News on China's scientific and technological development.

I first suspect the CZ-6 program is the same with the CZ-5 program. Apparently, they are different programs.





State authorities recently officially approved the Changzheng 6 carrier rocket project, according to China Space News.

Meanwhile, Changzheng 6 carrier rocket development work, undertaken by the 8th Research Institute of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), has also formally commenced. The first Changzheng 6 carrier rocket is expected to be ready in 2013.

The Changzheng 6 carrier rocket is part of a new generation of non-toxic and pollution-free carrier rockets in China. It adopts many new technologies that are being used in China for the first time and its development is a very difficult task.

Since 2000, CASC's 8th Research Institute has organized scientists and technicians to carry out overall program demonstration and research key technologies for China's new generation of carrier rockets.

In July 2008, China National Aviation Holding Company decided and confirmed that the development of the Changzheng 6 carrier rocket would be undertaken by CASC's 8th Research Institute.

The 8th Research Institute immediately began to organize a development team and comprehensively carried out coordination, demonstration and planning work prior to the approval of the project.

At present, CASC's 8th Research Institute has finished overall program demonstration, determined the planning and arrangement for the entire rocket type development process, elected persons in charge of all systems and essentially confirmed major technological subsystem programs. The research institute is further studying key technologies and developing key single machines.

:china::china::china:

China says military arsenal comparable with West

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press Writer – Mon Sep 21, 11:36 am ET

BEIJING – China's military now possesses most of the sophisticated weapon systems found in the arsenals of developed Western nations, the country's defense minister said in comments published Monday.

Many of China's systems, including the J-10 fighter jet, latest-generation tanks, navy destroyers, and cruise and intercontinental ballistic missiles, match or are close to matching the capabilities of those in the West, Liang Guanglie said in a rare interview posted on the ministry's Web site.

"This is an extraordinary achievements that speaks to the level of our military's modernization and the huge change in our country's technological strength," Liang said.

But an analyst said the claim was likely directed at the Chinese public and exaggerated its technological prowess.

The minister's remarks come ahead of the country's biggest military parade in a decade scheduled for the Oct. 1 National Day in Beijing. That event will showcase much of the country's most advanced equipment, the fruit of a booming economy and nearly two decades of annual double digit percentage increases in the defense budget.

Liang said he believed the parade would "display the image of a mighty force, a civilized force, a victorious force."

Still, in its 2009 report on Beijing's military power, the Pentagon ranked Chinese defense technology below that of the United States — as it always has — but noted that the country's armed forces have improved their capacity to carry out operations away from its shores and deny other militaries access to its airspace and seas off its coast.

Defense industry reforms and arms imports "have enabled China to develop and produce advanced weapon systems such as missiles, fighter aircraft and warships," the report says.

Hans M. Kristensen, an expert on the Chinese military at the Federation of American Scientists, said Liang's comments may have overestimated the country's capabilities.

"Although Western countries are concerned and uncertain about China's military modernization, China hasn't gone through the wars that have shaped and sharpened the swords and strategies of the Western militaries," Kristensen said. "It takes a great deal more than building a weapon system for it to be technologically comparable."

The 2.3 million-member People's Liberation Army is the world's largest standing military and its modernization has been accompanied by gradual steps toward greater engagement with the outside world. Liang said China has contributed 13,000 troops to U.N. peace keeping operations along with three navy flotillas to join in anti-piracy patrols of the coast of Somalia.

Despite such moves, however, the PLA remains largely a closed shop and military ties with the United States and other nations are often hobbled by disputes over Taiwan and other political issues.

China's improved capabilities are also seen as emboldening the country's military and civilian leaders in using force to back up political and territorial claims. Chinese ships have repeatedly harassed U.S. Navy surveillance vessels collecting intelligence off China's southeastern coast, while Chinese submarines have aggressively pursued aircraft carrier battle groups.

And while relations with Taiwan have warmed in recent months, Beijing continues to add to the hundreds of missiles it has pointed at the self-governing island that China considers its own territory — to be unified with by force if need be.

Analysts say the odds of conflict with the U.S., Japan and other regional militaries is likely to increase as China further beefs up its arsenal.

China announced a 14.9 percent rise in military spending in its 2009 budget, to 480.6 billion yuan ($70.3 billion). Many observers say actual Chinese military spending is much higher.

