Posted on 11/19/2011 2:37:42 PM PST by neverdem
A former China-desk Army intelligence analyst and co-author of a new book about Chinese-American relations, told HUMAN EVENTS November 15 that the strange giant white lines drawn in western China's Gobi Desert were most likely practice targets for Chinese space weapons.
“Usually when we think of space weaponry, we are talking about horizontal targeting by satellites firing on other satellites—to take your eyes out,” said William C. Triplett II, who with Brett M. Decker, wrote Bowing to Beijing: How Barack Obama is Hastening America's Decline and Ushering A Century of Chinese Domination.
The former analyst said at first he was skeptical.
“I have been waiting to hear that the images were Photoshopped,” he said. After two days, he came to seriously consider what the lines were with other members of his community of China watchers. “It is all we are talking about.”
There are three images in question. Two are white lines drawn on the desert floor without regard for the topography. One of the two has lines inside a rectangle and the other has lines loose without a box border. The third is a series of concentric circles.
The image without the box could be an airbase with runways on the left side, he said. It could not be a city or town because unlike the boxed image, the boulevards are not long enough and are not laid out in a practical way.
After ruling out the new cities, Triplett said there are three factors that lead him to think that are tied to the Chinese space weaponry program.
First, the images are close to the Chinese government's military space headquarters, which has long-been centered in the western desert, he said.
Second, the Chinese are developing powerful space-based weapons that have the ability to fire on earth and they have always tested their weapon systems away from populations, both for safety and security reasons, he said.
The third reason is that the lines are consistent with the practice of large modeling, he said.
“Modeling is very popular in Asia,” he said. “There is a famous photo of a Japanese mock-up of Pearl Harbor with men walking around it with rubber boots.”
The Chinese are famous for their three-dimensional models, too, he said. “In Wuhan, the Chinese built a life-size American aircraft carrier.”
The Chinese love using models and to see models from space, they have to be very large, he said.
Of the three images found on Google maps, Triplett said the one with concentric circles with easily discernible trucks and aircraft was the easiest to identify. “It is an atomic bomb test site.”
It is not uncommon to leave equipment at test sites, he said. The American military did the same thing after its desert tests.
Triplett said early in his career in the late 1960s, he became familiar with test sites in China.
“I was the youngest guy in the office, so while everyone else was watching the Cultural Revolution, I was told to keep my eye on the Western desert,” he said. It was during this time, as an Army analyst on loan to another federal agency that Triplett was the first American to report that the Chinese had conducted the only known test of a missile with an armed nuclear warhead.
“Many people thought it was irresponsible, they never did it again,” he said. “Back in those days, we were mostly worried that the Chinese would get into Vietnam, like they did Korea.”
Images courtesy of Google Maps.
Genghis Khan had many than 20,000 in his armies. In one battle he had 200,000 men.
Still far short of 200 million but I guess the creator of the universe knows more than I do.
They had 700+ nukes in 1984. I estimate 1500+ now.
Never again.
Quite true. However, the armies that made it as far as Central Europe were much smaller in size, breaking up into groups as small as the 20,000 I mentioned, or even smaller, but recombining as needed to fight major battles.
There is a persistent myth that the Mongols had huge armies, which is why their name for their armies, horde, came to mean a huge number.
In actual fact the Mongols were almost always considerably outnumbered by their opponents, though it probably didn’t seem that way to the opponents! The Mongols won by speed and maneuver instead of brute force, concentrating their forces quickly to achieve superiority at a critical point rather than across the board. The Mongols practiced a horse-powered version of blitzkrieg many centuries before WWII.
Yep, mobility and ruthlessness are an effective combination. War ponies with stirruped saddles, great mounted archers, and fairly effective lightweight body armor made them almost unstoppable by the enemies in their path.
Thanks for the links.
There is a fictional recreation of Genghis wars. Its based on what they know about the battles but of course makes assumptions on the first person of the people themselves. They have a strong basis on historical fact and I thought very well written.
In the one battle where he used prisoners as a shield there were tens of thousands killed. The bodies formed a continuous trail for over 34 miles.
>> “Why would an army of 200,000,000 march to Israel when nuclear bombs could wipe out Israel in a flash ?” <<
.
Israel having an effective anti-missile shield?
Or a thousand other possible events between now and then.
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