I am posting this here because this thread is practically the general post corner of this forum.
I was looking at reports RAND wrote about PLA in 2015. It is quite incredible how much the PLA has changed and how wrong they were about the speed of modernization.
For example in 2015 this was the combat aircraft fleet. Maybe a few J-10C as AESA. Nothing else that is competitive to what the US fielded. And you can see these people thought the J-16 was just a Su-30 equivalent rather than a AESA wielding cutting-edge fighter. 900 4th gens in total... Now there are probably 850+ AESA-equipped fighters in the inventory on their own, ~230 being VLO.
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And this is about the destroyer fleet. First of all missile ranges are wrong. The modern fleet consisted of 5 052C and a single 052D. Today there are 6 052C, 25 052D and 8 055. More in the way... Complete paradigm change in the seas.
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