´partners´are feeding them regarding military intelligence about China. Tokyo is trying to diversify her sources by establishing a more solid link with Taipeh (+ a SAR and optical sat array) but obviously this move has yet to pay off.

This state of affairs is very unfortunate for the national interests of Japan since she is currently lacking vital indigenous intelligence about China and is simultaneously prone to manipulation by their ´protector´. Of course Washington uses this instrument of control with the intent to shape the long term relations between Japan and China in a way that accomodates primarily US interests. Beijing must recognize that this development will only exacerbate sino-japanese ties and that China must take steps to address Japan's legitimate concerns.

Confrontation between China and Japan will create only senseless tensions in Asia to the benefit of extra regional powers.

 

[zhouj]

Re: Chinese Military News Thread

When i see reports like this:

"On the other hand, Japan's Sankei Shimbun reported yesterday that sinodefence.com whose headquarters is in England has for the first time openly published a photograph of China's new Type-094 "Jin-class" nuclear missile submarine, which has aroused the Japanese Defense Ministry's concern; it is now undertaking analysis and confirmation."

The Japanese Defense Ministry did not know anything at all about the 094 sub? This does not give much confidence about the intelligence establishment.

While living in the US and living in the corporate world has made me quite cynical about what really drives America, I think part of this may be deception on part of the American intelligence community to confuse or mislead the Chinese or another ploy to increase the budget.

On the other hand, it seems that most people (including all the esteemed Ivy League graduates) get through life at "top" firms without doing much. I doubt the US civil service is much better. Even in a market economy, there are very few truly ambitious people who want to go above and beyond. Most people are content to do decently well and float through their careers. This sense of complacency most likely extends to the CIA and intelligence agencies and I have no doubt that there are many career "slackers" content to do just good enough of a job to keep their job and on-track for promotions. They could care less if they're failing at their jobs to keep track of their enemies; 9/11 still hasn't really shattered the idea that the mainland is untouchable by conventional enemies at least.

A final consideration is that it may be yellow journalism; sensationalist reporting about intelligence failures is much more interesting than saying the CIA did its job (for once.)

 

[Quickie]

Re: Chinese Military News Thread

In my opinion, some of the misinformations could be deliberate in nature for some intended purposes. It reminds me of a chinese general who, during a lecture sometime ago, implies that the number of strategic weapons China have is much more than what was estimated by foreign intellingence. One may ask why the deliberate information leak? The reason could be that, to the chinese generals, the small number of strategic weapons, widely but falsely reported, was just not enough a deterence for a nuclear war specifically a limited one; and they were worried enough to do something about this misinformation. Which makes me wonder whether the chinese have fall into this trap of deliberate misinformations!

 

[Schumacher]

Re: Chinese Military News Thread

Here's a report from MingPao that a PLAAF Su-30 crash landed this month.
The pilot ejected & now all Su-30 are grounded.

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蘇30戰機墜眦 全部停飛 2007年11月27日
廣 告

【明報專訊】一架隸屬解放軍空軍安徽蕪湖基地的俄製蘇30重型戰機，近日在灣里機場降落時墜眦，機師跳傘逃生。事件引起中央軍委的高度關注，下令所有蘇30戰機停飛檢查。據悉，中國從俄羅斯購買約100架的蘇30，平均每架4000萬美元左右，目前該機種是中國空軍最先進的戰機。

機師逃生戰機報廢

據香港人權民運信息中心透露，本月21日，解放軍空軍第3師的一架蘇30戰機進行例行訓練返回機場時折翼，機師及時逃生，戰機則報廢，無法修復 。

中國空軍蘇30戰機已有數個墜眦案例，05年1月1架海軍航空兵的蘇30MK2型戰機就傳訓練飛行時墜眦，2名機師及時彈射逃生，同年7月空軍一架蘇30MKK戰機在雲南失事墜眦，機師亦跳傘逃生，但地面一名兒童閃避不及，不幸身亡。

蘇30是世界上最先進的戰機之一，為雙座多用途重型戰機，地面攻擊能力強，專門為對付美國的F-15戰機而設計。

 

[crobato]

Re: Chinese Military News Thread

It smells like a recycled story, given on other websites its accompanied with the CCTV taken picture of Su-30 no.17 on its nose after the landing gear collapsed. The timing is suspicious, given the recent negotiations with the Russians.

 

[kw64]

Re: Chinese Military News Thread

Here's a news article talking about China has recently refused the Kitty Hawk battlegroup to dock in HK to refuel and spend thanksgiving.

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