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China

Reports that China might start providing lethal weapons directly to Russia. This would be a huge elscalation of China's feud with the west. Also as admittance that China's attempts to drvie a wedge between The US and other Western nations has failed miserably, since selling weapons str4ight to Russia would alienated the West as a whole.
 
Well, Xi shows where he stands with his now open support of Putin.
Edited by jimbob: 


Rule 11 and rule 12 violation removed
 
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Kinda weird question for those who know more about the military than me (most of y'all):
How effective is the Chinese Military?
I know it's large. But I can't think of examples of it's quality. For instance, we are witnessing how ineffective the Russian military is. We've seen the American military in action all the time. We've seen NATO forces in action through out the years. Say, if everything goes terrible (especially with China increasingly siding with Russia') and there is a World War. (assuming no nukes) it seems NATO could destroy Russia, but I really have no idea How China would do.
 
gabeygoat said:
Kinda weird question for those who know more about the military than me (most of y'all):
How effective is the Chinese Military?
I know it's large. But I can't think of examples of it's quality. For instance, we are witnessing how ineffective the Russian military is.
Click to expand...

Hindsight has shown that Russia had the numbers, but the corruption within the army meant that instead of maintenance, money had gone into pockets.

That won't be the case in China, where there is only one form of corruption - that authorised by the CCP.

I expect their forces will be well-drilled, well-equipped and a vastly different proposition from the Russian rabble. And if they weren't in tip-top shape a year ago, they'd have seen what happened in Ukraine and smartened up sharply.

That said, I see zero chance of any kind of conventional way between the west and China.

gabeygoat said:
We've seen the American military in action all the time.
Click to expand...

And it hasn't been all that pretty.

Screwed up Iraq to an absurd degree, and were unable to stop ISIS.

Afghanistan wasn't very impressive, either.
 
theprestige said:
Maybe it's a SIGINT platform? Hoping to capture US military radio signatures of some kind? That they can't get from asking an expat to do some war driving?
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SIGINT makes more sense than anything else. The balloon has a chance to pass much closer to a source than a satellite in orbit, so it is easier to pick up on lower powered transmissions. Given that there was not much awareness of these things until a year ago, it seems likely that there were little in countermeasures happening until now.

And how is the data getting back home? Long range radio transmission? That the US isn't bothering to jam?
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I would guess burst transmissions using frequency hopping to satellites. Data gets stored and transmitted more than once to more than one receiver. Jamming would not be easy since it pretty much has to know approximately where the receiver is. A ground based jammer is not going to do much about a balloon that is already ten miles above the ground transmitting up to space.

The overall value of the balloons is pretty questionable. I would not count out some internal political BS from China being involved where one agency is doing this just to keep their share of funding even though there are better ways to do the same thing.
 
gabeygoat said:
Kinda weird question for those who know more about the military than me (most of y'all):
How effective is the Chinese Military?
I know it's large. But I can't think of examples of it's quality. For instance, we are witnessing how ineffective the Russian military is. We've seen the American military in action all the time. We've seen NATO forces in action through out the years. Say, if everything goes terrible (especially with China increasingly siding with Russia') and there is a World War. (assuming no nukes) it seems NATO could destroy Russia, but I really have no idea How China would do.
Click to expand...

Nobody knows exactly how effective the Chinese military is, because it has not yet been tested in battle. I think the general consensus is that it is somewhere between current Russian quality (abysmal) and peak Soviet quality (inferior, but capable).
 
theprestige said:
Nobody knows exactly how effective the Chinese military is, because it has not yet been tested in battle. I think the general consensus is that it is somewhere between current Russian quality (abysmal) and peak Soviet quality (inferior, but capable).
Click to expand...

Likely a very wide spread in quality. Norenco, which is a PLA run corporation, makes stuff that is sold around the world. At least somebody in the Chinese army knows enough how to run a business, which is not likely the case with the Russians military leadership.

The guy that makes the Chinese history podcast that I have been listening to reads from declassified UK intel reports from Tiananmen Square every anniversary of that disaster. The transcripts he reads does not make the PLA look good at all. Things found there:

Troops initially ordered to attack the square refused to move.

