Submitted by Gari_305 t3_z7utpw in Futurology
CathodeRayNoob t1_iy8pr0p wrote
Alternate headline:
China catches up to early 1990s Lockheed Martin manufacturing techniques.
KileiFedaykin t1_iy8reas wrote
This. The capabilities and build quality of their tech is way behind ours. Also, this is isn’t including the personnel experience and expertise that they can’t simply download and utilize.
A high tech tool, assuming they even had our real tech, is only as good as it’s operators and leaders.
hectichead22 t1_iy97dni wrote
One undeniable fact about China (and Japan) is they've always been very good at taking an invention from somewhere else tweaking it and churning them out at a fraction of the cost at a greater speed. (You seen those guys building a hospital)? "Operators" I agree with but they're not short of people but leaders is irrelevant if you've many many more of something than an enemy even if the few they have are superior crafts. Remembers Hitler 🤔. "Tech" you bet they have and things we haven't (as do we).
Fausterion18 t1_iya41vf wrote
Lol you just described 19th and early 20th century America. One of our greatest heroes and one of Britain's greatest villains is Samuel Slater who stole a bunch of British technology for America. Until after WW1(and for some technologies WW2), the flow of technology was pretty much one way from Europe to the US. Americans stole, cheated, and bought their way into technological dominance. Helped by the two massive wars fought in Europe and the Nazis getting rid of all their top scientific minds.
> Samuel Slater (June 9, 1768 – April 21, 1835) was an early English-American industrialist known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution" (a phrase coined by Andrew Jackson) and the "Father of the American Factory System". In the UK, he was called "Slater the Traitor"
hectichead22 t1_iya55ff wrote
Yea.. but tell that to GI fkn Joe who's confident of western superiority warfare. I dread to think what China have been playing around with that we have no fucking idea of because... We haven't seen it! WTF! That's just seriously dumb in my book. Look at how powerful Japan and Germany have become after "loosing the war" and having had a ban on becoming nuclear powers. If people think they've not invested in other as of yet unknown tech then I think they're very naive.
LastCall2021 t1_iybevd1 wrote
Someone’s naive… but it’s not the people you think.
nreis1992 t1_iybrmru wrote
For real, I think a very hard look at the War in Ukraine should be in order.
A nation, perceived to be a superpower with crazy capabilities, exposed as a paper tiger with a few good tricks.
The Germans, wrapped up in their own bureaucratic mess and seemingly shrugging their way through.
The Japanese whose focus is balance never escalation.
And western old school non-networked weapon systems showing strong results.
I think the media(mostly fiction) has made us fear future war concepts. I don’t think nations are really capable of doing it for one reason or another (another being progressive escalation to MAD)
In the end, always assume their nukes will work.
KileiFedaykin t1_iy9g0h9 wrote
When our optimal striking distance is further than their operational viewing distance, they don't stand a chance. I'm sure we can manufacture more arms than they can build functional strike craft. The gap in capabilities is very distant.
Also, leadership is very relevant. If they don't understand how to best utilize what they have, the numbers will fall apart very quickly and make little to no difference. You can't just throw numbers of craft in the air and expect to achieve air superiority.
hectichead22 t1_iy9gvb6 wrote
Sorry I didn't realize that they don't have any blocking technology or satellite tech. I'm guessing no hi tech weapons in the hand-gliders that they call airplanes. I definitely need to get up to scratch on what they don't have. You got any reliable links for that info please.
KileiFedaykin t1_iy9rw29 wrote
They do have both on that. I'm not saying they don't have capable tech, we just have better and it is better where it counts. What China really lacks manufacturing-wise is the ability to create complex microprocessors other finely engineered technology. They may be getting better, but they still rely on other countries for these products and building this infrastructure is very difficult and takes a long time to implement. Time will tell in this area.
They still need to be taken seriously, and I guarantee you that our military is clearly doing that. Air superiority is one that that our military will ensure we are the best at as it is the keystone to our military doctrine.
Satellites are not useful for coordinating live-combat engagements due to information lag. Where our known capabilities today lie are in our ability to use in-theater radar systems to see far enough away for our carrier groups to target and respond first and further away than the currently known capabilities of the current Chinese carrier groups. This is massive. Unless we are unable to counter similar advancement from the Chinese, that would put them at par with us at best.
hectichead22 t1_iy9uw20 wrote
You got any reliable links to your claims please.. I'm no military expert. You seem confident in USA superiority (I'd expect no different). However I think it's foolish to poopoo Chinas capabilities based on what you don't know they have. If you seriously think that "satellites are no good for coordinating real time combat" I suggest you go eMail Elon musk and the Ukrainian military and tell them they're on a loosing streak.
