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‘The Big One Is Coming’ and the U.S. Military Isn’t Ready
- Thread starter SFC13557
- Start date
SFC13557
NES Member
"On the second point, I would tend to agree with your thoughts as they pertain to invasion. I was just trying to point out that invasion need not be on the menu at all for there to be war. Perhaps they don’t really need us or what we have to achieve their immediate goals and to set the desired course."
China has occupied, built islands in the Pacific and fortified them, defying International Law. They are pretty much copying the Japanese playbook of the 1930's by establishing an island chain of Military outposts, forward defense positions. They claim most of the South Pacific which clashes with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. The Philippines took them to International Court and the Court ruled against China which ignored the ruling and occupied and fortified the islands. They harass our Naval ships and planes entering "their space" which the World claims as International Waters. Eventually there will be an "incident" involving an Allies ship and the Chinese Navy which could be one way a shooting war starts. The Straits of Formosa, which is between Mainland China and Taiwan, is another flashpoint.
China has occupied, built islands in the Pacific and fortified them, defying International Law. They are pretty much copying the Japanese playbook of the 1930's by establishing an island chain of Military outposts, forward defense positions. They claim most of the South Pacific which clashes with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. The Philippines took them to International Court and the Court ruled against China which ignored the ruling and occupied and fortified the islands. They harass our Naval ships and planes entering "their space" which the World claims as International Waters. Eventually there will be an "incident" involving an Allies ship and the Chinese Navy which could be one way a shooting war starts. The Straits of Formosa, which is between Mainland China and Taiwan, is another flashpoint.
SFC13557
NES Member
China Recruited Western Pilots With Knowledge of Stealth Fighters and Aircraft Carriers
Chinese military sought trainers experienced in advanced aircraft and weaponry, documents show
From Today's WSJ.The CCP isn't f***ing around, they're serious about taking us on to dominate the Pacific.
"China’s military sought to enlist veteran Western pilots into a program that aimed to improve its ability to fly planes from aircraft carriers, among other capabilities that could be useful in the event of a conflict with the U.S., including potentially over Taiwan, according to official documents, legal filings, emails and people familiar with the matter.
The program, some details of which were first revealed by the U.K. defense ministry in October, involved close collaboration between China and a South African flight academy that recruited former military pilots with expertise in areas where China’s military lags behind Western counterparts.
Managers at the school—in a remote South African community several hours’ drive from the regional capital Cape Town—targeted former military pilots from the U.K., Norway, France and other countries, according to people familiar with the program. The pilots, teaching less-experienced pilots at air bases inside China, stood to make hundreds of thousands of dollars annually working for just a few months a year, one of the people said.
The Journal reviewed the flying histories of numerous pilots approached for the program and found at least four with experience flying F-35s, the U.S.’s most advanced stealth fighter, which is used on aircraft carriers and competes against a Chinese stealth fighter known as the J-20.
Other pilots who were approached, according to internal emails at the South African school, had knowledge of sensitive projects including the development of new planes, sensors and advanced weaponry.
In an indictment unsealed this week, U.S. authorities allege that a former Marine pilot detained in Australia, Daniel Duggan, trained Chinese military pilots in landing on aircraft carriers in coordination with a South African flight school, which they said dated back to the early 2010s. The indictment didn’t name the school. A lawyer for Mr. Duggan has said that Mr. Duggan, who faces possible extradition to the U.S., denies breaching any laws.
It couldn’t be determined how much expertise China actually gained. Trainers hired by the Test Flying Academy of South Africa were sent to China for several months each year over the past few years, and the school received over $12 million in payments, according to emails from its managers and a person familiar with the program.
But the school also complained over allegations of missed payments, poor student quality and other problems, and threatened to end the project last year, the emails show.
Also, pandemic-era travel restrictions made it hard for some of the pilots to enter China for training.
The TFASA academy in South Africa has acknowledged recruiting former military pilots to train Chinese pilots but said none of the training involves classified tactics or other information. It hasn’t detailed the training.
A spokesman for the school declined to answer questions about the training program.
The U.K. defense ministry said in October it was concerned about retired U.K. pilots helping China when it highlighted the training in October, though it provided few details at the time. Since then, Australia, Canada and other countries have said they would look into whether their pilots have also been aiding the Chinese military.
The TFASA school has said it has been in regular contact with the U.K. about the program.
The Journal contacted around two dozen former military pilots identified in the emails. Some declined to comment, while the others referred questions to the flight school.
The project came amid a push by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to build a military capable of fighting and winning a conflict against the U.S., and reflected moves by China to study Western militaries to overcome its lack of combat experience.
