Honestly, this does make me genuinely worried about the lower number of VLS cells (64) on the Chinese 052Ds compared to their American and Japanese counterparts (96). Because no matter how accurate, powerful and resilient your radar sets and fire control suites are, I think the volume of firepower that every ship can put out is also a key factor in reliably dictating a battle's outcome.
Patch mentions the Burke's VLS only being able to energize 1 cell per 4 for a salvo. So Burke's initial salvo is divided by 4 right off the bat which drops that salvo size from the full 96 to 24. Then they factored in spares and missiles lost in the pre-flight phase to drop it to 16.
The Chinese UVLS operates somewhat different in exhaust formats etc. so I don't know if that divide by 4 applies at all to the 052D. If I recall correctly the UVLS has individual exhausts unlike the Mk41 so that's one hint that the PLA may potentially have access to more for the initial salvo.
Did the US really shutted down most of their production lines such that airframes and submarines are not enough and had to be overused?
For some cases it is because of production lines being shut down; Toaster mentions the SSN-22 Connecticut being disassembled for parts to repair the SSN-23 Jimmy Carter because the companies/yards that produced them have shutdown. But that doesn't fly for the other stuff. VA-class subs are still being built for example.
My personal view after hearing their discussion is the US force simply wasn't built for these sorts of tempos. They're dealing with a major surface fleet & air force challenge from the PLA that isn't remotely comparable to what other nations are putting out. So their force structure might have worked in the post-USSR collapse world but not so much in the current day.
I_Y8_H8 touches upon something similar when he talks about Taiwanese procurement. He says Taiwan's current force structure (thought up in the 1990-2000s) makes perfect sense if they were fighting 2005 PLA. The problem is the PLA has moved so extremely far beyond that level.
That was a fr1ck1ng massive surprise to hear, honestly. I have always put the F-35 on high regard, lol.
Looks, I don't want to mean anything rude to Patch, but I just hope that he is not saying that to gaslight the SDF because of the J-20 vs F-22 incident that happened late last August.
As far as I recall, this is something Patch was saying even before that incident happened. He was saying J20 was superior as system/platform/overall etc. but that the F22 was tactically/individually better. Some folks took a lot of issue with that. I don't think his position has changed at all on the topic.
Found this live stream comment when Patch, Blitzo, Toast and Y8 were talking about the Indian military:
View attachment 103515
I recalled this video by Liu Xiaofei from November last year:
To sum it up:
At that time, I found that statement by a seemingly very important former military official rather difficult to believe.
But now, man, I see...
Patch made a comment about the Indian military being made of the stuff they talk about (poo). Toaster and the rest were saying pretty much the same thing. It just confirms what I've gleaned about the Indian military for all these years. It's a joke.
Hard not to see it even from an outsider's point of view. Abysmal procurement and maintenance. Almost complete lack of domestic industry that can service existing equipment or innovate new platforms. Extremely visible poor morale in their troops. Military service functioning as a handout / safety net for the chronically hungry. India's been having these issues for how many decades now? And they've never made any move to actually fix their problems. At this point you have multiple generations of the military from top to bottom that has grown up in this sort of culture. This sort of rot becomes almost impossible to break from within.
If you look at their indigenous military procurement, it's a complete disaster. So I think of India's military in the same vein as Myammar, Thailand, and Vietnam's.
