AIRPOWER/Cold War - Its literally the first two lines of their hymn

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Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

The Proc posted:

Here's a detailed government report on the aftermath: http://www.ornl.gov/info/reports/1961/3445600598663.pdf

I know this is from a hundred pages ago but JESUS CHRIST this experiment is awesomely terrible. There is no control group in this extremely hazardous "blast an area with hard radiation and see what happens to the plants" experiment. At the end they have the closest you'll get to an "OOPS!" in a published paper in the conclusions where they note that "conservation of some undisturbed areas in the immediate vicinity of the reactor is desired for sampling purposes," or in other words "we're idiots and we forgot to take control samples, please don't gently caress up the experiment like we did." I have a coworker who worked at Oak Ridge for decades, I'll have to ask him if they ever carried out this same experiment. Also, their conclusion that they didn't generate any useful data is pretty hilarious in light of the blatantly irresponsible methodology. They could have done this with some potted plants and a lab sized radio emitter instead of a loving 10Mw reactor designed for propulsion research.

Also the goal: measure the effect of radiation dose on soil.

Coupled with the comment: we probably should have measured the soil dose instead of the air dose.

What a bunch of apes.

Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 13:08 on May 4, 2014

# ¿ May 4, 2014 13:05

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:30

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

If any of you watched Colbert recently, you know that the New Yorker sent a reporter to Hiroshima in the summer of 1946 to record eyewitness accounts of the first atomic bomb used on human targets. The full text is available online but in a difficult to read format. I did some find/replace-fu on it to make the format more readable, although paragraph indentations for all 76 pages are beyond the span of my patience. I think this is relevant to this thread as this is the first print article describing first-hand the horrors of nuclear war ever to hit the world presses. If you saw the Colbert interview, you know that the New Yorker devoted their entire edition to this story and the entire issue (for the at-that-time weekly periodical) was sold out within 12 hours.

The document is 80 pages and thus obviously beyond the text limit of a post(!) but I've uploaded the file here. I've left in .doc format so you can fix the paragraph indentation as you go if you want to make it more readable.

# ¿ May 8, 2014 13:29

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Better link to a better format of the text online. http://www.forgottenbooks.org/readbook_text/Hiroshima_1000634030/1

# ¿ May 9, 2014 04:32

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Cyrano4747 posted:

That article was also reprinted as the book Hiroshima, by John Hersey. It's been in non-stop publication since 1946, has some ungodly number of millions of copies out there, is required reading in countless high school and university courses, and is one of the major early texts in the New Journalism that was really important in the third quarter of the 20th century. It's an obscenely famous book. You can get used copies for pennies on Amazon if you don't want to gently caress with a .pdf, and I'm pretty sure you can get it in all your favorite e-reader formats for pretty cheap given how common it is as a required book in both History and Journalism courses.

edit: Amazon link

The thought that there might be people who are being introduced to this via Colbert makes me alternatively want to cheer and cry.

edit x2: it really is an amazing book and should pretty much be required reading for anyone who wants to talk about the Cold War or nuclear policy.

The thing has been on my dad's bookshelf for my whole life (he has a great collection of history) but because of the cover art I assumed it was a novel and never picked it up. I feel like there's a lesson here that could be easily summed up in a pithy phrase...

Now I live on the other side of the world from my dad's bookshelf.

# ¿ May 9, 2014 05:58

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Snowdens Secret posted:

Was the Colbert thing as anti-bomb as Jon Stewart was?

No, the Colbert interview was mostly about the publishing aspect of it and the impact. As for the moral question, the German Jesuit survivors laid it out very succinctly. Either total war is immoral, and the bomb is immoral, or total war is acceptable and the bomb is acceptable. Fortunately the world has never had to wrestle with the moral question of total war ever again after world war 2, probably because of the existence of the bomb.

Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 06:04 on May 9, 2014

# ¿ May 9, 2014 06:01

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Christ, Reagan was ready to start a constitutional crisis over the Falklands?

# ¿ May 12, 2014 01:38

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Nelson has been dead for almost 200 years. Battleships have been dead for 70 years. Carriers haven't fought a naval battle in just as long and naval doctrine hasn't had a real example to draw on in all that time. How many "capital ships" you have (now that destroyers are bigger than heavy old heavy cruisers anyway) isn't as good a metric as it was.

# ¿ May 13, 2014 03:59

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

More to the point England has its freedom of shipping guaranteed by possibly the closest alliance in the modern world with a nation that has 10 times the capital ships of any other power. Their strategic need for a capital ship is questionable. In a world where the strategic needs of Great Britain and the United States are hard to imagine ever being divorced to the degree that Britain would need its own Navy capable of winning blue water battles , why duplicate the capabilities and expense of the American Navy?

I did not check the date for the Battle of Trafalgar before posting. :-(

# ¿ May 13, 2014 05:00

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

How dare they spend money on generous social welfare! :argh:

The English government knows how to manage its monies which is why their economy is doing so much better. . . Right guys? :downs:

Honestly, what are English bonds going for nowadays? 2%? If the Tories won't buy health care or housing even on such generous credit maybe they could be convinced to spend it on The British Admiralty. :britain:

It would be better than using it to cut taxes or shrink the economy or whatever insane plan to not spend money they're pursuing now.

Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 09:23 on May 13, 2014

# ¿ May 13, 2014 09:18

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Yeah fiscal policy on both sides of the Atlantic took a huge poo poo and died in 2008. But in Europe monetary policy is also hosed. The US is doing comparatively better which tells you Europe is doing very badly indeed. Unless you're Germany and like literally the only one benefiting from tight Euro monetary policy. And even then your public coffers are being robbed to send Greece money so Greece can send that money straight back to German bankers.

It's amazing that of a continent supposedly ridden with socialist pinkos, only Iceland told the big banks to get hosed when they showed up at the public treasury with shovels and bags.

To make this tie into the Cold War somehow, the Thomas Piketty thread down in DD discussing (and I use that word loosely) his new book Capital in the 21st Century has been tossing around the idea that the Cold War kept the capitalist class honest to some extent, because they had to share some of the wealth or Communist propaganda would have been uncomfortably accurate. Now that there is no alternative to capitalism there is nothing holding them back.

