“But many remain unconvinced about China’s timelines for an advanced design.
“But we’ve yet to see a real organic design [emerge] from China. So far they’ve leveraged Russian or Israeli technology. They don’t have a lot of radar engineering capability, nor experience in integrating a complete structure.””
This is valiant effort to assuage one’s fears. They can build lots of good enough stuff. With their capture of strategic materials around the world they will also have the resources to do it with.
I don’t think we can pull off another Spartan like effort of the 300 with 187 dispersed F-22s. Even the Spartans were wiped out in their defensive action.
Don’t get me wrong, we are good and have really good stuff but you can’t turn a tidal wave when it comes ashore no matter how hard you try. Even though outnumbered by 8:1 the Marines and remnants of the army escaped from Chosin but all they could do was escape.
Even the Pakis will eventually outnumber our F-22s by 2:1 with aircraft that are probably good enough though we should overwhelm those numbers with other factors but what about the Chicoms? What if they field 2,000 of these good enough airplanes?
> This is valiant effort to assuage one’s fears. They can build lots of good enough stuff. With their capture of strategic materials around the world they will also have the resources to do it with
I agree. Here in New Zealand we see alot of China’s exports before most places do. India’s stuff as well.
(I hasten to add, no F-35’s Nothing that hi-tech... yet!)
The quality of their machine tools is superb — I own several, and they cost me a tiny fraction of what I would have paid for similar Japanese or US branded tools. For without a doubt, these are probably also built in China and re-badged for foreign consumption.
One silly-but-telling example: I have a Ryobi drill press — except it isn’t branded Ryobi, and it is painted red not blue-green. It’s made in China, and it is bolt-for-bolt, casting-for-casting identical to and compatible with its Ryobi counterpart. I paid next-to-nothing for it, brand-new. It is a superb machine tool.
The Indians are doing the same thing. I have a Record engineer’s vise, made in Sheffield England. I have an identical, unbranded engineer’s vise, made in India. Except for where “Record — Made in England” would be cast into the steel, the two vises are identical, and of equal quality.
OK, so two dumb examples that are hardly hi-tech but they are telling: there is no quality issue there when the Chinese want to make good stuff. They can do it, cheaply and in massive quantities.
The United States and Britain have both mostly lost their manufacturing strength. Can either country mass-produce anything of quality anymore?
Maybe they can — but not nearly as well as they used to.
What you say is spot-on: “Good Enough” stuff, made in massive quantities, may well be decisive. It worked a treat for the Japanese in WW-II.
Chosin is a good analogy, as is the Sherman tank vs. Panzer/Tiger tank analogy already offered. Sure we had a 10:1 kill ratio in Chosin. We still lost, and barely escaped. China has more available fighting age men than we have people. Oh, and our 300 million include many who won’t fight, like liberals and illegals. It is unwise to underestimate the Chinese.