Things are getting "Frosty"........Slightly more then NORMAL.

[Sourdough]

I confess I fear for Alaska, more then most jabbered about "Hot Spots".

Did Japan Just Warn The US Of An Impending Joint Attack From China And Russia? | ZeroHedge

 

[Hardcalibres]

A lot of this stuff is about Taiwan.

China is trying to intimidate all nations that might support Taiwan when China makes the big move to take them.

Last week, Chinese officials warned they would first strike Japan with nuclear weapons if they did anything to backup Taiwan.

“When we liberate Taiwan, if Japan dares to intervene by force – even if it only deploys one soldier, one plane or one ship – we will not only return fire but also wage full-scale war against Japan itself.”

https://www.news.com.au/technology/...t/news-story/d9af14dc6b90628082e79ab4c77629e1
Between China and Russia, they have maneuvered the US into a no win situation. When they move on Taiwan, if the US does nothing, then the US will lose the spot of most powerful nation on earth. If the US backs up Taiwan, then they will most likely lose in that effort (as much as anything because Taiwan is geographically so close to China) and also because the leadership of the US is very weak (ie senile old man who gets Libya and Syria mixed up).

Personally I suspect that China is trying to demoralize the population of Taiwan to the point where the people there assess they have only two choices:

1) Vote to rejoin China
2) Die

To do that, China needs to make clear to Taiwan that no one is going to back them up - hence the efforts at intimidating all those nations that have a treaty based responsibility to oppose any invasion of Taiwan.

The target audience for all this stuff is the population of Taiwan.

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

 

[Alaskajohn]

We are no longer the big kid on the block, and no one fears uncle joe.

 

[Tacitus]

It would be shortsighted of Russia to side with China. China is by far the bigger long term threat to Russia. We are still the #1 kid on the block, but that is temporary. The next century is the century of China...unless something changes...and I don't see any indications that the US will change its behavior and stop heading for an economic cliff. Russia should be taking a longer term approach, and making overtures to the US. At the beginning of WWII, the US did not have the largest military, but we did have the largest economy. That is the position China is in right now.

 

[user 55]

It might get messy. Will "they" resort to nukes? I doubt it as there is far too much to lose. The chicomms and their supporters are not stupid. Now, with the current lame duck administration, who knows what if any a response might be. Cant comment more since his isn't in the political section but I wont count America out just yet.

 

[Hardcalibres]

It might get messy. Will "they" resort to nukes? I doubt it as there is far too much to lose. The chicomms and their supporters are not stupid. Now, with the current lame duck administration, who knows what if any a response might be. Cant comment more since his isn't in the political section but I wont count America out just yet.

The Chinese using "crazy" language in relation to use of nuclear weapons is deliberate.

Nuclear deterrence is much more effective if the potential targets for strikes, think you might be crazy enough to use nuclear weapons.

Look at North Korea.......the mouse that roared.

Bluff or real? .........just like in poker.

 

[user 55]

The Chinese using "crazy" language in relation to use of nuclear weapons is deliberate.

Nuclear deterrence is much more effective if the potential targets for strikes, think you might be crazy enough to use nuclear weapons.

Look at North Korea.......the mouse that roared.

Bluff or real? .........just like in poker.

I agree to some extent. I suspect that if the nuke option went hot the US would respond and there would be significant carnage on both sides. Given the population density in China I suspect they would experience massive losses not that they care other than maintaining their slave labor force. They talk exactly the same as NK and they might be where NK "learned" the language of threats. Not sure if there is a bluff here or not as they often make calculated decisions based on long term outcomes.

 

[Sourdough]

One "Booger" in the ointment is..........China "CAN" shutdown our GPS system, and as I understand they can do it from outer-space. What is sweet for them is they have their own GPS system.

I am not sure ICBM are of any use without GPS system. Also I think a CME of substantial size, would play hell on the GPS systems. Some say it could be totally or partly destroyed.

 

[Aerindel]

I am not sure ICBM are of any use without GPS system

They are. They do not use GPS. They use old school navigation systems based on internal dead reckoning principles with no dependencies on exterior signals. "Fly for 18 minutes at such and such a heading (established by internal gyroscopes), at such and such an angle" Type of thing.

Portable tactical nukes are the same way. Their exact position on the ground is established with theodolites, sighted off things like local mountain peaks with known positions. This data is then fed into computers which calculate a firing solution and upload to the missile before launch. Again, this firing solution is very simple and comprised of just headings and time codes.