Sharpening pilots’ abilities to land and take off from aircraft carriers is an especially important skill for Chinese pilots, as Beijing’s first homegrown carrier undergoes sea trials and tensions over the fate of the self-ruled island of Taiwan intensify.
Aircraft carriers are relatively new to the Chinese military but could help Beijing project power further from its shores. China has two carriers in service, one a Soviet-made hull purchased in 1998 and another built on a similar design. Both lack aircraft-launching catapults that are standard on America’s 11 carriers, and instead deploy jets using “ski-jump” ramps that limit the payloads aircraft can carry.
A third Chinese aircraft carrier, the Fujian, launched in July and uses an electromagnetic catapult system similar to that on the newest U.S. carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford. The Fujian is still undergoing sea trials.
SFC13557
NES Member
"Beijing also is developing new versions of fighter and electronic attack jets that would launch from its aircraft carriers, putting pressure on its military to ensure it has pilots capable of taking off and landing from them.
People familiar with the thinking of the Chinese leadership say some modernization of its military is driven by concerns over a possible future conflict with the U.S., potentially over Taiwan, an island that Beijing claims and hasn’t ruled out trying to take over by force. The U.S. hasn’t committed to defending Taiwan but many military analysts assume it would if China opted to invade.
The TFASA school has said its main partner in China was Aviation Industry Corporation of China, a state-run giant linked to Beijing’s military. Emails viewed by the Journal from TFASA were addressed to AVIC and China’s People’s Liberation Army.
AVIC and China’s defense ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Emails also show that TFASA staff were repeatedly frustrated with their Chinese clients.
“When students have arrived a number of them are seriously underqualified and underprepared,” Jean Rossouw, the head of TFASA, wrote in a letter to AVIC and Chinese military representatives in March last year.
Mr. Roussow also highlighted problems with facilities, aircraft provided by the Chinese side for training, and airfields and accommodation for training staff. The school was also owed between $4 million and $5.1 million, he said. Some of the amount was later paid, he said in a later email.
Mr. Roussow didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
As the disputes flared, pilots who had signed up as trainers were left in limbo, either inside China or in their home countries, unsure whether they were still needed. Emails in 2021 from a TFASA project manager in China told pilots who were thinking of taking time off to go ahead and do so, but also advised them to remain on standby for when they would be needed.
“For now, those not in China will remain so but should be prepared to be called to return as soon as reasonably feasible in the event that we can rescind notice,” said Craig Penrice, the TFASA project manager, a former British military pilot. Mr. Penrice didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Skilled pilots are in short supply overall in China, and the country’s military competes with local commercial airlines for them. Chinese airlines recruit thousands of new pilots annually and Boeing forecasts the country will require 126,000 commercial pilots and a similar number of technicians over the next 20 years.
TFASA says it has had links to China since 2003, initially in testing aircraft for the Civil Aviation Authority of China and other entities. In June 2010, TFASA and AVIC formed a joint venture to create the AVIC International Flight Academy in South Africa and a sister academy in Xuhou, China.
Chinese commercial airline pilots train at both academies. Training at the Xuhou academy has expanded to include helicopter pilots for Chinese police and maritime and coast guard operations, according to TFASA.
The Chinese academy is co-operated by Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, known as one of the “seven sons of national defense” in Chinese state-run media—a reference to a group of public research universities that collaborate closely with the military.
In 2020, the U.S. Commerce Department alleged NUAA had attempted to acquire U.S.-origin items in support of programs for the Chinese military. Last year, the Biden administration banned any U.S. investment in AVIC because of its ties to the military.
As the Xuhou academy grew, the next step was to find former military pilots to help train the Chinese air force, bringing in outside expertise for a military that has long fretted that China hasn’t fought in any significant conflict since the 1970s—a problem referred to as a “peace disease” by Chinese military and political leaders.
As late as September this year, TFASA said on its website that it offered training from fully qualified fighter pilots with specialized military backgrounds “covering most modern fighters and helicopters in use in the world today.”
Among the courses it said students could take were “advanced fighter tactics,” “fighter weapons instruction” and “electronic warfare and tactics.” This section of the website was removed in October."
Mike Cherney and James T. Areddy contributed to this article.
People familiar with the thinking of the Chinese leadership say some modernization of its military is driven by concerns over a possible future conflict with the U.S., potentially over Taiwan, an island that Beijing claims and hasn’t ruled out trying to take over by force. The U.S. hasn’t committed to defending Taiwan but many military analysts assume it would if China opted to invade.
