Effectiveness of China's Air Defence?

sunchips said:

In Canada currently where I live, the media is playing up how Canadian air radars constantly pick up Russian bombers on their runs, and then scramble fighters to intercept and shadow them.

In general, it is relatively accurate to understand North American airspace as there being a relatively secure "shield" against any hostile aircraft and/or missiles.

My question is: what about China? In 2001, the EP-3 got within 70 miles of Hainan. Normally, any suspicious foreign aircraft over north america, way before any aircraft would have gotten that close, there would be fighters shadowing and escorting it (although--mind you--not harrassing it, it seems).

How well is Chinese air defence at detecting, intercepting and resolving ALL air threats, over ALL of Chinese airspace, not just over economical areas?

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the EP-3 is not a good indicator, only the USA intercepts aircraft flying 200 nm from her shores. some country claims continental shelf, while other only look at only 12 nm of territorial waters.

Nor the harassing statement an educated one, sending an armed plane to intercept another is always a provocation. The US and European pilots have a history of flying close to Tu-95s, an F16 collided with one in such a manner. you seem to imply that the Chinese harassed the EP3?

During WWII, the Germans did something very smart. They conceived of the Flak train. A train with carriages for 88, 105 and 120 mm flak guns, even having a carriage with their own fire control systems. The extensive rail network in Germany and occupied europe enabled many guns to brought to bear in a short span of time. This accounted for a good percentage of RAF and USAAF bombers shot down over europe. Best example is the Ploesti raid. Flak accounted for more than 50% of the attacking force of 175 B24's.
Can you imagine, with China's extensive rail network, complemented with state of the art wireless and C4 communications, if china's SAM system could be rail friendly? Let us spice it up a little more, with extensive fiber optic communications other land and sea based systems can be beautifully integrated together. This is not counting on China's big fighter fleet of J11, 10, even 7's and 8's. This SAM system could be truly formidable indeed.
China is also working on intelligent submunitions for SAM warheads, and with the growth of nanotechnology, very soon FLAK will also be able to take advantage of intelligent proximity type of shells with spin stabilization. This will open another chapter in air defence systems.
Tom Clancey et al, may be fiction, but he and his friends surely give a lot of excellent hints to China. I call this "free consultation". Chinese love this. One of my chinese friends even thinks to invite Tom Clancey over to China and give him a VIP reception.
cheers
Clive

sunchips said:

In Canada currently where I live, the media is playing up how Canadian air radars constantly pick up Russian bombers on their runs, and then scramble fighters to intercept and shadow them.

In general, it is relatively accurate to understand North American airspace as there being a relatively secure "shield" against any hostile aircraft and/or missiles.

My question is: what about China? In 2001, the EP-3 got within 70 miles of Hainan. Normally, any suspicious foreign aircraft over north america, way before any aircraft would have gotten that close, there would be fighters shadowing and escorting it (although--mind you--not harrassing it, it seems).

How well is Chinese air defence at detecting, intercepting and resolving ALL air threats, over ALL of Chinese airspace, not just over economical areas?

Click to expand...

The EP3s were always intercepted before they got anywhere close to Chinese airspace.

Planes coming in from the Sea are always easier to detect and distinguish compared to planes flying in from a shared land boarder with a friendly neighboring country.

Given the size of China, there is almost certain to be large areas that are not very well monitored or monitored at all. However, that is only the case because there is no real threat in that area and/or little if anything worth defending.

If any of that changes, it would be fairly easy to put surveillance and/or air defense in place.

Clive, let me show you another failure of US society.

remember that most US cities had street cars and a proper public transit? and that the 50s came along and the Big Three "convinced" the govt that the age of personal transit is here and that the street cars, railways should be dug up?

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Not true.. President Eisenhower was so impressed with the German autobahn that he had the US design and develop the US interstate highway system. the developers that built the highways convinced large cities such as LA to get rid of their streetcars etc and build still more freeways.. Did the Big 3 lobby behind the scenes? Probably.

bd popeye said:

Not true.. President Eisenhower was so impressed with the German autobahn that he had the US design and develop the US interstate highway system. the developers that built the highways convinced large cities such as LA to get rid of their streetcars etc and build still more freeways.. Did the Big 3 lobby behind the scenes? Probably.

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Have you heard of the Great American Street Car Conspiracy? where nine defendants, National City Lines, American City Lines, Pacific City Lines, Standard Oil, Federal Engineering Corp, Phillips Petroleum, General Motors, Firestone Tire and Rubber and Mack Manufacturing were convicted of criminal conspiracy? still a huge debate to this day.