Except democracy and rule of law. :rimshot:

Ah yes austerity, the policy that first-year economics students could tell you would cause another recession. But what do they know, they're just first-year students and we've got professional academics like Niall Ferguson telling us it'll work grea -- oh we've gone back into recession? NO ONE COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS.

Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 12:36 on May 13, 2014

# ¿ May 13, 2014 12:28

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

I remember reading an Economist article in something like February 2009 trumpeting about how PUBLIC DEBT IS THE NEW PROBLEM in a bit of disbelief. Yes, European public debt was at record levels because their governments had not four months ago absorbed massive private debts that the banks ran up. The financial industry and many people in their general orbit developed a powerful selective amnesia about the events 2008. And the fact that the insane policy prescriptions that came out of that industry-wide amnesia were put into place, and largely stay in place despite 6 years now of economic disaster in Europe, speaks to how warped our system currently is.

Mortabis posted:

Except the English economy isn't doing better. It has been much worse than ours for decades. Phoneposting and I don't remember the exact numbers but we're on the order of 10% wealthier, maybe more.

e: holy poo poo they're 30% poorer actually

# ¿ May 13, 2014 12:45

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Meh. The most succinct thing you can say to the people who predict an inevitable war with China is "what would we fight over?" The U.S. and China don't have many strategic disagreements, and we have zero that either nation is willing to go to war over. Would we fight them over some rocks in the South China Sea on behalf of our definitely-not-treaty-allies Vietnam and the Philippines? Would they be willing to drag us into a war over the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute? Hell no. Both countries would need to be led by complete morons to accomplish such a stupid war.

We don't have any strategic interests on the Chinese mainland, and the PLAN don't have a chance in hell against the USN (or worse USN and JSDF together) fighting anywhere not on the mainland. So... what would we fight over? And how?

# ¿ May 15, 2014 11:35

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Well it's a good thing the US has a policy of deliberate ambiguity on Taiwan then, because the PRC invading Taiwan wouldn't necessarily trigger a war between the US and PRC.

Honestly I'd have to educate myself quite a bit to be able to talk about the tactical considerations of defending Taiwan from an attack from the mainland, but I would guess it would be very costly for both sides and involve a lot of fighting for air superiority over the strait before an amphibious landing could happen.

The cross-strait relationship is better than it's been since forever though, to the point that there are protests in Taiwan over favorable trade deals with the PRC.

# ¿ May 15, 2014 12:26

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

The ultimate response is that we're both nuclear powers* and not only would we not want a war for all economic reasons and the lack of strategic objectives, but neither side would want to risk fighting a nuclear power. Especially not for some rocks in the ocean.

*The U.S. has a vastly larger stockpile of nuclear weapons than China. China maintains a budget nuclear posture known as "credible response doctrine" in which they maintain enough of a stockpile to kill a few tens of millions of people after a first strike, and that's it. As part of credible response doctrine China does not forward deploy SLBMs (their boomers stick real close to Chinese shores) and their ICBM inventory isn't large enough to make a useful first strike. A military policy document a few years ago cut out explicit mention of "credible response doctrine" which has lead to a little bit of speculation that they might want to ramp up their nuclear strike capabilities in the long term. Still, China has a few hundred warheads while the U.S. has a few thousand, several hundred of which are somewhere lurking in the Pacific, and you can bet this fact would be on their minds when considering whether any strategic goal is worth risking a war with the U.S.

# ¿ May 15, 2014 13:05

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

iyaayas01 posted:

If you think those are just "some rocks" in the South and East China Seas, you haven't been paying attention. Without even getting into the economic component of the disputed territories (which is, putting it mildly, significant), there is a large portion of the disputes that is strictly nationalistic in nature. Nationalism is on the rise in Southeast and East Asia, particularly in China, and nationalism can drive leaders to do incredibly stupid things. Nationalism can also drive subordinate commanders to do even stupider things in the absence of direct orders. If you can't imagine a scenario where actions taken by relatively junior officers on the scene drive leaders toward a war that rationally they may not want, let me pose one for you. Imagine something like this happening somewhere like Second Thomas Shoal. You don't think that would raise the temperature in the region to the boiling point? And oh by the way, Chinese and Filipino vessels have clashed regularly at Second Thomas Shoal over the last several months, as the Chinese have been maintaining a blockade that the Filipinos have been trying to run to resupply the garrison they maintain on the shoal. Armed warships of a state attempting to intercept military vessels of another state is not something that is conducive to stability.

One last thing I'll throw out there...there are strong indications that many of the provocations undertaken by the Chinese in recent years have likely been unilateral efforts ordered by PLA leadership, conducted without the knowledge of the Chinese civilian leadership. If that doesn't scare you, it should.

It's not about us fighting a major war. You all are right that in an age of nuclear weapons that is ludicrous. It's about us (in conjunction with our allies) putting forth a strong enough force and commitment to deter the Chinese (particularly the PLA leadership) from even thinking about starting down the road that could lead to a Johnson South Reef Skirmish style incident that could be the spark that lights off a brief (non-nuclear) but still incredibly destructive and damaging conflict. Chang Wanquan should wake up every morning and say to himself, "today's not the day."

I have been paying attention, I live in China in fact, and I still think they're just some rocks. You're right that some incredibly dumb action might drag us into war, and that junior officers are more likely to precipitate an incredibly dumb action, but I still think it's really, really unlikely that China would risk a shooting war with the U.S. The current situation with the Philippines is so hilariously uneven, and China's strategy of aggressive nonviolent action has been so successful, that I don't see it turning hot any time soon no matter how irksome it is to the Philippine government. Basically, yes there's a chance of something really stupid but I doubt the government in Beijing will let it escalate if it could bring in the U.S.

Living in China I may have a different perspective on the nationalism issue. I hear this as a reason why China would be aggressive a lot and it goes like this: China's propaganda and nationalist rhetoric have been so overheated for so long that the Chinese people will demand aggressive action, and the government in Beijing will be under serious pressure to escalate. The thing is, the last time the Chinese government was under really serious pressure from the people, a thousand Beijingers ended up dead for something like 12 PLA. The scorecard is in favor of the government doing whatever it wants.