The TFASA school has said its main partner in China was Aviation Industry Corporation of China, a state-run giant linked to Beijing’s military. Emails viewed by the Journal from TFASA were addressed to AVIC and China’s People’s Liberation Army.
AVIC and China’s defense ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Emails also show that TFASA staff were repeatedly frustrated with their Chinese clients.
“When students have arrived a number of them are seriously underqualified and underprepared,” Jean Rossouw, the head of TFASA, wrote in a letter to AVIC and Chinese military representatives in March last year.
Mr. Roussow also highlighted problems with facilities, aircraft provided by the Chinese side for training, and airfields and accommodation for training staff. The school was also owed between $4 million and $5.1 million, he said. Some of the amount was later paid, he said in a later email.
Mr. Roussow didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
As the disputes flared, pilots who had signed up as trainers were left in limbo, either inside China or in their home countries, unsure whether they were still needed. Emails in 2021 from a TFASA project manager in China told pilots who were thinking of taking time off to go ahead and do so, but also advised them to remain on standby for when they would be needed.
“For now, those not in China will remain so but should be prepared to be called to return as soon as reasonably feasible in the event that we can rescind notice,” said Craig Penrice, the TFASA project manager, a former British military pilot. Mr. Penrice didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Skilled pilots are in short supply overall in China, and the country’s military competes with local commercial airlines for them. Chinese airlines recruit thousands of new pilots annually and Boeing forecasts the country will require 126,000 commercial pilots and a similar number of technicians over the next 20 years.
TFASA says it has had links to China since 2003, initially in testing aircraft for the Civil Aviation Authority of China and other entities. In June 2010, TFASA and AVIC formed a joint venture to create the AVIC International Flight Academy in South Africa and a sister academy in Xuhou, China.
Chinese commercial airline pilots train at both academies. Training at the Xuhou academy has expanded to include helicopter pilots for Chinese police and maritime and coast guard operations, according to TFASA.
The Chinese academy is co-operated by Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, known as one of the “seven sons of national defense” in Chinese state-run media—a reference to a group of public research universities that collaborate closely with the military.
In 2020, the U.S. Commerce Department alleged NUAA had attempted to acquire U.S.-origin items in support of programs for the Chinese military. Last year, the Biden administration banned any U.S. investment in AVIC because of its ties to the military.
As the Xuhou academy grew, the next step was to find former military pilots to help train the Chinese air force, bringing in outside expertise for a military that has long fretted that China hasn’t fought in any significant conflict since the 1970s—a problem referred to as a “peace disease” by Chinese military and political leaders.
As late as September this year, TFASA said on its website that it offered training from fully qualified fighter pilots with specialized military backgrounds “covering most modern fighters and helicopters in use in the world today.”
Among the courses it said students could take were “advanced fighter tactics,” “fighter weapons instruction” and “electronic warfare and tactics.” This section of the website was removed in October."
Mike Cherney and James T. Areddy contributed to this article.
mibro
NES Member
Saxons, Normans, the Germanic and Gallic tribes, Nordics, Celts. I'm Saxon btw, brown hair, hazel eyes, 6'2", my boyhood dream was to become a pilot.
My source is The Big Fat Book Of Racist Facts.
Sub-Saharan Africans have particular difficulty with visuospatial problems.
Cross-cultural differences in visuo-spatial processing and the culture-fairness of visuo-spatial intelligence tests: an integrative review and a model for matrices tasks
Visuo-spatial reasoning tests, such as Raven's matrices, Cattell's culture-fair test, or various subtests of the Wechsler scales, are frequently used to estimate intelligence scores in the context of inter-racial comparisons. This has led to several high-profile ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Last edited:
Saxons, Normans, the Germanic and Gallic tribes, Nordics, Celts. I'm pure Saxon btw, brown hair, hazel eyes, 6'2", my boyhood dream was to become a pilot.
My source is The Big Fat Book Of Racist Facts.
Sub-Saharan Africans have particular difficulty with visuospatial problems.
Cross-cultural differences in visuo-spatial processing and the culture-fairness of visuo-spatial intelligence tests: an integrative review and a model for matrices tasks
Visuo-spatial reasoning tests, such as Raven's matrices, Cattell's culture-fair test, or various subtests of the Wechsler scales, are frequently used to estimate intelligence scores in the context of inter-racial comparisons. This has led to several high-profile ...
I could never be a pilot cause I was born a black. Being the pure specimen that you are and of the most advantageous race and intelligence traits, what happened to those dreams?Saxons, Normans, the Germanic and Gallic tribes, Nordics, Celts. I'm pure Saxon btw, brown hair, hazel eyes, 6'2", my boyhood dream was to become a pilot.