The 225,000-sailor People's Liberation Army Navy already operates more submarines than any other Asian nation, with up to 10 nuclear-powered vessels and as many as 60 diesel-electric subs. It boasts almost 80 destroyers and frigates — more than a dozen of which have entered service since the 1990s — along with hundreds of smaller craft and support ships.

China's second-generation, nuclear-powered Jin and Shang class submarines are considered just a notch below cutting-edge U.S. and Russian craft. The diesel-electric Yuan class boasts a Chinese-developed air-independent propulsion system that allows it to remain submerged for weeks, while Chinese Luyang destroyers and Jiangkai missile frigates incorporate stealth features and a mix of latest-generation Chinese and Russian weapon systems.

Liang made no mention of an aircraft carrier or other systems that Beijing is believed to be pursuing. However, he said the military's goal is to achieve complete mechanization and computerization by 2020 and produce a fully modern force before mid-century.

That's seriously one of the only times I've seen modern China exaggerate their strength. Usually they are always downplaying their capabilities.

:china::china::china:

US panic at China's new ship killer September 29, 2009


The father of China's modernisation, Deng Xiaoping, gave his colleagues a famous piece of advice: "Hide your strength, bide your time, and do what you can." China's leaders have kept to Deng's advice, modernising at breakneck speed without calling too much attention to the Middle Kingdom's gathering power.

In a momentary slip, the leadership declared a new slogan in 2003, announcing China's "peaceful rise". But the word "rise" was considered too provocative to American ears, perhaps even threatening. In 2004 it was revised to "peaceful development".

In the meantime, China has been doing what it can. The world has watched, mesmerised, as China overtook Germany this year to become the world's third-biggest economy with an annual output of $US3.4 trillion ($3.9 trillion).

It is still behind Japan's $US4.3 trillion economy and is far smaller than America's $US14 trillion economic behemoth, yet it is commonly projected to vault over Japan within a few years and the US by 2030 or 2040.

Last year China's military decided it had been demure and self-effacing for long enough. The Military Digest, published by China's armed forces, carried a commentary in April 2008 titled "Phase of Exercising Restraint in National Defence is Over."

Under Deng, China in 1978 had launched its famous "four modernisations" to build China into a modern state by the early part of the 21st century. The last of the four was the modernisation of the military.

But the Military Digest set out that, under the current President, Hu Jintao, the modernisation of the armed forces would be given equal emphasis to the country's economic renovation.

The US Defence Department had long been troubled by the pace of Beijing's military build-up, but China was considered to be some 30 years behind the American forces and not any real competitor for the US as the hegemon of the Pacific Ocean.

The unchallengeable dominance of the US Seventh Fleet was starkly demonstrated in the crisis of 1996 when China seemed to be preparing to attack Taiwan, the country Beijing deems a "renegade province".

The US sent two aircraft carrier battle groups to stand off the Taiwan Straits. Each is a high-tech armada of ships and planes and missiles, with the aircraft carrier as a big waterborne base for the fleet. The deployment was an unmistakeable warning that the US would defend Taiwan. Beijing backed down. So surely Chinese braggadocio about a new military era was rhetoric, not real.

But Washington had been using the wrong yardstick, according to a former senior official in the US State Department who made a close study of China's military. "There's been a tendency to compare China's military to our own," says the analyst Randy Schriver, "but it's the wrong metric."

Washington had been reassured by the fact the Chinese had not reached parity with the US. "But we shouldn't be lulled into that thinking; we need to think about what cost China can inflict on us, and this goes for all our allies too," Schriver told me recently.

And when looked at this way, China suddenly becomes a much more potent military force. Indeed, China is in advanced state of developing a new weapon which Schriver describes as "a huge game-changer".

In March, an analyst with the US Navy Institute, Raymond Pritchett, wrote that the news of this new weapon had "created a panic" in the US Navy.

The weapon? It is a ballistic missile designed to strike ships at sea. The US Navy Institute's headline on the report was more dramatic: "Chinese Develop Special 'Kill Weapon' to Destroy US Aircraft Carriers."

The institute's report said the Dong Feng missile was thought to have a range of about 2000 kilometres and a speed of Mach 10: "The size of the missile enables it to carry a warhead big enough to inflict significant damage on a large vessel, providing the Chinese the capability of destroying a US supercarrier in one strike."

Schriver, a former navy intelligence officer who went on to become deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific in the second Bush administration, says the implications are profound: "After the Taiwan crisis in 1996, the Chinese looked at it and said, 'what do we need to do to prevent the US intervening like this again?'"

