02.16.11
Chinese Threat Inflation
One of the biggest jokes on DD blog is the US media’s fascination with the Chinese military.
The US spends more than the top ten countries in the world — combined — on its military.
And it has been in active combat for the last ten years.
Yet you still see stone idiot news, lately on Chinese inventions, said to put us behind the eight ball.
There are many things that have put the United States behind the eight ball. Most of our own invention. Chinese military might isn’t one of them.
So today, the continuing story of the Chinese super missile with the name that rhymes with “dung.” Similar to stories about Soviet super missiles decades ago. And we know how that turned out.
A new “carrier killer” missile that has become a symbol of China’s rising military might will not force the U.S. Navy to change the way it operates in the Pacific, a senior Navy commander told The Associated Press.
Defense analysts say the Dong Feng 21D missile could upend the balance of power in Asia, where U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups have ruled the waves since the end of World War II.
However, Vice Adm. Scott van Buskirk, commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet, told the AP in an interview that the Navy does not see the much-feared weapon as creating any insurmountable vulnerability for the U.S. carriers — the Navy’s crown jewels.
“It’s not the Achilles heel of our aircraft carriers or our Navy — it is one weapons system, one technology that is out there,” Van Buskirk said in an interview this week on the bridge of the USS George Washington, the only carrier that is home-based in the western Pacific.
The DF 21D is unique in that it is believed capable of hitting a powerfully defended moving target — like the USS George Washington — with pinpoint precision. That objective is so complex that the Soviets gave up on a similar project.
It’s material for a Tom Clancy thriller. Fuck that guy and his ilk.
In the real world, Chinese kit — all the stuff lining the shelves of American stores, from all garments to all electric guitars once invented here to all flatware — is either really substandard, slightly substandard, or necessarily acceptable because no other products are available. Because we gave up all manufacturing of the same things for the sake of Wall Street and the immediate bottom line. And even if you didn’t want to buy it you have no choice because it would mean going naked, shoe-less and with no furniture or appliances in your apartment.
The only thing you’d have left would be the dry and canned food on your cupboard shelves. Because your refrigerator would be taken away, too.
And suddenly the same country is said to have a missile that puts the supercarrier fleet at risk in the Pacific Ocean.
Here’s a thought exercise.
Assume it’s as perfectly omnipotent as claimed. The Chinese plink a US supercarrier in some imagined confrontation off North Korea or Taiwan.
We still manufacture weapons. In fact, that’s about all we manufacture, other than hookers and beer, the latter of which is all owned by Belgium.
How many weeks past two or four will the rubble stop bouncing at military bases in China?
Another example of news for the purpose of creating the impression the US military is behind in some way, immune from the painful sacrifice that’s going to be shoved down all our throats.