PLA strike strategies in westpac HIC

ZeEa5KPul said:

It's not just what he wrote here, but an impression I get from reading his body of work here and on Reddit. It's a consistent theme I've noticed; the passage you quoted just recalled it.

The "rabbit out of a hat" is my way of putting it (with some embellishment), but what I got from reading what he wrote when he was active in the past is that the balance of power could shift in the US's favor in the 2030s from a present/near future nadir, as opposed to continuing to erode (or indeed face accelerated erosion) as is currently happening.

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ZeEa5KPul said:

I'll cop to more than my fair share of jingoistic hubris and say that I heavily discount the possibility even if the US were to summon up Herculean levels of commitment. A lot has been made of the Chinese shipbuilding capacity being ~230x the US one, and even taking all the requisite grains of salt and ignoring the media hysterics, there is just no way for the US to overcome that kind of deficit in any conceivable timeframe if an appreciable fraction of that capacity were used militarily.

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ZeEa5KPul said:

No offense intended, I just wanted to know if it's as bad as it looks from the public reporting. There have been senators quoted saying things like "worst telecom hack in our nation’s history — by far"

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Given that a large part of their job is theatrical, I wanted to know (without revealing anything that would get anyone in trouble, of course) how seriously what Warner and his like say about it should be taken.

Patch, if this is too sensitive, feel free to dismiss it with a "no comment."

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Blitzo said:

Ultimately this discussion is not being held with parity in exposure to information or access to said information, so challenging his judgement or interpretation of information should only occur if there's something particularly doubtful or strange beyond reasonable explanations.

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• UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization) projects that by 2030, China will have 45% of global manufacturing. This is an absolutely insane level of concentration unseen since the immediate aftermath of WWII when the industrialized world outside the US was destroyed by the war.
• The International Federation of Robotics reported that China installed more industrial robots in 2024 than the rest of the world combined, and now has the third highest robot density on the planet behind Korea and Singapore.
• China's huge advances industrial sectors like semiconductors (especially power and RF electronics and advanced materials like GaN (now a commodity), Ga2O3, SiC, synthetic diamond, etc.) renewable energy, electric vehicles, batteries, etc. and what that implies about China's future strategic position and military capabilities.
• The aforementioned shipbuilding capacity.

Blitzo said:

I know why you'd want to ask, I'm more surprised at the fact you actually chose to ask.

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Jono said:

I remember in the past, Patch was challenged by certain members rather unfairly.
in the sense that he had sensitive information which he could not possibly disclose in a public debate, and so he was hamstrung with his defense to the challenges thrown at him. That led to unhappiness and frustration.
I just hope history will not repeat itself.

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Patchwork_Chimera said:

I disagree. While the PLA could certainly ramp up its own procurement tempo, there are hard limits on the total scope and scale of such an effort which are driven far more by internal resource and economic priorities than external factors. The level of expenditure and overall allocation of effort towards PLA modernization and evolution have remained mostly constant over the past quarter decades, despite the significant changes in the balance of military power. Some degree of mirroring would likely occur, yes; but for all intents and purposes, the PLA has its own vision of its future force structure, and is likely to continue pursuing this vision regardless of actions we take on our end.

Further, many lines of effort present themselves which the PLA would be hard pressed to address in a meaningful capacity, but which still provide the US a notably improved position in some way. There is a lot of low hanging fruit that current senior leadership have utterly failed to harvest due to misaligned incentives and general incompetence, but even simple successes in this capacity would render our position far less tenuous than its current state. Significantly reducing overseas US commitment and operational tempo in low-yield theaters, recapitalization of our yards - even if just to maintain currently in service platforms, realigning fiscal priorities strongly in favor of Air Force and Naval procurement and modernization efforts, and more sensibly approaching procurement and sustainment endeavors such that we are no longer paying enormous fees to rent-seeking contractors to conduct support activities which are fundamentally ill-suited to civilian involvement, etc. etc. etc. would substantially reduce the barrier to fielding a capable and credible force to operate in the WestPac. Unfortunately, all of those things seem vastly beyond the capacity of our existing institutions to act upon.

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Wrought said:

The fact that you are getting pushback on the extremely obvious conclusion that the US—which spends far more resources on its military in both absolute and relative terms than China does, no matter how you choose to count—could significantly alter its current trajectory with major reforms to eliminate rampant waste/fraud/inefficiency and sundry glaring flaws readily apparent to even a casual observer, is depressing. Especially if executed in parallel with a drastic reprioritization, a genuine pivot to Asia, if you will. How exactly is having more resources with better utilization supposed to turn out poorly for the US?

Whether or not such reforms will be successful, or even proposed in the first place (and no, DOGE doesn't count), is a different question tangled up in all sorts of nightmarish politics. But the simple fact that such a thing is theoretically possible should not be in any way controversial. It's explicitly not about increasing budgets, but rather about using the existing budget more effectively. And there's plenty of room for that.

(Also, any PLA response would be inherently limited by its own relative lack of accumulated pants-on-head idiocy to eliminate. Because its own MIC is mostly brand new and not burdened by decades of politicized corrosion/overreach/etc).

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While the PLA could certainly ramp up its own procurement tempo, there are hard limits on the total scope and scale of such an effort which are driven far more by internal resource and economic priorities than external factors. The level of expenditure and overall allocation of effort towards PLA modernization and evolution have remained mostly constant over the past quarter decades, despite the significant changes in the balance of military power.

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Some degree of mirroring would likely occur, yes; but for all intents and purposes, the PLA has its own vision of its future force structure, and is likely to continue pursuing this vision regardless of actions we take on our end.

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Overbom said:

I don't think anyone disagrees that if US somehow managed to reform it's MIC, and reduced overseas commitments, it would improve its position wrt China

What people disagree is that PLA would/could not respond to that. That's the fundamental argument I disagree with him.

If he manages to make such huge leaps of faith (US basically solving internal matters) dunno why he also doesn't correspondingly think that the PLA would be allocated massively expanded budgets to correspond to the new threat.
He is willing to perform such big leaps of faith for the US, but he can't/won't entertain the basic logic that the PLA at the very minimum would just spam the "buy more" button.

It takes two to tango, Patch's argument would work only if Chinese leadership were imbeciles who saw the rising US military threat and decided to close their eyes and ears and pretend everything is normal and maintain PLA investment levels. I think this argument falls flat, and it's actually quite unconvincing and disrespectful of Chinese leaders.

If you or anyone else thinks that Xi would sit and watch US threat exponentially rise without massively expanding the PLA then I rest my case

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Wrought said:

Assuming the US could successfully pull off major military reforms—a very large assumption, but let's go with it for now—then it will have achieved a dramatic capability boost with zero increase in resources. In other words, for free.

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coolgod said:

WTF kind of assumption is this? Assuming US military wins, therefore US military wins?

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Patchwork_Chimera said:

Indeed. Fundamental and system-wide changes are necessary to reform the US Military into a competitive institution when compared against anything beyond second-rate powers. Insofar as how it is possible, I never said it was. I personally believe that not only will such changes not occur, but that our problems will likely just keep getting worse until a major national-scale failure either snaps us back to reality or precipitates a grim sequence of internal calamities.

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