Or, the South Park version:

1. Chinese people demand something
2. ???
3. Chinese government enacts it

Also, living with views that have been inculcated into people you get a sense for how deep those beliefs are, which is not very. Sort of like the high school captain of the christian youth club with the promise ring getting an abortion, you get the feeling that the beliefs she expresses don't come from within and she's not particularly committed to them. You see the same thing in China. If there was no nationalist propaganda people wouldn't give a poo poo about Japan. Most people I know who talk to me about the Diaoyus have never even seen the ocean and yet are convinced that these tiny islands belong to China. But ask them to sacrifice something for them? You would see how deep those beliefs really go.

I didn't realize we were treaty allies with the Philippines though!

# ¿ May 15, 2014 23:35

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Sure but that's a different argument than the one I was talking about. I hear people talking about popular nationalism not hard line factions in government. I think we shouldn't overestimate how much the Chinese government buys its own propaganda especially at the top level which is often a contributor to those "they did what? " decisions. There have been some very cynical comments leaked from this politburo standing committee.

Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 00:55 on May 16, 2014

# ¿ May 16, 2014 00:53

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

The 80s and 90s generation in China points to kind of selfish people who form strong peer group bonds. So basically completely normal people.

The gender imbalance is more complicated than it looks on the surface. In reality the gender imbalance is local and in some places even skews female. This is mostly because female migrant workers are in demand for semi skilled manufacturing labor because they're more patient and possibly more tractable, and male migrant workers tend towards more strenuous manual labor. So in big manufacturing cities that attract hundreds of thousands of young women you can have a great marriage market for young men despite the larger gender imbalance. Especially if the in laws are dirt farmers and thus easily impressed.

The places with the worst gender imbalance in terms of unmarriagable young men tend to be poor and rural, which isn't great for uprising chances but means that the issue is unlikely to produce a movement with real chances of doing anything since the new middle class and the wealthy are not sympathetic in general to rural peasants.

In the short term the middle class can be expected to freak the gently caress out about falling property prices since the coming crash/correction (nobody knows which one) will be the first time in their experience with capitalism that a house won't be a good investment. Lots of middle class families in big cities got most of their wealth from essentially lucking into valuable property when the state gave people their formerly collectivized housing and are probably not prepared for the concept that the gravy train is over and their children will never get that opportunity no matter how many apartments they buy.

# ¿ May 16, 2014 03:43

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Joke's on them, the safety devices were secretly removed by SAC years ago!

# ¿ May 16, 2014 09:10

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

The region? The RAAF is the only air force in the region, unless you want to include SE Asia in your region. But honestly, you're talking about China, right? They're the only power within 4000 miles of Australia. China is working on the Chengdu* J-20 stealth fighter and to be honest, nobody really knows how that program will work out. My guess is that the J-20 will be at least equal to the F-35 in air to air combat but nobody really knows at this point. Neither program is finished. As we've been talking about in the thread, the chance of these two aircraft facing off against each other is very slim, and even if a war did kick off it's hard to imagine a scenario where Australian F-35s are going up against J-20s.

*Chengdu Aircraft Group, headquartered in My Fair City :china:

I have a friend who has friends who work for Chengdu Aerospace but I can't meet them because they're literally not allowed to associate with foreigners. I've heard a couple amusing rumors about the Chinese aircraft industry's (already well-known) troubles with engines but nothing else.

Oh and a coworker of mine got a die cast model of a J-20 from some guy in the PLAAF or Chengdu I forget which. Maybe if I can get him to bring it back to work I could take a picture. :effort:

This is now a J-20 post

（Yes, this is a J-20 on the ground photoshopped onto a picture of a J-10 in flight.)

Captions from left to right

Rhomboid nose trim
All-moving canards
DSI (divertless supersonic intake) variable air intakes
leading edge extension
V all-moving tailplanes
Low aspect ratio single wing (or with a single typo, could mean low observable single wing)(Chinese has a lot of homophones)

Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 13:48 on May 16, 2014

# ¿ May 16, 2014 12:45

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Turns out the F-35 program is an elaborate plot to turn China's first stealth fighter into a lemon.

# ¿ May 16, 2014 13:42

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Snowdens Secret posted:

Pretty much everything the PLA etc is building right now is some form of prototype; they understand they're advancing too fast for serial production to make much sense. I think they have a destroyer and a corvette / missile boat class they're making somewhat in bulk. Not sure about heavy tanks. Even their cargo aircraft every third one comes out looking different.

They went the way of the French on the Type 99 MBT and made the armor package modular, so they're probably done with tank development for the moment like the rest of the world.

iyaayas01 posted:

Also just look at the aircraft, they're clearly two very, very different designs, intended for two very, very different purposes.

The Chinese defense industry isn't above running competing prototypes, and that's the stage these aircraft are in. I wouldn't be surprised if the PLAAF selects only one for adoption. From the J-31/F-60 designation the J-31 is already slated for export to Pakistan. Over the last 20 years it's been pretty standard for one Chinese weapon system to get adopted by the PLA and one to exclusively export to Paksitan.

Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 04:55 on May 17, 2014

# ¿ May 17, 2014 04:51

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Nah it's probably some sort of physics thing happening with the fireball and not the nuke itself.

# ¿ May 19, 2014 08:40

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

evil_bunnY posted:

You can't slow light motherfucker.

What do you think refraction is?

# ¿ May 20, 2014 02:09

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

To be fair exocets are pretty small. I don't personally know of any reason why you couldn't target and launch an exocet from a rowboat so there probably isn't one. :downs:

# ¿ May 23, 2014 03:42

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Onion nails it yet again: Congress Reluctant To Cut Funding For Tank That Just Spins Around And Self-Destructs

# ¿ May 24, 2014 05:39

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

But can it kill Pashtun teenagers? This is important.

# ¿ May 25, 2014 12:22

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Snowdens Secret posted:

For somewhat obvious reasons (including espionage) it is easier to catch up technologically when behind than it is to pull away when you're ahead.

China's economic growth (unsustainable and/or fictitious it may be) means that their economy has roughly reached and will soon surpass US levels in terms of purchasing power. Their military spending continues to rise (for several reasons including driving R&D and stimulating key industries) while ours continues to face downward pressure; it's not unrealistic to think in 20 years their effective spending could match or exceed ours. We are not spending now at a level to maintain the force we have, not by a long shot, meaning even without further cuts from status quo budget we will see continuous reduction in capability; this is very prominent on the Navy side. (If you don't already know, I am much more pessimistic on budget capability in the middle term than most SA posters.)

