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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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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@mercoglianos@ltgrusselhonore The origin of just-in-time was with the Japanese. They sourced every down level vendor for an auto factory in the same city and worked to get stable relationships to eliminate as much as possible transaction costs.
When the ISO box came plus massive computer ordering systems
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@mercoglianos@ltgrusselhonore ...first retail and then increasingly manufacturing companies tried to make the ISO boxes their warehouses both to save costs and to avoid property taxes on warehouse stock.
The issue is this wasn't cost reduction as much as cost shifting.
2/
@mercoglianos@ltgrusselhonore Continental or intercontinental sized supply chains are about avoiding measurable costs.
There are always disruptions in large supply chains that result in mistimed deliveries of parts that result in the production of Mfg goods w/o those parts.
This thread is on the unexamined local political issues affecting the supply chain blockage at California's Ports of LA & Long Beach. 1/ portoflosangeles.org
Salvadore Merclianos' Youtube channel "What's Going on With Shipping?" is 'must watch' streaming on the subject of world supply chain meltdown & the ports of LA/LB. This is one of his latest streams: 2/
The Youtube stream @mercoglianos runs is also a "must read" for its comments from truckers, railwaymen, warehousemen and others involved in the on-going world wide supply chain collapse.
Case in point this comment on how CARB pollution rules throttle SoCal port clearance. 3/
In 1943 the Harlem Hellfighters 369th regiment was broken up and organized into the 369th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Gun Battalion and the 870th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion.
One of the most difficult issues in researching & writing about electronic warfare in WW2’s Pacific Theater is it’s systematic exclusion from the USN’s official histories. This exclusion was as systematic was it was intentional.
1/
The war diaries of the US Navy are both digitized and available on the Fold3.com service.
A simple search on the radar decoy code name “Window” in the WW2 War Diaries gets thousands of hits. 2/ fold3.com
Window was one of the names for radar dipole decoys dropped from A/C, rockets, bombs and artillery.
The Japanese were both technically skilled and increasingly proficient in its use by 1945.
And, like those thousands of Fold3.com war diary hits, their efforts 3/