Other troops were ordered to attack the troops that did not attack. They did follow through.

When the second group did not quite get the job done, other units were ordered to attack the remains of the first two. At this point the units being sent forward were of illiterate peasant stock and were being told they were attacking counter-revolutionaries.

Lots of dead civilians and military that never even reached the square.

Bottom line is that, at least 30 years ago, the Chinese military was a mixed bag and a lot of it not very capable or reliable. Those that were reliable were not very skilled and often illiterate. China still treats the peasants badly even today and still uses them in their army.

Edited to add a links for where you can listen to this.

https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podca...n-square-massacre/id741606139?i=1000476755923
 
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gabeygoat said:
Kinda weird question for those who know more about the military than me (most of y'all):
How effective is the Chinese Military?
I know it's large. But I can't think of examples of it's quality. For instance, we are witnessing how ineffective the Russian military is. We've seen the American military in action all the time. We've seen NATO forces in action through out the years. Say, if everything goes terrible (especially with China increasingly siding with Russia') and there is a World War. (assuming no nukes) it seems NATO could destroy Russia, but I really have no idea How China would do.
Click to expand...

IMO China's military would perform no better than Russia's. Both are deeply corrupt, in some respects China's may be even more corrupt. China may also have serious chain of command issues. Their military is under the command of the Communist Party rather than the president and this it's not entirely certain who in the Communist Party various officers and units are loyal to.

Xi didn't come up though the military so he likely had very little backing there meaning it may not have followed his orders. He has spent a good part of the last decade on an "anti-corruption" campaign who's real goal was to remove officers and rivals, the people he replaced corrupt officers were still corrupt but they were his corrupt officers rather then that of a rival.

Where China does have an advantage over Russia is that they can probably build and maintain their modern equipment in a way Russia can't. However, they also lack the doctrine to use it properly and they lack the combat experience that NATO and even Russia has accumulated in the last 2 decades so I question if this equipment would do any better in actual combat.

The other issue China would face is that their main military objective is an island. This makes any invading far more complex and difficult than anything Russia needed to do in Ukraine. This would expose the cracks in experience, competence and doctrine to a correspondingly greater degree.
 
lomiller said:
The other issue China would face is that their main military objective is an island. This makes any invading far more complex and difficult than anything Russia needed to do in Ukraine. This would expose the cracks in experience, competence and doctrine to a correspondingly greater degree.
Click to expand...

China has one other advantage you didn't mention, but which is relevant and significant. They have been building their military with the specific goal of invading Taiwan. As Perun pointed out in one of his early military analysis videos, Russia didn't spend its military budget as if invading Ukraine was a priority. It spent a lot of its money doing things that are of no use in the current conflict. So more of China's military is focused on the goal of invading Taiwan than Russia's military was focused on Ukraine.

Nevertheless, the other problems you mentioned don't go away even with that focus. A large scale amphibious invasion is incredibly hard to pull off, and just as China has focused resources on preparing to invade Taiwan, Taiwan has also focused resources on defending against such an invasion. Its military is much better equipped than Ukraine, much better trained, and has the geographic advantage. I expect an Chinese invasion attempt would be a much higher intensity conflict than the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but my sense is it would also burn out more quickly, and probably not in China's favor. You can't send amphibious assault craft continuously for a year, either you win or your fleet gets sunk. And unlike Russia, China is not food or fuel independent, it needs imports to survive. And those imports have to come by ship, through the South China Sea. So it can't afford a protracted conflict where Taiwanese subs could cripple shipping for extended periods.
 
Doubt said:
Likely a very wide spread in quality. Norenco, which is a PLA run corporation, makes stuff that is sold around the world. At least somebody in the Chinese army knows enough how to run a business, which is not likely the case with the Russians military leadership.

The guy that makes the Chinese history podcast that I have been listening to reads from declassified UK intel reports from Tiananmen Square every anniversary of that disaster. The transcripts he reads does not make the PLA look good at all. Things found there:

Troops initially ordered to attack the square refused to move.

Other troops were ordered to attack the troops that did not attack. They did follow through.

