Posted on 05/21/2013 8:03:56 AM PDT by Seizethecarp
As you can see in the Google Maps image above, the airfield (located about 300 miles from Qingdao, the homeport of China's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning) is freshly built and the northern end of the runway features a fake carrier flight deck that appears to be used to practice carrier landings (there are clear skid marks on the landing area). The southern end of the runway features two "ski-jump" ramps that are likely used by pilots to rehearse taking off from Liaoning's bow-mounted ramp. (Notice how only one of these ramps is complete in the imagery above while the southernmost ramp appears is shown being built in an older satellite image of the base.)
As OSIMINT notes, the field has 24 fighter-sized aircraft shelters, indicating that China's first carrier aviation units will be equipped with 24 J-15 carrier fighter jets.
(Excerpt) Read more at killerapps.foreignpolicy.com ...
Not going to sign up.
Thank you Bill Clinton and every other globalist simpleton who thinks that trying to protect your national sovereignty and economy by limiting information and immigration smacks of protectionism/isolationism. All we have accomplished and we give it away to people that hate us just so we can feel good about being one big happy Agenda 21 family.
Now you’ve gone and done it. The “Free Traders” are going to hate you now.
Chinese weren’t trying to hide any military secrets here. I visited Qingdao 2 years ago and they were giving tours and promoting its battleship industry. They let visitors take pictures too. You could even visit its naval museum in Qingdao where they showed detailed photos of naval ships getting built in stages. What’s funny is that Obama’s intelligence team in China were so incompetent, they probably never visited Qingdao to observe China’s most recent naval developments. They were too busy trying to recruit MSM reporters based in Beijing instead. Obama even used journalismjobs.com to recruit them by posting a job ad, supposedly for the Asia-Pacific Command Website. This shows Obama always had very little respect for journalists and wasn’t concerned about putting their lives in danger for his own political gains.
Why hide it? We gave it to them. Over the last 40 years we have educated untold numbers of Asians and Middle Easterners and employed them here in sensitive and high tech jobs only to see that intellectual property taken back to the east and used to compete directly with us and undermine us. Why must we always ensure that everyone gets the advantage but us? The globalist economy goons are just as dangerous as communists.
What they couldn’t steal Slick Will gave them.
They lost a million dead during the Korean War. (Their official number is 128K, but Communist numbers about casualties tend to resemble Baghdad Bob's). I think they'll survive, somehow. Besides, their procurement budget is massive. After adjusting for labor costs that are 1/10 of ours, it wouldn't surprise me if it was pretty similar to ours*. That buys a lot of of aircraft simulator development time. And if they've stolen the source code and blueprints for our simulators, it's just a matter of tweaking it for their aircraft and carrier specs.
* This is why I've been hammering on the point that our military dependents in the area, ranging from Taiwan to Japan, have been asleep at the wheel. While China has been binging on the the latest and greatest acquisitions and R&D, both locally-developed and stolen from abroad, regional defense budgets have either stagnated or fallen as a % of GDP.
I imagine every country that has aircraft carriers, has a similar facility.
We get 20% of Chinese exports. China is the cheapest and best locale for assembling widgets. China's incomes are in the top 50% of nations around the world, meaning there are dozens of locales with cheaper labor that include India (1/4x) and Nicaragua (1/3x), but none that offers the combination of highly-educated workers, reasonable wages and stable regulatory environment (i.e. the host government won't try to confiscate your factory without compensation) that China does. We need cheap labor locales abroad if our corporations are to be competitive internationally. We could be like Brazil and carve out a moat where local companies can charge what they like because of tariffs that double or triple the prices of imports. But we'd also get Brazilian standards of living. The reality is that there's no hiding from foreign competition - we can avert our eyes, but they'll continue plugging away.
Well, we disagree. Setting principal aside (doing business with enemies of our republic) we need the jobs here and businesses don’t all need to be globalist competitors. It is the same lie that all kids need to go to college. I guess while I believe that business should grow I am not keen on growing into mammoths. It smells of greed. Let’s see how happy our citizens are in 50 years when there is no borders, we are the one’s starving or assimilated, and everyone is sooo happy. I’ll be dead I don’t care anymore.
We had a good run but it is over. I’ll fight if it comes before I pass but other than that I have given up on change for the better.
I must say, I admire their honesty. The people who should be worrying are the Japanese. They have some small carriers—they need to get some big ones on the ways. The Japanese have the history and the background to be real sailors. Mark my words a naval war is a brewing between these two. Its not about Globalism—that’s a UN—Rich man’s Theory—It is and shall always be about Nationalism and power.
I think it predates nationalism. Did Napoleon really need to conquer the world? Ultimately, I think it comes down to boredom and a thirst for adventure, which leads to a quest for gloire. Napoleon once said: "A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon". While that's been sublimated into team sports for the West, that thirst for military adventure may not have been completely extinguished elsewhere. And even in the West, it may only last until the great bloodlettings from the recent past have been forgotten. After all, the Hundred Years' War in the 14th and 15th centuries between France and England resulted in 10x the casualties of WWI and WWII combined as a % of the population killed.
What he’s talking about has NOTHING what so ever to do with trade.
Trade with China has everything to do with the military build up of the China. Where do you think all the money came from?
Resolute Conservative - reply #3 was NOT talking about trade.
Free Traders are gloBULLists by default. China’s ascendancy over the last 30 years is the result of short sighted policies towards that dangerous giant Communist(Fascist) country (one that performs 20 million abortions a year)...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.