Maybe their economy is growing, but they have a ton of future outlays that aren't being met right now that will impact military budget growth. China has 4 times the population of the US so even when they hit GDP parity they'll still be 4 times as poor. The Chinese social safety net is virtually nonexistent, which makes up most of US non-defense spending. As the population becomes more urbanized and more educated it's going to become more apparent to them that social services are woefully lacking in comparison to other countries, and as China becomes richer it's going to be harder and harder for the party-state to justify not providing meaningful social services. There's a demographic crisis on the horizon and the current model of forcing children to take care of parents isn't going to work when every adult male has four retired people to support.

So I think China will also be facing budget pressure in the future. The PLA budget can't keep growing forever because for all China's rise they still have not implemented a lot of expensive parts of being a modern state.

# ¿ May 28, 2014 02:22

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

It would happen in a bubble -- Taiwanese energy shield technology is way more advanced than they want the world to know.

# ¿ May 28, 2014 11:16

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Just wanted to say again that cross-strait relations are excellent at the moment. While China may be ramming fishing boats (and claiming that the fishing boat rammed a military vessel then sank, yeah right) in the South China Sea, relations with Taiwan are excellent. Plus the Chinese national media hasn't made a peep about Taiwan in years as far as I know, and I think I would know.

China may have hundreds of MRBMs that could be used on Taiwan but they seem in no hurry to do so.

# ¿ May 29, 2014 03:30

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

The question we should all be asking ourselves are: Liaoning can into space?

# ¿ May 29, 2014 08:02

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Hmm could there be any conflict of interest in RAND corporation or other defense organizations or organizations with close ties to the defense community predicting that strategic conflict with China will definitely require more resources for the defense community?

# ¿ May 29, 2014 09:37

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

You can't MRBM stingers!

# ¿ May 29, 2014 14:58

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Insane Totoro posted:

You also have to keep in mind that the KMT's "maybe reunification, maaaaybe not" carefully nuanced stance might not be sustainable in the island's politics. The DPP has been rather successful lately in terms of winning elections and there is a question as to the long term viability of the KMT. The KMT was a recent transplant (by force) to Taiwan only as of 1949. And while there were imperial Chinese settlers in the 1800s, it's questionable as to how closely administered they were by the rapidly weakening Qing Dynasty. Regardless, the bulk of early 20th century modernization was under Japanese colonial administration.

The concern of the KMT is that they're losing the culture war in the sense of convincing the younger generations to have ties to China. As I mentioned before, there are extremely strong ties culturally to Japan and the rest of the Asian first world. Heck, the first popular election for a president of Taiwan ended in electing a dude (and a KMT candidate at that) who loved the idea of cosplaying as his favorite Japanese manga character. I poo poo you not, go and Google "Lee Tung Hui cosplay" and tell me what you find.

Of note is also the Sunflower Student Movement (actually last month) in Taiwan that led to the occupation of the ROC parliament by various protest groups. It's a symptom of the larger cultural shift away from China and a popular sentiment against closer economic and cultural ties with the mainland. It's a culture where the mainlanders-in-exile have a derogatory slang phrase "your adoration for Japan" that the younger set (both native and mainlander youth) wear with pride.

If you're on an American college campus right now, I will bet you that the Taiwanese student union is separate from the Chinese student union. It's not just a clique. They literally don't understand each other and the cultural background of either side. So you have to wonder if thirty years from now if the KMT will even be politically viable as the older "KMT thugs-in-exile" generation begins to die out, especially if the "KMT kids" and the Formosan kids are getting along swimmingly enjoying their shared identity as "not mainland Chinese."

In terms of US strategy, all these think tanks might want to plan for a Taiwan Strait conflict where peaceful reunification is politically impossible and/or lacks popular support in Taiwan. And if demographically speaking Taiwan becomes culturally "incompatible" with the mainland, why would China want to reunify other than for a point of national pride/dick waving? Forty years from now China might have the means to annex Taiwan via military/diplomatic/economic force where the KMT sentiment for reunification no longer exists in a meaningful way.

TL;DR, if the KMT had never exiled itself to Formosa, nobody would ever be asking why Taiwan and China should reunify. And it's one of the last leftover flashpoints from the Cold War that the younger generation doesn't give a flying gently caress about because they're too busy not giving a poo poo about mainland China and rolling their eyes at the mainlanders who are jaywalking on campus.

Disclosure: I am one of the "KMT kids" and my viewpoint might be colored by my personal experiences.

Edit: I found enough public information to openly say there may be contingency plans in the ROC military to develop standoff munitions capable of severely damaging mainland ports, industry, and other infrastructure including the Three Gorges Dam. And the specifications of the existing munitions including indigenous weapons similar to the AGM-154 and Tomahawk are available on the open web.

This is a really good post. It also fits my point earlier about mainland Chinese convictions. Chine people have been told they really care about "returning" Taiwan to China, and so they will tell you they care because the Chinese are socialized to accept authority figures' beliefs unquestioningly. But ask them to actually sacrifice something for it and I suspect they will quickly discover that no, they actually don't care about a small island that will never affect their lives. The days when the Chinese were uncritical about propaganda is over (or maybe it never really existed) and while Chinese kids are indoctrinated to be nationalistic in school the overall attitude of adults is mostly quiet cynicism. Maybe they remember when the Party was less benign or maybe it's just part of growing up. But it's obvious that communism doesn't mean anything anymore and that the leadership is corrupt to the core.

Can anyone comment on corruption in the PLA? I've just read the one article about it; a report on a newspaper editorial written by a retired PLA general in which he says the PLA has become so corrupt that he questions its readiness to fight a real war.

# ¿ May 30, 2014 07:47

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

evil_bunnY posted:

Nobody's going to loving ask them tho.

The reason the '89 massacre was so bad was that Beijing flipped its collective poo poo when they called in the army. Before that it was a student protest, after they sent in the APCs it was city-wide non-violent resistance. The reason most people died outside the square is not because they dragged the students out and then killed them, it's because the army had to shoot and crush its way through the common people just to get to the square. In the days leading up to the massacre the Beijing people had stopped PLA columns just by showing up in such large numbers that nothing could move on the streets. When they decided to push through a human blockade, it's no wonder so many people died. And when they started shooting the non-violence ended on the other side too. I don't have numbers obviously but there are reliable reports that Beijing civilians knocked out quite a few APCs, mostly with gasoline. They needed tanks to get through the burning buses and other roadblocks.