Lezt said:

Have you heard of the Great American Street Car Conspiracy? where nine defendants, National City Lines, American City Lines, Pacific City Lines, Standard Oil, Federal Engineering Corp, Phillips Petroleum, General Motors, Firestone Tire and Rubber and Mack Manufacturing were convicted of criminal conspiracy? still a huge debate to this day.

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ffSure.. That's one of the themes of the Disney cartoon film Roger Rabbit was based on. Don't laugh guys. There's some truth to what Letz stated. Developers building the freeways in LA conviced the city fathers of LA to rid themselves of there excellent streetcar system in favor of the automobile. I just don't believe the whole conspiracy theory.ff

Let's get back on topic.. Yes I know I'm the one that brought this subject up....

Back on topic!!

plawolf said:

Given the size of China, there is almost certain to be large areas that are not very well monitored or monitored at all. However, that is only the case because there is no real threat in that area and/or little if anything worth defending.

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This is why I think that interceptors like the J-8 is still vital to Chinese air defence (I think this is partially proven by the development of a new J-8 variant).

China, like, Russia, is a very large country and you can't provide decent air coverage for all that territory unless you either field large fleets of interceptors or have a huge carrier fleet like the United States. I don't think China could afford a U.S. scale carrier fleet in the next 20 to 30 years so we may see the SAC crank out more J-8s (maybe even a variant with electronically scanned radar ).

bd popeye said:

ffSure.. That's one of the themes of the Disney cartoon film Roger Rabbit was based on. Don't laugh guys. There's some truth to what Letz stated. Developers building the freeways in LA conviced the city fathers of LA to rid themselves of there excellent streetcar system in favor of the automobile. I just don't believe the whole conspiracy theory.ff

Let's get back on topic.. Yes I know I'm the one that brought this subject up....

Back on topic!!

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At one time about every city in the USA with a population of over 10,000 people had a trolly, if it was efficent enought many of them still would have such a system.

Let me ask a question, since China just bought 15 batteries of S300 from Russia why would Chiina buy Missles if it could produce sopisticated anti-aircraft missles?

Since Israel and I expect the USA has in all probability already obtained and countered that S300 technology as I suspect from Greece why would any one expect it to be worth while....

Also why would Russia sell S300 to China if the technology still has value since they expect China to copy the technology and resell it. Is it because Russia thinks the technology is worthless.

noname said:

At one time about every city in the USA with a population of over 10,000 people had a trolly, if it was efficent enought many of them still would have such a system.

Let me ask a question, since China just bought 15 batteries of S300 from Russia why would Chiina buy Missles if it could produce sopisticated anti-aircraft missles?

Since Israel and I expect the USA has in all probability already obtained and countered that S300 technology as I suspect from Greece why would any one expect it to be worth while....

Also why would Russia sell S300 to China if the technology still has value since they expect China to copy the technology and resell it. Is it because Russia thinks the technology is worthless.

Click to expand...

I think it is a case of diversification of a nation's defence capabilities. The U.S. air force also purchased the Harrier Jump Jet from Great Britain and Israel also purchased the F-16 and F-15 from the United States. No one doubts that the U.S. and Israel are capable of producing world class fighter jets.

It is not true that the Russians sold the S-300 to China because it is "inferior" technology to what they have domestically. They sold the Su-30 MKI to India while a large portion of their air forces are still flying Su-25s and Su-27s. They collaborated with India on the PAK FA, their recently developed stealth fighter and are willing to sell it to just about anyone with enough money to buy them.

What Clive said make some sense... however all the examples given are in the 50s and some in the sixties. Well... this is 2010, coming to 2011. I think we all make mistakes, even US too. However I do not think that US after making these mistakes will continue to make mistakes. Look at Korea war, the number of death and casaulty far outweighs those that die in Vietnam war... took a step further, at WWII, the number of casualty there far outweighs those that die in Korean war... then look into the two Iraq war (Gulf war if you will), the number of death had decreases further.

Although many of us didn't like it... but US is the only country (other than Israel) who is actively involved in most and hottest wars around the globe, even now. They are much more experienced, and faced a number of different threats.

China on the other hand, might have quite a large number of innovative peoples, had good hardwares and training doctrines, but they do not have that much experience when it came to real war and battles. The last major war that the Chinese fought was the Vietnam war... after that, they do not sent their army out for any major engagements.

Thus on paper, China looked pretty impressive, not sure how she would look in real wars. Hope that we will not find out though.