This is a thread addressing Chinese military technology innovation today, it's parallels with Imperial Japan in the Mid-1930's to early 1940's period, & the "Great Supply Chain Collapse."
The Chinese took two existing technologies, the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) and the Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV) & kit bashed them together into a 1st strike nuclear weapon that evades US ICBM trajectory early warning radar coverage. 2/
One can argue about the usefulness of this kit bash.
The one thing you cannot ignore is that it's a highly innovative weapon system design aimed like a laser at a decades old weakness.
A weakness the Chinese have been aware of for its entire existence, via @TheDEWLine 3/
A PLARF Long March 2C expendable launcher was used to launch the 3-4 ton FOBS payload with a HGV for reentry vehicle(RV). The DF-ZF from the DF-17 system is the likely candidate RV. 4/
The Long March 2C is a proven legacy design from the 1980s, like the LGM-25C Titan II and Soviet R-36.
It is fueled with hypergolic N2O4 / UDMH propellants & capable of lifting almost 4 tons to LEO. It benefitted from the 1998 Loral missile scandal 5/ jonathanpollard.org/1998/040798b.h…
One of the benefits, if you can call it that, of being a retired tail end Boomer/early Gen X'er military procurement official means I know where the bodies are buried...because I helped to bury them.
Like most men of my generation, I have the WW2 history bug. Unlike most, I was interested in how the War & Navy Dept. bought weapons in lieu of war gear "Top Trumps," because day job.
Doing this while training other in the admin. of ITAR w/in DoD gave me unique perspectives. 7/
I also looked at how other WW2 major powers, particularly the Japanese, developed their weapons.
I laid out Imperial Japan's national technological style in a July 2021 @WW2TV stream on MacArthur's Secret Radar Hunters, Section 22. See Photo & link 8/
The Japanese had a "challenger technological style" I've seen echoed in Soviet/Russian & now Chinese military development.
US, by contrast, always invested more thought into both usability and maintainability of its weapons, vice UK or Germany tech.
9/
There are usually two prices for the "US Style of Design."
1. It takes longer to get out there. 2. It costs more & competitors quickly copy it with cheap knock off's.
10/
If you have a smart US management. You can win using that style via better service & by continually improving design -- See IPad & early IPhone
That smartness has been lacking the last couple of decades as marketing hype displaced good engineering via MBA "Off-shoring."
11/
This is a highly dangerous place for the USA to be in as China has made in the late 20-teens the kind of innovative leap the Imperial Japanese 1935(+) did via a class of truly innovative world class engineers.
Yamato, A6M Zero & I-400 sub-carriers are historical examples. 12/
While the PLARF FOBS with HGV RV is the current events example of China "Post-Challenger/Peer Competitor" national technological style, arriving.
I've also mentioned a few months ago "why" the US Defense industrial base lacks the ability to systems engineer their way out of a paper bag, let alone a ship design, namely the death by corruption of Mil-STD-499.
Unlike 1941-1945, the now 'Innovative Peer Level' Chinese military industrial base is facing off against a decayed Western Military Industrial base that has had its system engineering hollowed out by political corruption and "Off-shoring." 16/
This isn't to say Systems Engineering has completely disappeared from the West.
The Israeli Iron Dome anti-rocket system has some of the best systems engineering on the planet.
/17
Systems engineering that is so elegant that it includes considerations of digital selectivity and the economic cost avoidance for Israeli policy makers in its architecture.
It beats Islamist suicide terrorism with superior economic cost accounting.
The reason that Israel has such a high level of systems engineering is their decades long industrial policy of "On-shoring" it defense industrial base to meet local existential threats, AKA the 2006 Lebanon War & 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead rocket attacks. 19/
Space X is another example of high levels of systems engineering via both "in-sourcing" & "On-shoring."
Roughly 70% of every Space X rocket or capsule is mfg by Space X internally.
20/
Short, internal, supply chains with 3D/AM make systems engineering with swift, iterative, innovation much easier.
It also avoids the worst effects of the "Great Supply Chain Collapse" now washing over the "off-shore supplier" world economy.
21/
The 21st Century Chinses challenge for US economic, national security & foreign policy calls for on-shoring, in-sourcing, & shortening supply chains with 3D/AM.
That is, returning to the traditional US technological style.
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Making this reality will the politics of the post "Great Supply Chain Collapse" western world.
/End
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Oh heck yes, AFU is hunting Russian H2O trucks! ⬇️
@secretsqrl123 has sussed out the Russian potable water supply chain and it involves a thrown together bubba engineering with palletized IBC containers used by restaurants for vegetable oil.
I've been asked to post my four appearances on Paul Woodadge's @WW2TV youtube channel to X.
This was about MacArthur's "Wild Weasel" radar hunters before the term was invented.
Dr Bellamy was PhD heavy lifter here.
Section 22 Radar Hunters
1/
This is the story of Master Technical Sergeant Dermott H. MacDonnell and how his performance as chief radar operator for Marine Air Group 23’s (MAG-23) SCR-270 radar...
The Horseshoe Nail of Victory of the Guadalcanal Air Campaign
2/
...made the difference between keeping and losing daylight air superiority over Henderson Field in the darkest days of the Guadalcanal campaign.
Incendiary devices were 10 times as effective at destroying urban areas than high explosive per unit mass per the US Strategic Bombing Surveys'.
2/
Sending twice the warhead mass of incendiaries of a unitary explosive warhead Tomahawk for the same price is 20 times as effective and requires 10 times the air defense missile warshot or gun based ammunition to protect any target.
This trial use of 17 year olds by Putin reported by Ukraine's Center for National Resistance (CNR) closely mirrors the Hitlerjugend Division of the Waffen SS in the Normandy summer of 1944.
...in Feb/Mar 1945 was the Waffen SS using 14 year old kids.
Per the CNR Report:
"Currently, Russia is actively recruiting members of patriotic movements, in particular, the network of military education centers "Warrior" and "Yunarmiya" (Young Army). Teenagers aged 17