The People's Armed Police is huge now, but it shows you just how terrified the Beijing leadership was the last time they went up against the people for real.

I'm not sure if you mean that China can just make its citizens do what they want or if you mean that they wouldn't have to ask citizens for any meaningful sacrifice in order to take Taiwan.

# ¿ May 30, 2014 14:37

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Shannon Tiezzi posted:

South China Morning Post reported details this week on an official government raid of the home of Lt. Gen. Gu Junshan, one of the highest-ranking PLA officers to ever be investigated for graft. Gu, who used to be the deputy chief of the PLA�s General Logistics Department, reportedly had quite a collection of treasures at his home in Henan Province, including �a pure gold statue of Mao Zedong, a gold wash basin, a model boat made of gold and crates of Maotai liquor.�

For all the recent fervor in the United States over China�s military modernization programs, corruption within the ranks could be weakening these efforts behind the scenes. According to Xinhua, China�s official defense budget for 2013 was $114.3 billion, a 10.7 percent increase over 2012. Western analysts such as Andrew S. Erickson and Adam P. Liff have noted that it is incredibly difficult to tell exactly what this money is being used for. �China still does not release even basic information that would provide insight into intra-PLA spending priorities, including a budget breakdown by service, the total amount spent on weapons imports, or the procurement costs of specific weapons and platforms,� they told the National Bureau of Asian Research in 2013.

It�s worth wondering, though, if the Chinese government itself keeps a careful eye on where all this money goes. Given the amounts of money Chinese civilian officials have been convicted of embezzling�over $28 million in the case of former Railways Minister Liu Zhijun�if there are similar levels of corruption in the PLA, a significant chunk of China�s defense budget (both reported and unreported) might be used not to develop new weapons systems, but to pad officers� pockets. There haven�t been nearly as many public reports on corruption in the PLA, but the occasional investigation does suggest the scale of the problem. In 2005, the last military official to be toppled by corruption charges, Adm. Wang Shouye, was rumored to have stolen almost $20 million.

In April 2012, PLA General Liu Yuan, the political commissar of the PLA�s General Logistics Department (and rumored to be a close friend of Xi Jinping�s) gave a series of candid speeches on the issue of corruption in the PLA. According to Foreign Policy, Liu told PLA officers that �no country can defeat China � only our own corruption can destroy us and cause our armed forces to be defeated without fighting.� In addition to misusing funds, Liu also pointed to the problem of effectively buying promotions, another issue that the civilian and military spheres seem to share. This could have serious repercussions on the efficacy of Chinese military leadership.

Also in 2012, the New York Times profiled a book by Chinese Colonel Liu Mingfu, in which the officer claimed that �the People�s Liberation Army has reached a stage in which its biggest danger and No. 1 foe is corruption.� The two outspoken critiques of corruption in China�s military were taken at the time as a sign that Xi Jinping, who (unlike Hu Jintao) has close military ties, might be getting ready to clean house.

In fact, Xi�s anti-corruption drive has been a higher priority than many would have guessed, and it has reached the PLA as well. For example, new laws have restricted the number (and brand) of cars military departments can own. The Asahi Shimbun reported earlier this month that Xi Jinping was making additional efforts to ensure that anti-corruption policies are implemented by military as well as civilian officials.

However, in contrast to the almost monthly reports of high-ranking Party officials being busted, there have been far fewer reports of military officers being investigated and arrested. Gu has been one of the notable exceptions�and to date, there haven�t even been any official announcements about the investigation. Gu�s name has merely been scrubbed from official websites. An unnamed �anti-graft expert� told the Global Times that �there is grave corruption in the military,� especially in the logistics sector where Gu worked. But, the expert added, the fight against graft in the military is kept under wraps to preserve the PLA�s public image. This is a huge contrast to the public push to eliminate corruption in civilian circles, where the government takes pride in naming the latest �tigers and flies� ensnared in its probes.

Recent reports about Gu�s opulent lifestyle are drawing more attention to the issue of military corruption. Still, it�s notable that the recent reports detailing Gu�s ill-gotten gains did not feature in China�s official state media, although the semi-official Global Times did run the story. Instead, reports on Gu appeared in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post and in a mainland paper, Caixin, famous for its independent reporting. This may indicate that, while the government is willing to let such stories be published, the Party is not yet willing to make a concerted media push against military corruption. It�s a trend to watch closely as Xi seeks to tighten his control over the Chinese military through the newly formed national security committee.

# ¿ May 31, 2014 14:52

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

The FT posted:

In many fields of international competition, China is less sanguine about its abilities than outsiders. Chinese leaders often remind Westerners that China is a developing country, with hundreds of millions of people living in poverty, an unbalanced economy, and high social tensions. What should most worry Beijing, and provide some comfort to those who fear Chinese military expansionism, is the state of corruption in the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

True, the world underestimated how quickly a four-fold jump in Chinese military spending in the past decade would deliver an array of new weaponry to prevent the United States from interfering in a regional military conflict. Top American generals have worried publicly about "carrier-killer" ballistic missiles designed to destroy U.S. battle groups as far afield as the Philippines, Japan, and beyond. Last year, China tested a prototype stealth fighter and launched its maiden aircraft carrier, to augment new destroyers and nuclear submarines. What is unknown, however, is whether the Chinese military, an intensely secretive organisation only nominally accountable to civilian leaders, can develop the human software to effectively operate and integrate its new hardware.

Judging from a recent series of scathing speeches by one of the PLA's top generals, details of which were obtained by Foreign Policy, it can't: The institution is riddled with corruption and professional decay, compromised by ties of patronage, and asphyxiated by the ever-greater effort required to impose political control. The speeches, one in late December and the other in mid-February, were given by Gen. Liu Yuan, the son of a former president of China and one of the PLA's rising stars; the speeches and Liu's actions suggest that the PLA might be the site of the next major struggle for control of the Communist Party, of the type that recently brought down former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai. Liu is the political commissar and the most powerful official of the PLA's General Logistics Department, which handles enormous contracts in land, housing, food, finance, and services for China's 2.3 million-strong military.

