Jets, submarines, and carriers of my!

>>34182591
>Honest question, why do websites like popular science keep trying to convince people that china has the smallest hope of equaling the American military in tech?

Because they're stealing everything they can and are pouring huge amounts of their GDP into R&D. Give it time and stagnation on our own end and they absolutely will.

>>34182803
that doesnt answer the question at all. The question is literally
>why would people think the opposite of what you just said?

>>34182591
Because alarmist fear mongering sells, and it's especially easy to write when China loves to publicize their newest projects in the most favorable ways possible, compared to the DoD, where there's literally a department for publicly complaining about equipment.

So you get
>Chinese propaganda saying new plane/radar/ship/etc. is totally a raptor/F-35/carrier/etc. killer
>lack of american propaganda saying otherwise
>reports readily available pointing out every flaw in new designs

PopSci is a garbage rag.

And the Chinks are aware of how pathetic they are, which is why they don't want to engage any great powers head-on.

>>34182624
Ooh, is that their new micro-carrier? Looks pretty good but they will also need something on the scale of a US carrier if they ever want to compete.

>>34182624
A
FUCKING
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMP

File: Sub gap.png (3MB, 2668x1138px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 2668x1138px

>>34182591
First of all because they're becoming a serious player. The days of scoffing at China as a complete military failure as far as even limited power projection are coming to an end. This isn't necessarily a bad thing for the US, as competition breeds technological advancement across all sectors, and defense-related breakthroughs tend to bleed into and enhance the civilian economy and quality of life over time.

But the other major reason is because publicly perceived external threat level is a large driver in military funding and research resource allocation. This means that in times of lower perceived threat or peace, the threat environment is often exaggerated both to congress and the public at large to maintain military funding. This may seem nefarious (inb4 muh ebil MIC), but it is in fact pretty necessary.

Military research and procurement projects take a long time to complete. You can't just build bleeding edge weapons and systems over night, you have to keep the entire defense industry chugging away at a constant, steady rate to maintain a technological edge in deployed platforms. Fluctuations in defense spending have pretty severe and exaggerated long term effects, after all. For instance:

>the USN SSN "gap" as boats are retired faster than they can be built due to service life completion (see pic related - basically all the sturgeons go retired by 2004, and the 688s are being retired at 2-3 per year, but we can only build VA class boats at 1-2 per year currently) was created in part due to the cancellation of the Seawolf class after 3 boats. If we'd been building Seawolfs (or 688Is) at one or two per year since the mid 90's, there would be more than enough boats to go around. However, between the "peace dividend" and the USN being way, way over optimistic in terms of applied technology and ensuing cost, the project got cancelled and set deploy-able boat numbers behind for two decades to come. Simple decision, very long term consequences.

File: THE EVIL MIC.jpg (138KB, 1032x510px) Image search: [Google]

138KB, 1032x510px

>>34182591
>>34184508
CONT

>B-2 bomber, see Seawolf saga above. Similar story. "Peace dividend" + over-reach on technologies applied (not yet mature and cost effective) = strategic bomber command having to refurbish B-52s to continue serving into the 2040s
>Ditto F-22
>In the case of USN surface combatants and the Zumwalt/CGX/DDGX program saga, the force level crisis has been somewhat averted by restarting Burke production. Overall force numbers are preserved, but next generation platform technologies are further delayed

In the case of the funding cuts of the 90's due to perceived significant threat level dropping by Congress and the US public, we see force level chaos extending even into the 2030's in several crucial areas - SSNs, air superiority platforms, strategic bombers, surface warfare combatants, armored vehicles, etc. The public and politicians were generally correct in thinking that in the mid-90's the US didn't require force levels as high as in the mid-80's comparatively. However, the decisions they made then did not directly affect the 90's so much as cripple US combat readiness decades down the road. It's the classic democratic political problem of "fuck it today to solve this short term problem, let the people coming tomorrow deal with the consequences since it won't affect me right now".

TLDR: small funding cuts today often mean big trouble a decade later. people offset this in times of low threat to help defense funding remain constant, as is necessary

>>34183089
No, that's the Liaoning. They recently launched their second and the third has been under construction for a year and a bit.

The third carrier is expected to be larger and to use catapults.

>>34182591
http://larvatus.com/michael-crichton-why-speculate/
basically