KileiFedaykin t1_iya0yw3 wrote
I agree that I am very confident in US military superiority. I've just have yet to be shown otherwise. I'm not trying to necessarily "poopoo" on China's capabilities because I feel that China is stupid or incompetent. I simply don't believe they have had the necessary long-term experience in this level of military system refinement.
Also, on the satellite front; to my knowledge, no one has satellites that are capable of sending video of a combat engagement to be used for live tactics. Not even in Ukraine. Also, the Elon Musk satellites (Starlink) are data satellites, not imaging satellites.
hectichead22 t1_iyadjo2 wrote
You got any reliable links to your claims please.
KileiFedaykin t1_iycy2ib wrote
Military capability speculation is very hard to verify. I can only offer my opinions gained from a variety of reported conflicts and talking with the service members I know. They have articles expounding the capabilities of the different units and some youtube videos I've watched that describe the use of the variety of units.
Sorry that I cannot provide reliable articles on what is controlled and propagandized data. I'm merely providing my opinion on what I believe.
hectichead22 t1_iyd3kjj wrote
Fair enough, and that's my point. I'm sure that all countries have propaganda machines in operation and exactly zero of those countries would be saying what they don't have and any other countries that are saying such things are saying so out of pure speculation and for propaganda reasons. I'm trying to imagine a western country discovering that China had made some sort of secret mega weapon. The daddy of all weapons, and the likelihood of that country telling it's population of the discovery.
Havana syndrome for example.
KileiFedaykin t1_iyewapm wrote
I had to look up Havana Syndrome. I knew of the event, but hadn't heard the term. TIL
PerfectPercentage69 t1_iyca4lk wrote
>(You seen those guys building a hospital)?
You mean the one that's started leaking and falling apart within a few months? China might have the speed and price in building something, but the quality is still crap.
hectichead22 t1_iycq0sg wrote
I used it to illustrate the point. Almost all of our appliances and electrical goods are made in China. I think it a mistake to judge everything about China on an aged stereotype that everything they make is cheap and defective. It's not.
ResolutionShoddy9171 t1_iycnrad wrote
Please do mind that China has a massive choking point that is oil. If you have to import a enormoust percentage of a usefull resource for war, you are extremelly vulnerable. Especially if said resource has to come by boat and your opponent has the biggest and far better fleet.
hectichead22 t1_iyd05vk wrote
Hmnn.. a good point ☝️ but 😂😂😂.
Isn't Russian connected by land to China? They (Russia) are the third and fourth (China) largest oil producers in the world. Both from within their own borders. The only current supplier of oil that would require a boat for delivery is from Brazil who supply only 6% of China's imported Oil (and possibly Angola). The rest are connected by land and easily accessible.
China's Top Providers of Imported Crude Oil
Saudi Arabia: US$39.9 billion (17.4% of China's crude oil imports)
Russia: $35.8 billion (15.6%)
Iraq: $23.5 billion (10.2%)
Oman: $20.2 billion (8.8%)
Angola: $17.3 billion (7.5%)
Kuwait: $14.1 billion (6.2%)
United Arab Emirates: $14 billion (6.1%)
Brazil: $13.8 billion (6%)
JustAKarmaWhore t1_iy98qr5 wrote
Yeah, and I bet those 'hospitals' will probably topple over at a slight breeze in the wind, or after a few years when whatever fake material they used to build it starts to degrade.
There's constant building collapses in china of buildings literally just falling over so yeah, you can build stuff pretty fast and cheap if you dont care about the reliability or quality of the product.
I highly doubt China has anything that is 'better' compared to what the US has.
hectichead22 t1_iy9fhxz wrote
Cheap and disposable yes, then just build another. It's a great way to keep your population employed. "Better things compared to the US" .. how about artificially built islands out in the ocean, with runways on? You almost make it sound like they live in paper houses, don't wear shoes and all paddle around in paddy fields.
YourWiseOldFriend t1_iya1zm6 wrote
>Cheap and disposable yes, then just build another.
They've built entire cities just for investment purposes that few if any people live in. Then there's the buildings they started building that were never finished and then demolished.
It is a humongous waste of resources and a blot on the landscape to have all that housing just standing there, without maintenance or upkeep, just falling apart.