My source is The Big Fat Book Of Racist Facts.
Sub-Saharan Africans have particular difficulty with visuospatial problems.
Cross-cultural differences in visuo-spatial processing and the culture-fairness of visuo-spatial intelligence tests: an integrative review and a model for matrices tasks
Visuo-spatial reasoning tests, such as Raven's matrices, Cattell's culture-fair test, or various subtests of the Wechsler scales, are frequently used to estimate intelligence scores in the context of inter-racial comparisons. This has led to several high-profile ...
mibro
NES Member
Have you ever wanted to be a pilot?
I read too many books under the covers with a flashlight and became mildly short-sighted. My brother and sister both have perfect eyesight. So I joined the Army instead. Life's a bitch, eh?
From WSJ last week:
“In recent weeks, Apple Inc. has accelerated plans to shift some of its production outside China, long the dominant country in the supply chain that built the world’s most valuable company, say people involved in the discussions. It is telling suppli-ers to plan more actively for assembling Apple products elsewhere in Asia, particularly India and Vietnam, they say, and looking to reduce dependence on Taiwanese assemblers led by Foxconn Technology Group.
… Coming after a year of events that weakened China’s status as a stable manufacturing center, the upheaval means Apple no longer feels comfortable having so much of its business tied up in one place, according to analysts and people in the Apple supply chain.
… Apple’s longer-term goal is to ship 40% to 45% of iPhones from India, compared with a single-digit percentage cur-rently, according to Ming-chi Kuo, an analyst at TF In-ternational Securities who follows the supply chain. Suppliers say Vietnam is expected to shoulder more of the manufacturing for other Apple products such as AirPods, smartwatches and laptops.”
Rockrivr1
NES Member
My recruiter told me I could become a pilot if I joined Undesignated in the Air Wing Delayed Entry Program. Hummmm, he must have lied as I'm still not a pilot.....
SFC13557
NES Member
Yes, I read that. Supposedly the problem w/India is that each Indian "State" has different rules and regulations on foreign manufacturing and it's a licensing nightmare for non-Indian Companies to operate there. I believe this explanation, info was in the same article you're quoting. The US MUST slowly start cutting ties w/China and US manufacturers need to have serious discussions on their overseas manufacturing, especially in hostile countries. The CCP has done what the USSR could never do, establish themselves as a manufacturing hub to the world. They sucked in the World's major companies and CEO's with cheap, efficient labor even as they stole their intellectual property. Starting in the early 90's the CCP became the #1 bad actor in economic, intellectual espionage according to the briefings we received at LL.
“Yes, I read that. Supposedly the problem w/India is that each Indian "State" has different rules and regulations on foreign manufacturing and it's a licensing nightmare for non-Indian Companies to operate there.”
I think the problem with India, is that it’s in India.
I think the problem with India, is that it’s in India.
SFC13557
NES Member
The Dangerous Downward Spiral of U.S.-China Relations
For six years, neither side has shown a serious interest in resolving differences through diplomacy
From today's WSJ."How bad is the relationship between China and the U.S.? There is no need to mince words: China and the U.S. are caught in a competitive downward spiral that if not reversed could drastically damage the two countries and the rest of the world.
Even if Beijing and Washington can “put a floor” under their competition (as the Biden administration likes to put it) so that it doesn’t go military, the hostile interactions between these two superpowers—which constitute 40% of the world’s economy—will take a toll on innovation and growth. Even before the onset of the Covid pandemic, global growth in 2019 was the lowest in a decade.
That’s because technology has become the focal point of strategic competition. Fear and mutual suspicion are leading both countries to weaponize their interdependence—once considered a solid foundation for peace—and use it against each other. The risk that either country could suddenly block the other’s exports or imports of crucial technologies or materials—as both have already begun to do—is driving them to erect walls between them and pursue nationalist self-reliance after decades of fruitful collaboration. They are pressing other countries to join their bloc, forcing an either-or choice that most nations wish to avoid.
Nothing about this deterioration of relations was inevitable. It is a truism that rising powers and reigning ones end up fighting one another as the gap between their economic and military capabilities narrows—the so-called Thucydides Trap. Yet for decades foreign-policy makers in China and the U.S. proved this theory wrong; the two countries got along remarkably well despite China’s growing might and their very different political systems.
But for the past six years—four under President Trump and two under President Biden—neither side has invested any serious effort in resolving their differences through diplomacy. There has been no progress at the international level—no joint efforts on common threats like climate change, public health or the North Korean nuclear threat—to build confidence between the two societies. Their mutual alienation has been exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, which cut off travel between Beijing and Washington and kept President Xi Jinping isolated in Beijing. As a result, there was nothing to prevent Sino-U. S. relations from being dragged down by domestic politics in both countries.