"No country can defeat China," Liu told about 600 officers in his department in unscripted comments to an enlarged party meeting on the afternoon of Dec. 29, according to sources who have verified notes of his speech. "Only our own corruption can destroy us and cause our armed forces to be defeated without fighting." This searing indictment of the state of China's armed forces, coming from an acting full three-star general inside the PLA, has no known modern precedent.

There is no way to independently verify Liu's withering assessment of the extent of corruption in the PLA, but he is well-positioned to make it. His professional experience includes a decade in the government of the central Chinese province of Henan and a decade in the paramilitary, taking him beyond narrow lines of command and patronage. His logistics department is integrated with all other arms of the Chinese military and his status as the descendant of a high-ranking leader, or princeling, enables privileged informal networks across military ranks and the civilian side of the party-state. Some Chinese and diplomatic PLA watchers believe Liu, the highest born of all the princelings now climbing into power, is on his way to the very top of China's military as a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) after the current leadership retires following this year's 18th Party Congress, the first large-scale transfer of power in a decade. It helps that he is a close friend of the princeling president-in-waiting, Xi Jinping.

While Chinese leaders regard the United States as a likely future adversary, Liu is more worried about what the PLA, which hasn't seen significant combat since a militarily disastrous invasion of Vietnam in 1979, is doing to itself in times of peace. In his February speech, he described the army beset by a disease of "malignant individualism" where officers follow only orders that suit them, advance on the strength of their connections, and openly sell their services at "clearly marked prices."

The practice of buying promotions inside the military is now so widespread, Liu noted, that even outgoing President Hu Jintao, who also leads the military from his position atop the CMC, had vented his frustration. "When Chairman Hu severely criticised �buying and selling official posts,' can we sit idle?"

Liu's revelations are not necessarily good news for China's would-be foes. Foreign government strategists are starting to worry that corruption and byzantine internal politics may amplify the known difficulties in communicating with the PLA and adroitly managing crisis situations. Despite the risks inherent in China's growing arsenal, expanding ambitions and spasmodically aggressive rhetoric and actions, military cooperation between the United States and China is almost nonexistent. Diplomats say American officials are given less access to PLA officers than colleagues from other Western embassies, who themselves are kept largely in the dark. Senior Western government officials have told me that U.S. military leaders have less knowledge of command systems, and far fewer avenues of communication, than they had with their Soviet counterparts during the Cold War. Michael Swaine, a China security expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes that the "fragmented and stove-piped structure" of the Chinese system means it has great trouble communicating even with itself, especially in crisis situations. He, like most other analysts, does not study corruption in the PLA because of the difficulty in measuring it.

In some ways, though, it's hiding in plain sight. Outsiders can glimpse the enormous flow of military bribes and favours in luxury cars with military license plates on Changan Avenue, Beijing's main east-west thoroughfare, and parked around upmarket night clubs near the Workers' Stadium. Business people gravitate toward PLA officers because of the access and protection they bring. PLA veterans told me they are organising "rights protection" movements to protest their inadequate pensions, which they contrast with the luxury lifestyles they observe among serving officers. Retired officers have told me that promotions have become so valuable that it has become routine to pay the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to even be considered for many senior positions.

The February address, the second and most detailed of Liu's corruption speeches, suggests the problems run much deeper than anecdotal evidence suggests. "Certain individuals exchange public money, public goods, public office and public affairs for personal gain, flouting the law and party codes of conduct, even resorting to verbal abuse and threats, clandestine plots and set ups," he said. "They physically attack loyal and upstanding officials, kidnap and blackmail party leaders, and drag in their superiors to act as human shields. They deploy all of the tricks of the mafia trade within the army itself." The way Liu describes it, the web of military cliques, factions, and internal knots of organized crime sounds more like the workings of warlord armies before the communist revolution than the rapidly modernizing force that is currently rattling China's neighbors.

Chairman Mao spoke of "curing the disease to save the patient" in the times of discipline and austerity before the revolution. Perhaps because Liu was talking about the PLA -- where putrefaction appears more advanced than elsewhere in China's sclerotic bureaucracy -- he took the metaphor beyond its usual graphic limits. In his February speech, Liu recalled a childhood tale about a surgeon in Siberia who saved himself from acute appendicitis by using a mirror to guide a knife into his lower abdomen.

"How many people on this earth are really able to operate on themselves?" he said, according to sources who verified the speech. "No matter if it is an individual or an organisation, to fix a problem when it arises requires this type of guts and nerve."

Liu's legendary pedigree gives him license to do and say things that others cannot. He is the sole surviving son of former President Liu Shaoqi, who had been Mao's anointed successor for 20 years until Mao turned on him at the start of the Cultural Revolution. Arrested and publically beaten, the elder Liu died in 1969 in a cold concrete prison cell -- naked, emaciated, and caked in vomit and diarrhea. One of his brothers died when his head was forced onto a railway track; the other lost his sanity in jail and died shortly after his release. In 1979, Liu's mother was released after a decade in jail; his father was posthumously rehabilitated the next year in the lead up to a great show trial for the family's old assailants, including Mao's wife Jiang Qing. Liu Yuan and his friend Xi Jinping, who also suffered during the Cultural Revolution, resolved to be grassroots officials in the countryside and began ascending through government ranks.

When he talks of a "life-and-death" struggle to save the PLA and the Communist Party system his father helped create, few would doubt that Liu means it. What is less clear, however, is whether the PLA can simply remove its own rotten parts as if they were an infected appendix, and whether the divided and compromised civilian and military leadership, reeling over Bo Xilai's downfall, can provide so much as a scalpel to enable Liu do the surgical work.

Liu's Dec. 29 "life-and-death" speech heralded what could become the biggest expose of PLA corruption since former president Jiang Zemin opened an investigation into the Yuanhua Group in 1999. In that scandal, widely covered in official media, Yuanhua used military connections to evade a staggering $6.3 billion in taxes by smuggling everything from cigarettes and luxury cars to fully laden oil tankers. The case brought down hundreds of provincial and military officials, including the head of a major PLA intelligence division. It also enabled Jiang to consolidate his grip on the military.

