QTS-11 OICW. 5.8 mm Heavy and 20 mm Air Burst.

Equation, I can't argue with irrationality. And will not drag this thread more off topic in a political debate based on fear or pandering of a Political Howard Stern.

My statement is that despite claims to the contrary the US maintains a fair to average industrial base for development and continued modernization, All modern economic industrial bases are integrated and linked meaning that despite claims to the contrary Even the PRC is subject to importation of technologies from foreign makers.
The XM25 may be priced higher by unit but that is as the US has maintained it in a evaluation procurement mode not full production. vs South Korea who was pricing based on Full production of 900 units and the PRC who is likely pricing based a projection of large block orders.
The US Military will procure and modernize at the same rate it has over the last few years or better to aim at maintaining a Offset standing, as the only nation of have fielded Stealth fighters, maintains the largest navy in the world and set the standard by which other Armies are Judged.

You may not realise this, but SecDef most certainly has.

On current trends, we're 5-10years away from China devoting a large amount of actual economic output to military spending than the USA.

So the days of the US military setting the standards for the military are soon coming to an end.

I don't think you realise that's what offset strategies are for.

I do, but I reckon China has a better than even chance of doing a better job of developing "Third Offset" technology. We've seen that with the overall development philosophy which already emphasises commercial tech, speed, simplicity, modularity, cost etc

Plus the attitude is that as the current underdog - they need to skip today's tech and go straight to the next-gen.

AndrewS said:

Plus the attitude is that as the current underdog - they need to skip today's tech and go straight to the next-gen.

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I reck on different, So far much of their latest stuff seems to be following a catch up and very conservative track mentality. Aviation, Armor, naval power. the Leap ahead is more wishful thinking than actual fact.
They have some impressive stuff but hardly in the area of skipping and leaping. Part of that is due to the sear size of the PLA. It's easier to leap frog tech when you have a smaller force. by keeping a large volume force they hare constrained to maintain and add when available.

From a strategic point of view, there was/is a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of technology catchup which is very cost effective. Plus when you look at the price differences between Chinese and foreign products in the marketplace - this opens up a lot of profitable export opportunities.

If we talk about leap-frog technologies, the thing with those is that no one quite how they will pan out and how much they will change - so it is only prudent to deploy them in limited numbers. And like the USA, China keeps it's leap-frog technologies very close to its chest.

Remember China doesn't face any credible threats on land and is not constantly at war - so why buy a lot of expensive equipment that is unlikely to be used - and will likely be superceded in the near future?

So spending on the huge Chinese Army is at *minimum* levels, with most spend directed to the Air Force and Navy. I also remember seeing a budget document from FAS some years ago, which showed that the Chinese Air Force and Navy received a larger share of the budget pie, despite being so much smaller than the Army.

In comparison, the Chinese Air Force and Navy have much smaller legacy fleets to maintain than the USAF and USN - yet modernisation rates are broadly similar.

AndrewS said:

I do, but I reckon China has a better than even chance of doing a better job of developing "Third Offset" technology. We've seen that with the overall development philosophy which already emphasises commercial tech, speed, simplicity, modularity, cost etc

Plus the attitude is that as the current underdog - they need to skip today's tech and go straight to the next-gen.

Click to expand...

Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work said that the best we Americans could hope for is a 5-10 year lead in Third Offset technologies.

Looking at just the open source stuff that's coming out in China, I think that might be just a tad too optimistic for the Pentagon.

I would agree on that one.

Plus if we look to the undersea realm specifically - both China and the US already have the technology to build small cheap autonomous UUVs which operate on battery and are therefore completely silent. It should be relatively easy to build a fleet of these to deploy minefields or dormant torpedoes off major ports.

That would mean they would both China and the US have ability to deny the seas to each other in the Pacific- but because they are both continental sized nations - they could survive on their own resources and through overland trade. However, this does not apply to the smaller littoral nations of Japan/Korea/Vietnam/Philippines/etc - who would be devastated if seaborne commerce were blockaded.

Such a development should be a more stable configuration because China would also be faced with its own A2AD problem if it were to try to use its military power - so would have little appetite for futile military adventures.

The smaller littoral nations in WestPac would also know that in a full-scale conflict with China - it would be they who suffer most whilst China and the USA get by. They also have to consider how both China and the US have nukes - whilst they don't.

So China's energies would be directed more towards expanding its influence via economic means - which is an easier competition from China's perspective - and is ultimately the only safe way of managing the power transition from the US to China.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

The US Military will procure and modernize at the same rate it has over the last few years or better to aim at maintaining a Offset standing, as the only nation of have fielded Stealth fighters, maintains the largest navy in the world and set the standard by which other Armies are Judged.

Click to expand...

Yet again it became a very costly affair that needed to "borrow" money in the selling of T-bills just for the two wars over in the Middle East and now ISIS. It's also about how much it will cost one to procure and modernize without destroying one's own budget, otherwise we are staring at another Soviet Union debacle.

Some screen captures from a recent military news segment. No sure if the footage itself is recent. Seems all five soldiers in the frame are armed with QTS-11. I wonder how standard this is, or maybe the footage is recycled and merely shows the rifle during its trial phase. I can't envision a standard squad having more than one or two QTS-11s', other than for urban warfare scenarios perhaps.

Edit note: changed "ZH-05" to "QTS-11", which is the correct designation, per @MwRYum.