- China missiles filled with water, not fuel: US intelligence
- Xi seeking to root out corruption, prepare military for combat
US intelligence indicates that President Xi Jinping’s sweeping military purge came after it emerged that widespread corruption undermined his efforts to modernize the armed forces and raised questions about China’s ability to fight a war, according to people familiar with the assessments.
The corruption inside China’s Rocket Force and throughout the nation’s defense industrial base is so extensive that US officials now believe Xi is less likely to contemplate major military action in the coming years than would otherwise have been the case, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing intelligence.
China missiles filled with water, not fuel: US intelligence
oops
US officials now believe Xi is less likely to contemplate major military action in the coming years than would otherwise have been the case
So this is a good news story.
Mmm.
Hopefully.
Unless you think war is inevitable.
The current Chinese doctrine in a theoretical conflict with America relies heavily on saturation of missile defenses to take out things like carrier groups.
If they didn’t know they’d have a 10% failure rate or whatever it could have completely invalidated their tactics.
But it you accept both that war is inevitable and that China will be the aggressor it would have been better for them not to discover this and thus be unprepared for the conflict, like we see with Russia and Ukraine.
War isn’t inevitable. Back in the cold war it was averted multiple times, and the USSR had a much more closed economy than China’s. China going to war with NATO would lose them all their largest trading partners.
They don’t want a war with NATO. But they might want to invade Taiwan which pretty much everybody in NATO kind of agrees is sort of China’s anyway. Only a handful of nations recognise Taiwan as sovereign, and they ain’t coming to the rescue.
We don’t really want them to take Taiwan, but the only bargaining tool we have to stop them is the threat of stopping trade. And as far as I can tell, the main reason we don’t recognise Taiwan is because we don’t want China to stop trade either.
No one builds a trillion dollar navy without intending to use it, but sure.
It might not happen.
In a world that solves its energy crisis and stops climate change.
If China ever wants to be able to take Taiwan, it’ll have to do so within the next few years. Due to a large number of factors, like economy weakening due to over ballooning, an upcoming extreme population decline (they have a serious problem on their hands there alone) and more, they find themselves in the best position to grab and conquer Taiwan now, or never. I do expect the next 4 years in this world to be shit, no matter what US president we get, just a matter of “really shit” or “holy fucking hell its the end times” shit.
While having China’s rockets fail at a high rate during an invasion would be good. They may be weaker by the time they rebuild their arsenal and an invasion is not possible. They are going to have to check a huge amount of rockets then start rebuilding. A lot can change in 2 years.
I mean…the US Navy is roughly 40 times more capable than the Chinese navy just looking at aircraft carriers compared, nevermind the carrier group components or the planes. A US super carrier is so much more capable than the 2 Chinese carriers combined.
China’s ship building capacity is greater than the US. They may be able to overwhelm the US Navy in an extended conflict.
That said, China is looking at a demographic cliff from the One Child Policy. Too many old people and not enough young ones to take care of them. If they’re going to start a war, it has to be in the next few years or not at all. It’s possible the window is already closed.
Imagine what their demographics would look like if they also started a war and killed their young people though.
Not saying they won’t do it, and they do currently have an excess of young men specifically, but a country with a population problem isn’t in a great place to start a war imo.
They can’t. China is a green-water navy with but-water dreams, but a complete lack of ability to produce the right type of ships for the task. Their missile boats are concerns in littoral areas, but effectively worthless anywhere else, and that’s all they can produce at any appreciable speed. Their carriers aren’t even sea worthy.
That’s like saying if we produce enough preschoolers fast enough we might be able to overwhelm that SWAT team.
The US Navy could likely sink their entire fleet without losing anything of significance outside of ammunition and fuel, it doesn’t matter how fast they can build such inferior ships.
When it comes to engaging with developed nations the US doesn’t do extended conflicts, that’s a luxury of third world occupations. We’d take out their Navy and then invade or force a surrender based on extended range weapons.
Of which? Last I looked at Wiki the US has 11 aircraft carriers in service.
China with two ramped smaller ones. Apparently one was formerly a casino and the other is a clone.
Tonnage is another decent metric. US has 4.6 million tons to Chinas 2.
The capability of the tonnage is a whole other twist. Force multipliers like mid air refueling, AWACs, stealth etc
China missiles filled with water, not fuel: US intelligence
Somebody fucked up the actual story somewhere along the way. A normal problem with liquid ICBMs like a DF5 is tiny amounts of water contamination in propellant. N2O4 is meant to sit in a missile for months but if even just the humidity in the air gets in to it, it forms nitric acid and corrodes the missile. That happened to US ICBMs like the Titan II constantly and the US never reliably stopped it, they just switched to solid fuel. If contractors cut corners building a silo water contamination causing corrosion is the first thing that would go wrong. Meth heads siphoning rocket fuel and trying to replace it with water and dying instantly in a massive explosion didn’t happen.
I hate to be that guy, but source?
All the info I could find is derived from the Bloomburg article, which clearly says “water instead of fuel”, and also silo doors that don’t fully open lmao
No source it’s just pretty much physically impossible. Even if there’s no safety system setting off alarms N2O4/UDMH is denser than water, you can’t fit enough water in the rocket to make it weigh like it’s full of fuel, it’s going to read like 20% is missing either way. And if nobody cares about that why are you putting anything in it at all?
Water contamination and the 100 ton armored door not working are both super likely results of generals embezzling money, water instead of fuel is dumb and Bloomberg has a track record of fucking up this kind of thing
Putin has the same problem. Perhaps it made Xi look for it.
A significant delay could be the ballgame in Taiwan for the foreseeable future.
The B-21 will be in service in 2027 and sixth generation fighters a few years later. The Chinese will need a very long time to try to come up with countermeasures for the new tech.
Given how defensive warfare is showing its strength in Ukraine, without air superiority, I doubt China could take the island right now. And I think the US and all of its allies would make life hell for the Chinese. Just submarine warfare would cut Chinese oil off like it did to the Japanese in WWII.
True, and unlike Russia China is not even remotely self-sufficient. Fuel, food, etc. all imported on a massive scale.
And unlike Ukraine, Taiwan already has a lot of protection against incoming missiles and no direct border. Having to ship everything by sea makes it so complicated, I believe the only option for china would be to nuke Taiwan. But that would have a whole lot of other repercussions…
Aww. China invading Taiwan with Super Soakers.