The outside world caught another limited glimpse of military corruption in December 2005, when the deputy commander of the navy, Adm. Wang Shouye, was detained for unspecified "economic crimes." Official reports said he was brought down by a mistress, while Hong Kong's Asia Weekly said he kept five mistresses and stole almost 20 million dollars. At the time, the PLA Daily, the military's official newspaper of the PLA, said the PLA's two historic tasks were fighting wars and eradicating corruption, but no one took visible action on corruption for a further six years. The subject was pushed back out of sight and all that seems to have changed is that the sums have grown much bigger.

In late January, Liu followed up his tough talk by ripping out one allegedly cancerous node, the deputy director of his Logistics Department, Gu Junshan, after a protracted internal struggle. Gu was the first military official of such a high rank to be toppled since Admiral Wang in 2005. A source with direct knowledge of the case described General Gu extorting county officials with threats of violence and buying his way up through the PLA hierarchy. The source, whose allegations could not be independently confirmed, said that Gu, together with friends, relatives, and patrons in and beyond the military, profited immensely from a property development in Shanghai, distributed hundreds of PLA-built villas in Beijing as gifts to his friends and allies, and generally ran his construction and infrastructure division like a mafia fiefdom. He lists a bewildering array of personal assets, beginning with Gu's own villa, which stands outside the usual military compounds behind a high wall next to Beijing's East Fourth Ring Road, called the General's Mansion.

"Gu's problem is extraordinary big," said the source. He said Gu had arranged chartered flights for his domestic and international flights even when he had been a one-star major general, which is unheard of for someone of that rank. Gu could not be reached for comment.

In February, official military websites and news agencies confirmed Gu's removal, but only in passive terms: "Gu Junshan no longer holds the position of deputy director of the General Logistics Department." The leadership, it seemed, was still battling over the fate of Gu and those who have protected him.

The Department of Defense, which represents the PLA when dealing with foreign bodies, did not respond to faxed interview questions. But all Chinese observers interviewed for this article agreed that the PLA's corruption and discipline problems are growing worse. Military corruption is a more "imminent" threat to the PLA than the U.S. armed forces, said Zhu Feng, a professor international relations at Peking University. Others say the problems have multiplied in the decades after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, as the formal PLA budget has climbed to $106 billion a year while civilian leaders are struggling to assert control.

Chen Xiaolu, a princeling and former PLA colonel who has many powerful princeling friends including General Liu, declined to repeat the "terrible stories" about PLA corruption he hears from recently retired generals (except to confirm the broad thrust of stories about Gu Junshan, whom Liu deposed). Chen, the son of one of China's 10 great marshals and son-in-law of a legendary commander, Gen. Su Yu, runs a successful infrastructure investment firm, Standard International. He opted out of the government and military system after the Tiananmen massacres. He told me the 1989 bloodshed left a vacuum of purpose and integrity within the PLA, which money has rushed to fill. "The problem has really got out of hand in the last 20 years," he said. "After the June 4 movement, when 'opposing corruption' was the protestors' slogan, some of the officers no longer cared about anything. They just made money and broke all the rules."

A second princeling who has recently retired from a ministerial-level position told me discipline and unity in the PLA has deteriorated in the past decade. He said an unprecedented leadership vacuum has opened up at the top of the military because President Hu never consolidated his grip, even after more than nine years at the helm of the Communist Party and seven years chairing the Central Military Commission. Unlike under Mao, Deng Xiaoping, and the latter years under Jiang Zemin, China no longer has a paramount leader who can hammer down authority at crucial junctures. "Gangs" of patronage and bribery are congealing together, he said, adding that "Corruption is the glue that keeps the whole system together, after the age of idealism."

A third princeling, whose father once ran China's security apparatus, blames Jiang for sabotaging the last leadership transition in 2002 by refusing to relinquish control of the military. He said Jiang promoted dozens of generals who are, as he put it, either "henchmen" or "morons." The result is that nobody is really in control, he said.

On the civilian side of the Communist Party, Bo's spectacular demise has punctured the conventional wisdom that China's power transitions are "institutionalised" and will flow smoothly. The Bo episode showed, once again, that there are no enforceable rules, nor independent arbiters to decide who governs the world's most populous nation and how they do it. Bo is now officially being investigated for "serious discipline violations" and his wife for murder.

Liu's battle against PLA corruption has opened a new field of elite political struggle, adding uncertainty at a time when old patronage bonds are breaking down, a new generation of princelings led by Xi Jinping are taking power, and the princelings themselves are not united. Gu Junshan's case "reveals serious struggle between those already in power and the new forces in the PLA," said Chen Ziming, an independent political analyst in Beijing. "Princelings like Liu Yuan represent the new force but who are those in power now?"

The official with direct knowledge of the Gu Junshan case told me that Liu succeeded in taking Gu down only after Liu had appealed personally to President Hu, who had three times issued instructions to handle it. The source said the first two orders had been blocked by Gu's key patron high in the hierarchy, whom the source did not name. "It was as if President Hu was making a show of his impotence," said the official.

Several sources with indirect knowledge of the case said that Gu was removed late in January only after Hu took the highly irregular route of asking the party's civilian apparatus to do the job. "With Hu's direct instructions, they bypassed the PLA discipline inspection commission and asked the central discipline inspection commission," said Chen Ziming, the political analyst. "This means the case faced major resistance inside the PLA."

Gu's networks and patrons in the Central Military Commission and beyond remain in place. The source with direct knowledge of the Gu case said that three of the top four members of the Central Military Commission expressed strong support for Liu Yuan's move against Gu; Xu Caihou, the fourth member of the CMC, and others, did not. Liu may have been alluding to this resistance in his speeches, when he spoke darkly of those who acted as "shields" and "umbrellas" for corrupt officers. He also spoke mysteriously of "hostile forces" who tried to use last year's uprisings in the Middle East "as a spear to attack our army" and sow "discord between the party and the army," suggesting another dimension of struggle.