This is not a smart way to build things. Their buildings do collapse. It's easy to say 'build another one', but you know: there were people in those buildings when the collapsed. Is that not something to worry about? That the standards are so lax and are ignored with impunity that you're going to live in a building that is going to collapse at some point and you may, or may not be in that building at the time?
hectichead22 t1_iya3zjy wrote
I think we've strayed somewhat from the point of the discussion. What has that got to do with 3d printed airplanes that fire rockets?
CathodeRayNoob t1_iy9mf8y wrote
Something something “if you want to create jobs, give them spoons, not shovels”
MilkshakeBoy78 t1_iy9vilb wrote
why spoons and not shovels?
CathodeRayNoob t1_iy9zrqe wrote
>This quotation is usually coupled with a colorful anecdote, but the details of the stories vary greatly. Here is an account from the economics writer Stephen Moore that was printed in the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Moore stated that he used to visit Milton Friedman and his wife, and together they would dine at a favorite Chinese restaurant: [2]
>At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels
>Cheap and disposable yes, then just build another. It's a great way to keep your population employed
Labor should be necessary and fulfilling. Not arbitrarily maximized.
The worst part about cheering for a cheap and disposable design is that there is still a pilot in that jet. China might find it's pilot's disposable but America doesn't have the same notion of its' pilots.
hectichead22 t1_iyad6wi wrote
🤣🤣🤣 you ever been in the army/navy/ air force?
Anyway.. back to the point in question which seems to be that USA great.. China weak..
Nothing going on with all those space rockets and things. It's just to get good photos for the internet. China don't have anything we should worry about after they split from the international space program. They just want to have a little gander on there own. Lmfao. Jeesssusfk people have nothing, have confidence in there government to PROtect them.. and are happy.
Bobtheguardian22 t1_iyagx3n wrote
how have they not been able to
A. acquire blueprints.
B. train talent.
Specific_Main3824 t1_iycuvwh wrote
Sooooooo wrong lol.
KileiFedaykin t1_iycxge5 wrote
Care to elaborate?
MyBallsAreOnFir3 t1_iyc3vpx wrote
Of course the comments had to make it a dick measuring contest with America. Do you guys ever get tired of feeling constantly under attack at the mere mention of the word "China"?
CathodeRayNoob t1_iyd9ftf wrote
When someone posts blatant propaganda; it should be met with facts.
That’s all that happened here. 3D printing is not “advanced manufacturing” for aerospace components.
dissident_right t1_iybissl wrote
Lol this cope. I'm sure the planes that China is producing in 2023 will be no better than the ones LHM produced in 1990. Sure.
My entire life useful idiots like /u/KileiFedaykin have been playing down the technological and economic strength of China ("Handing over HK will be the beginnings of Chinese Democracy!", "The Asian Tiger is going to go into recession!", "This housing market slump is the end of Chinese growth!"), every time they end up looking foolish.
CathodeRayNoob t1_iyblaya wrote
I'm referring to the use of 3d printing in mass production.
Mass production of modern jet fighters is dozens of units; not millions. 3d printing has been cheaper than tooling for various parts for decades.
I'm not necessarily knocking the Chinese; they are masters at traditional tooling and manufacturing in ways we simply don't have the talent base to replicate. But for the same reasons, we are decades ahead in additive manufacturing and Uncle Sam only knows how far ahead in aerospace technology.
I'm more knocking the headline that 3d printing is new or advanced in the field of aero defense.
KileiFedaykin t1_iycyqer wrote
Funny how you peg me as a useful idiot and then apply quotes that I've never said and very much disagree with. China is the most prominent competitor to the US in military capability and the US military will need to ensure it continues to advance and prepare for potential conflicts with China.
The track record I've seen from what China has built has not convinced me that they have the ability to seriously threaten US battle groups in open combat. China is certainly pushing to advance and expand their navy, but it hasn't happened yet, so it is an unknown. Their current navy doesn't seem to live up to the propaganda from what I hear.
These are just my opinions because I haven't seen anything to convince me otherwise, but I am always open to learn.
Specific_Main3824 t1_iycuss0 wrote
I'm not a Chinese person or a CCP 50-cent army member. Im just an Aussie. I can guarantee you China is already more advanced than the US and the US military. They don't have all the state-of-the-art ships built yet, but they have started building them. 5 years, and China will have more military than every other nation combined, and right now It's already more advanced.
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