Anyway,

I read an interesting (fiction) book recently, wherein China is suffering a food shortage and has essentially no choice but to take over Taiwan and some other territories in the Philippines. Knowing the US would not normally allow this, they launch a large scale cyber attack on the US, hoping to trigger an economic depression large enough that the us would be forced to circle its wagons and see to its own needs first rather than foreign intervention. They assume American culture would respond to such an situation the way Asian culture would, with increased unity and socialism.

The complete underestimate the US domestic situation and instead of an economy depression, they trigger complete collapse and civil war, destroying the US in all but name and prompting total retaliation which kills hundreds of millions of Chinese and WWIII.

I found this a very interesting scenario as I don't see any path where China would deliberately start WWIII, but I could see them starting it on accident.

 

[Hardcalibres]

They are. They do not use GPS. They use old school navigation systems based on internal dead reckoning principles with no dependencies on exterior signals. "Fly for 18 minutes at such and such a heading (established by internal gyroscopes), at such and such an angle" Type of thing.

Portable tactical nukes are the same way. Their exact position on the ground is established with theodolites, sighted off things like local mountain peaks with known positions. This data is then fed into computers which calculate a firing solution and upload to the missile before launch. Again, this firing solution is very simple and comprised of just headings and time codes.

Anyway,

I read an interesting (fiction) book recently, wherein China is suffering a food shortage and has essentially no choice but to take over Taiwan and some other territories in the Philippines. Knowing the US would not normally allow this, they launch a large scale cyber attack on the US, hoping to trigger an economic depression large enough that the us would be forced to circle its wagons and see to its own needs first rather than foreign intervention. They assume American culture would respond to such an situation the way Asian culture would, with increased unity and socialism.

The complete underestimate the US domestic situation and instead of an economy depression, they trigger complete collapse and civil war, destroying the US in all but name and prompting total retaliation which kills hundreds of millions of Chinese and WWIII.

I found this a very interesting scenario as I don't see any path where China would deliberately start WWIII, but I could see them starting it on accident.

Yep.

"Chicken" is a dangerous game.

 

[Sourdough]

They use old school navigation systems based on internal dead reckoning principles with no dependencies on exterior signals. "Fly for 18 minutes at such and such a heading (established by internal gyroscopes), at such and such an angle" Type of thing.

Well........I am a "commercial pilot" and that system gets you close "generally". And that system is what is used for flying VFR over top of IMR conditions. Assumptions are required, these rely heavily on accurate and fresh information about winds aloft, as to direction and speed. This information is subject to change midflight, and likely not super accurate to start with. Winds are posted at layers of elevation, given ASL and are never in the same direction. So you get winds aloft at 3,000 ft. and 6,000 ft. and 9000 ft. and 12,000 ft. They will be going in different directions and at different speeds.

 

[Aerindel]

Well........I am a "commercial pilot" and that system gets you close "generally"

"Close generally" is what nuclear weapons are good for. Also, winds, etc have a lot less effect when you are just punching up through them on the way to space, or falling down through them, especially as a blunt spinning cone, compared to aerodynamic flight.

And in any case, inertial guidance can compensate for much of that, as wind pushing on a rocket exerts force on the internal gyros that they can steer the rocket into.

Keep in mind, this was how V2 rockets where aimed all the way back in WWII without digital computers and they could still hit the city they where aimed at most of the time from hundreds of miles away.

But at the end of the day, ballistic missiles are not precision weapons. Hence the expectation of multiple warheads directed at high value targets. Absolutely reliability is far more important than precision in this case.

 

[Aerindel]

Of course, most of our conventional weapons these days are dependent on absolute air and communication superiority. Its really a big unknown what war would look like with a peer force. For decades now our 'wars' have consisted of taking out whatever AA and coms ability, if any, the target country has in the first few hours and after that simply using whatever precision weapons we want to, regardless of their dependences.

In some ways, this could be a deterrent to a country. If you take out our ability to drop a bomb on a specific car, that may mean we simply resort to blowing up the entire airport next time.

 

[Neb]

I have created test applications to test both ICBMs and cruise missiles.

ICBM do use inertial guidance, most of the flight is in space and need only get close.

Tomahawk cruise missiles can be programmed with multiple way points (fly north for 100 miles, make a right turn through the straits of Gibraltar, go around Lybia...) and uses GPS. There are more than one type of GOS with the military version having a higher degree of accuracy.

Ben