When the second group did not quite get the job done, other units were ordered to attack the remains of the first two. At this point the units being sent forward were of illiterate peasant stock and were being told they were attacking counter-revolutionaries.

Lots of dead civilians and military that never even reached the square.

Bottom line is that, at least 30 years ago, the Chinese military was a mixed bag and a lot of it not very capable or reliable. Those that were reliable were not very skilled and often illiterate. China still treats the peasants badly even today and still uses them in their army.

Edited to add a links for where you can listen to this.

https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podca...n-square-massacre/id741606139?i=1000476755923
Click to expand...

Thanks! The podcast sounds interesting.
 
theprestige said:
Thanks! The podcast sounds interesting.
Click to expand...

The history chronology is just getting to the end of the Ming dynasty. The guy making it is an American teaching english in Shanghai. The Tiananmen square stuff and his occasionally updates on COVID are just side things he has dealt with. Pretty sure he plans to move back to the US by the time he really gets into 1900s.
 
IMO China is being surprisingly capitalistic about this.

See how they can get the maximum profit out of this conflict, dealing the maximum damage to their competitors without going under themselves.

If the Chinese army ever enters Russia I have my doubts it will be to help. And selling ammo is going to get disapproving talks, but not much else. Both the EU and in a lesser extent the US depend on cheap Chinese stuff to help with the recession this war is causing to hit it with sanctions over this, and it allows the Chinese to present themselves to the rest of the world as the nation willing to stand up to the US, which might get it inroads in Africa and SE Asia.
 
Lukraak_Sisser said:
IMO China is being surprisingly capitalistic about this.

See how they can get the maximum profit out of this conflict, dealing the maximum damage to their competitors without going under themselves.

If the Chinese army ever enters Russia I have my doubts it will be to help. And selling ammo is going to get disapproving talks, but not much else. Both the EU and in a lesser extent the US depend on cheap Chinese stuff to help with the recession this war is causing to hit it with sanctions over this, and it allows the Chinese to present themselves to the rest of the world as the nation willing to stand up to the US, which might get it inroads in Africa and SE Asia.
Click to expand...

What's surprising about it? Until the advent of international socialism and the global worker's paradise, "national" socialism must necessarily be some form of state capitalism.
 
Ziggurat said:
China has one other advantage you didn't mention, but which is relevant and significant. They have been building their military with the specific goal of invading Taiwan. As Perun pointed out in one of his early military analysis videos, Russia didn't spend its military budget as if invading Ukraine was a priority. It spent a lot of its money doing things that are of no use in the current conflict. So more of China's military is focused on the goal of invading Taiwan than Russia's military was focused on Ukraine.

Nevertheless, the other problems you mentioned don't go away even with that focus. A large scale amphibious invasion is incredibly hard to pull off, and just as China has focused resources on preparing to invade Taiwan, Taiwan has also focused resources on defending against such an invasion. Its military is much better equipped than Ukraine, much better trained, and has the geographic advantage. I expect an Chinese invasion attempt would be a much higher intensity conflict than the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but my sense is it would also burn out more quickly, and probably not in China's favor. You can't send amphibious assault craft continuously for a year, either you win or your fleet gets sunk. And unlike Russia, China is not food or fuel independent, it needs imports to survive. And those imports have to come by ship, through the South China Sea. So it can't afford a protracted conflict where Taiwanese subs could cripple shipping for extended periods.
Click to expand...

This just means they ostensibly have the right equipment to pull off a large scale landing relatively close to their own shores. The problem is that the doctrine and even the equipment was designed by people with no first hand knowledge of landing operations.

IMO China doesn't even get past the first hurdle which is air superiority. Winning in air combat isn't just about the spec of the aircraft, or even about pilot skill. IMO Western, doctrine, avionics, communications systems, weapon systems, etc are all far superior to their Chinese counterparts and would allow the defenders to shoot down Chinese aircraft at very high kill ratios even if the aircraft themselves have similar specs.
 
I'm pretty sure that if China invaded Taiwan, the first we in the "west" would hear about it is when the news reports started circulating saying "China has invaded and taken control of Taiwan".
 
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