The result, 13 years later, is the Dong Feng 21. "It's a technological leap that's never [before] been made," says Schriver, now the head of a non-partisan research body, Project 2049 Institute, and a founding partner of the consulting firm Armitage International.

"The Russians couldn't do it. If it works, it will have the range of a ballistic missile and the accuracy of a cruise missile.

"The Chinese would have the ability to hold our carriers at a great distance - it almost makes the aircraft carriers obsolete.

"What did we do in 1996? We sent carriers. What are the Chinese doing? Taking the carriers out of the equation." He thinks it prudent to expect such missiles to be operating within a couple of years.

No wonder the US Navy is in a panic. If this weapon takes the field, and unless the US can quickly develop a countermeasure, it is a deeply troubling development.

The US Navy, the peacekeeper and guarantor of strategic stability in the Pacific since World War II, will lose its ability to operate anywhere near the Chinese mainland. It is a development of historic significance with which China can celebrate its 60 years under communist rule.

The US kept the Pacific peaceful and its sea lanes open. What will China do?

Peter Hartcher is the Herald's international editor.


Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

Thats old news. At the time when it was first talked about, there were many doubts about the feasibility of such a weapon , or whether it would work. So has there been any progress reports on the weapon since then which actually proves they have solved all the technical problems with such a weapon as I havent seen any serious response from the Americans apart from the usual scare mongerers such as Gertz and co.

bladerunner said:

Thats old news. At the time when it was first talked about, there were many doubts about the feasibility of such a weapon , or whether it would work. So has there been any progress reports on the weapon since then which actually proves they have solved all the technical problems with such a weapon as I havent seen any serious response from the Americans apart from the usual scare mongerers such as Gertz and co.

Click to expand...

Response? Maybe they can't and too expensive to think of a solution.

Despite having a $600billion military budget per year. US military project are getting exaggerating expensive. Just Afghanista and and Iraq alone already eat up huge chunk of it. Look at American F-22 per price unit. Simply ridiculous and not to mention the heavy fat carrier which is so expensive to maintain for just one alone. And I forget to inform u. USN has 10 of such carriers to feed.

Where is the money left to conduct project of counter measures for ASBM??

USA is not god that it can counter every threat surface.

Lion said:

Response? Maybe they can't and too expensive to think of a solution.

Despite having a $600billion military budget per year. US military project are getting exaggerating expensive. Just Afghanista and and Iraq alone already eat up huge chunk of it. Look at American F-22 per price unit. Simply ridiculous and not to mention the heavy fat carrier which is so expensive to maintain for just one alone. And I forget to inform u. USN has 10 of such carriers to feed.

Where is the money left to conduct project of counter measures for ASBM??

USA is not god that it can counter every threat surface.

Click to expand...

If it was considered to be a a impending threat, I have no doubt the money would be found. I remember it being discussed on this and other forums in the past. TWo big problems I can remember were actually finding the target and targeting it.A big carrier is still a small target in the ocean especially and when it doesnt want to be found. It would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

i think most major powers including allies of the US are keeping a record of where the carrier fleets are at all times, and they are quite capable of doing that.

:china::china::china:

Military parade shows scientific development
2009-10-09 13:14 BJT
Special Report: 60th Anniversary of PRC |

More than 50 types of new weapon systems were displayed at this year's National Day parade. All of them were made in China and 90 percent of them were paraded for the first time.

Wang Jingsheng has been working at this factory for more than 30 years. He has witnessed three National Day military parades and the rapid progress of China's scientific innovation.

Wang Jingsheng, technician of China North Industries Group Corperation, said, "In the past, the accuracy rate for our products is around one single hair, but now, we reduced it to less than one third of a hair."

Accuracy is not the only area of improvement. The time frame for manufacturing military equipment has also shortened.

Xue Changxing, secretary of CPC China North Industries Group Corp. Committee, said, "We spent 30 years developing our first-generation of equipment. The third generation only took five years."

Wang Yulin, Deputy Director of Ordnance Science Institute of China, said, "Our products are all close to, or reach, international standards."

All of China's aircraft were imported at the first National Day parade 60 years ago.

A total of 151 warplanes took part in this year's parade, including the advanced J-10 fighter jets. Ninety-five percent of them made their debuts at the grand event.

China's military has transformed from being a labor-intensive force to a technology-intensive force. This year's parade displayed China's determination to safeguard its national security and maintain world peace.



Editor: Liu Anqi | Source: CCTV.com