Other signs of PLA power struggles are bubbling to the surface. Three weeks ago, a Chinese defence attach� informed a foreign military academy that that another of the PLA's rising stars, Gen. Zhang Qinsheng, would not attend a conference because he had been "replaced" in his position as first deputy chief of the General Staff Department, the PLA's operational headquarters, according to a source at the academy. The information appeared to confirm swirling rumours at the time. Chinese defense officials then scrambled to tell foreign diplomats that there had been "a misunderstanding" and General Zhang's position was, in fact, secure. The false information of Zhang's demise was followed by false rumors of a military coup, which a surprising number of citizens thought to be credible.

The PLA's top brass has responded to the rumours of a coup and the ongoing political struggle -- including in relation to the ongoing purge of Bo Xilai, who has military supporters -- by demanding unity and further isolating its officers from the outside world. "Whenever the party and country faces major issues, and reform and development reach a crucial juncture, struggle in the ideological arena becomes even more intense and complex," warned an editorial in the PLA Daily. Alluding to the recent chatter, the editorial also told soldiers to ignore rumours on the Internet. "We must pay close attention to the impact of the Internet, mobile phones and other new media on the thinking of officers and troops."

The PLA has made huge efforts to politically indoctrinate its officers in order to ensure their loyalty, according to Chen, at the expense of parallel efforts to "professionalize." He does not believe the political campaigns are working. "Maybe one day they will not be willing to obey their higher authorities because they are corrupt," he said. "Maybe the young generation of officers don't want to serve anybody and just want to take their own advice."

Meanwhile, Liu is generating enemies as he drives his corruption campaign deeper into entrenched networks of factions and patronage, and reveals his ideological views and political ambitions more openly. "Liu Yuan has gone mad," said the princeling who has recently retired from a ministerial position, and who is close to the Jiang family. Liu spent less than a decade in the PLA, and some officers resent being led by a man who lacks a professional military background, according to a source close to a rival princeling general. Others are suspicious of his personal ambition and believe his political comments have overstepped the boundaries of military discipline: Liu, like Bo, has suggested China should return to Mao-era ideals. Many see Liu's challenge to their financial and political interests as an existential threat.

Already, Internet rumors have spread that Liu is battling cancer, which sources close to him deny (he has annual checkups after an earlier scare). Other rumors speak of business links between Liu's wife, a glamorous nurse named Wei Zhen, and Bo Xilai's wife, who is under investigation. Sources close to Liu says his wife does not engage in business.

Liu knows what he's up against. "Those who work against corruption are out-competed by those who are corrupt," he said in his February speech. "Justice is under pressure and people fear retaliation while the scum congratulate each other on their great career prospects, get promoted and become rich."

And many are relieved that someone is at least trying to arrest the rot. "He says the Communist Party is in crisis and has to change," Chen said of Liu. "Some people question his intentions. I say I don't care about intentions; I say if he's against corruption then I support him."

There are signs Liu may be making progress. Although General Gu was not detained after his sacking, in recent weeks a formal investigation was finally approved, according to the official source close to the case. Last week the military director of Liu's department, who had supported his efforts to unseat Gu, was empowered to convene a new PLA-wide corruption-fighting audit committee. "Thoughts and actions must be united to the decisions and instructions made by Chairman Hu and the Central Military Commission," the military director, General Liao Xilong, said in official military media, adding to the chorus of calls for unity after recent upheavals.

Liu's surgical work could alter the delicate balance of factional power involving President Hu, his predecessor Jiang, and his anointed successor Xi. If Liu succeeds, he could vault into the vice chair position of the CMC, officially reporting to his friend Xi Jinping when Xi becomes CMC chairman. Some observers believe Liu is enabling Hu to make his move to assert authority, as Jiang had done with the Yuanhua corruption investigation, also late in his own term. "The formation of the audit committee in the military finally signifies a decisive move by the current civilian leadership to assert more control over the military," said Victor Shih, a political scientist at Northwest University. "For a variety of reasons, it has taken Hu Jintao almost his entire administration to prepare for such a move."

Few analysts believe the PLA can seriously tackle its own corruption problems without decisive intervention from the civilian leadership. Whether Hu or his likely successor Xi will have the political capital to spend remains an open question. And if the PLA is the malignant morass of theft, bribery, extortion and mistrust that Liu and other well-placed princelings say it is, then China's military offensive capabilities must be lower than many overseas strategists fear. "The impact of corruption on the PLA's war-fighting capabilities is likely to be serious," said Tai Ming Cheung, a China security expert at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, San Diego.

Behind the PLA's shiny exterior is a world where information is not trusted, major decisions require cumbersome bureaucratic consensus, and leaders fear their subordinates will evade responsibility or ignore directions. This entails a different array of risks than the ones that have troubled China's neighbors and the United States. And Liu, like several other active princelings, is not sure whether the PLA is capable of self-surgery in the age beyond ideals and strong leaders. "We are falling like a landslide!" Liu said in one of his speeches. "If there really was a war," he asked his subordinates, "who would listen to your commands or risk their life for you?"

Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 15:05 on May 31, 2014

# ¿ May 31, 2014 14:56

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

That reminds me, in the winter of 2012/2013 there were rumors of a military coup in Beijing which, while they turned out to be nothing, were surprising because of how many average Chinese thought them to be credible. The mere fact that people thought this might happen says something about the perceived legitimacy of the Chinese government.

Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 15:31 on May 31, 2014

# ¿ May 31, 2014 15:06

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Snowdens Secret posted:

vulturesrow mentioned it earlier in the thread but the bottleneck with carrier ops is shuffling the planes around on the deck. The moved island I guess lets you put elevators closer to the cats or something so you're not taxiing as much, and factors into the increased expected sortie rate. This article mentions it:

http://www.dodbuzz.com/2014/01/31/navy-alerted-to-ford-class-carrier-reliability-issues/

THe effects on sortie rate from the EMALS cats seems to be that they break too often and presumably spend too much time broken, but that quite possibly is just teething / first in class issues; the article is several months old and I haven't kept up with newer developments, if any.

What I read was that the tower placement made one of the elevators basically unusable. In order to make the second starboard elevator actually useful for operations they had to rejigger the tower position. That's just something I read somewhere though.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2014 15:01

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

The Greenland-Iceland-Britain line?

# ¿ Jun 1, 2014 15:31

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 14:30

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Good idea except instead of cameras user Maverick seekers attached to live missiles. US carriers need secondary weapons anyway.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2014 06:08

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > AIRPOWER/Cold War - Its literally the first two lines of their hymn

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