A U-turn
To start with China, after decades of collective leadership, President Xi took a U-turn back to personalistic dictatorship.Deng Xiaoping had blamed the costly tragedies of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution on the “overconcentration of authority” and “arbitrary decisions” of Mao Zedong’s strongman rule from 1949 to 1976. After Mao died, Deng replaced Mao’s dictatorship with a system in which power was more diffused and competition more rule-bound.
But Mr. Xi shattered intraparty rules and ignored precedents after becoming top leader in 2012. He claimed a third term in power and surrounded himself with loyal sycophants. He purged rivals, real and imagined, by means of a massive anticorruption campaign that continues to this day.
In this context, the top-down pressure on all officials to salvage their careers by demonstrating their loyalty to the leader is intense. It drives them to jump on the bandwagon behind Mr. Xi’s preferences in both foreign and domestic policy as early as possible and implement them to a more extreme degree than he may have originally intended—hence the “wolf warrior” insults made by diplomats of every rank, intensified military and coast guard actions in the South China Sea and against Japan and Taiwan, and the economic arm-twisting against Australia, South Korea, Lithuania and other countries who have dared deviate from China’s dogmas. Forcing Muslims into thought-reform camps in Xinjiang and crushing Hong Kong’s autonomy have made China’s image even more threatening in the eyes of the world.
Echo chamber
Inside China no one dares tell Mr. Xi about the negative fallout of his policies. He lives in an echo chamber of head-nodding and praise. At this fall’s Communist Party congress, he forced into retirement the politicians from outside his own faction who might have questioned his judgment and replaced them with only his most trusted and compliant comrades.Consider that during his first decade in power, Mr. Xi abolished term limits that had provided a regular, predictable succession of top leadership; cracked down on internet companies and other private businesses; refused to condemn Russia’s brutal, unprovoked war in Ukraine; and prolonged an extreme zero-Covid approach to managing the pandemic that he claimed demonstrated the superiority of China’s system even as it broke the finances of local governments and generated growing public resistance. It took the first nationwide protests against the central government since Tiananmen for Xi’s administration to finally get the message and abruptly pivot toward a more flexible approach.
The costs of Mr. Xi’s “overreach” are piling up domestically as well as internationally, pummeling its economy and damaging the country’s reputation for competent economic management. Unemployment of college graduates is approaching 20%, many private entrepreneurs are rushing for the exits, and even the usually bullish international investors are diversifying their portfolios away from China.
Given this perfect storm of self-inflicted problems, it’s no wonder that Mr. Xi’s regime tries to protect itself by blaming American “containment” and “hostile foreign forces.”
U.S. overreaction
As for the U.S., domestic political priorities have pushed policy makers to overreact to the China threat. Many observers anticipated that the Biden administration would revive diplomatic engagement of Beijing after the confrontational approach of the Trump administration had failed to produce any improvement in Chinese behavior. But with Beijing continuing to act provocatively, the new president opted to put his ambitious domestic agenda first.Despite the Democrats’ paper-thin margin in Congress, President Biden believed he could win bipartisan support for his expensive legislative agenda for national self-strengthening if he made competition with China the foil.
Such an approach may have been useful for winning close votes in Congress, but it made it harder to make the compromises necessary to stabilize what was becoming a dangerously adversarial relationship. For example, the Trump administration’s tariffs against imports from China remain in effect even though they contribute to inflation by raising prices for American consumers and manufacturers.
The bipartisan consensus on the China threat left little space for sensible thinking about the trade-offs between the costs and benefits of specific policies toward China. The most obvious example is that the visa restrictions on certain categories of Chinese students and scholars, introduced by President Trump and retained by President Biden, have undercut America’s own great advantage in attracting talent to its unsurpassed research universities.
The face-to-face meeting of Mr. Xi and Mr. Biden at the margins of the G-20 meeting in Bali in November hinted that the two leaders may now have incentives to make greater investments in diplomacy. Mr. Xi won a third term at the party congress, and Mr. Biden’s Democrats defied expectations to hold on to their majority in the Senate. If the two governments can build on the Bali meeting to start a process of negotiated give-and-take that generates momentum toward detente, it could restore a modicum of good will between the two societies and counteract the domestic drag toward the bottom in U.S.-China relations."
Dr. Shirk is research professor and chair of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego, and the author of “Overreach: How China Derailed its Peaceful Rise.” She can be reached at [email protected].
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