Shrike
7hr ago
So the US plans to shut down the strait with 1100 km range F-35Cs firing 370 km range anti-ship missiles. Plus B-21s and subs.
And land-based mines and surface-to-surface cruise/ballistic/hypersonic missiles.
LUCAS or 'cheap hypersonics' are fields China's going to be ahead in.
The United States actually has fielded LUCAS in combat. China has not. While I know Chinese companies have put together Shahed clones, it's unclear to me if the Chinese military has even procured any of them, while the US is actively procuring and integrating LUCAS into its order of battle.
And while China likely has a current edge in air-launched hypersonic weapons, the US has a "cheap" hypersonic missile (Blackbeard) in flight testing now, and it seems quite plausible to me that the US is ahead of China in relevant areas (particularly sensor and propulsion technology) that will allow them to bend the cost curve down in their favor.
No matter how many LUCAS's America makes, China will make a lot more more.
Again, this is not the operative dynamic that matters here.
If the West Pacific becomes an impassable no man's land, then Taiwan and South Korea will capitulate eventually due to their total reliance on seaborne imports, lack of domestic energy/food supply or import-substitution capability. Japan is also in some danger. Shutting down the strait only removes China's preferred victory condition of a quick win, it's insufficient.
Setting aside that, first of all, it's a violation of international law to shut off food supplies, and that it would likely be pretty foolish for China to pick a fight with South Korea too, how has this worked for everyone else that has tried it? Iran has no shortage of ballistic missiles and drones, but they have not been able to shut down the strait of Hormuz, which is a much more constrained location than the Philippine Sea and the Sea of Japan. Ukraine, as far as I can tell, has not managed to shut down the Black Sea for Russia (or vice-versa). The Houthis had mixed results. It did not work for Germany in World War One or Two. I think the US versus Japan was probably the most successful submarine warfare campaign in the world, and the US still did not defeat Japan through starvation.
Secondly, how are you supposed to turn the entire West Pacific into a no-man's land? You've got a few options:
Mines – but there's not enough mines to do this to the entire West Pacific. You can use mines to shut down chokepoints, not the entire ocean. And the US has recently demonstrated the ability to clear mines pretty quickly (although Iran did not deploy large numbers in the strait at all – something like a dozen real mines and a couple hundred decoys). Might work against Taiwan, or temporarily against ports elsewhere. You're not going to starve out Japan or South Korea with mines, or turn the entire West Pacific into a no-go zone.
I don't think China has enough good submarines to shut down traffic to South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.
You can use radar to try to detect anything that moves in the entire West Pacific, but ground-based radars don't have the range (barring OTH radars, which from what I understand are finicky and may not have the resolution to complete a kill chain). Air-based radars have better range, but AWACS flying over Chinese soil probably don't have the radar range to detect and track ships traveling to South Korea, let alone Japan, just due to the curvature of the earth. AWACS are also very big, slow, juicy targets, so pushing them out further is very dangerous, and it's possible to jam them.
Satellites are the best option, but they will likely be slated for deception, destruction, or defeat early on in a conflict. Satellites also have limitations due to weather or inclination; the Soviet Union had RORSAT deployed during the Cold War, but that did not stop them from losing track of NATO carrier groups operating near their shores in the 1980s.
High-speed reconnaissance aircraft are an interesting possibility that China has invested in, but you they are not invincible.
The US is the side that needs some kind of laser to shoot down Shaheds, not China.
I guess it's good that the US has this, then!
The US victory condition is preventing Taiwanese and Korean subjugation.
Or perhaps, if China actually decides to conduct aggressive action, the United States will decide that its victory condition is crushing China, and would gladly trade Taiwan and Korea to do so.
Shrike
19hr ago
Given that AI service providers are essentially charging users for content, locking users into arguing with models/a certain base rate of mistakes/verbosity (bumping up use rates) might be a viable revenue strategy, with the mitigating factors being performance competition from other providers, the need not to totally alienate users, and the fact that such a strategy might backfire if mismanaged since they are themselves renting compute.
If incentives were structured differently (for instance, if AI service providers were paid a fixed fee per task) there would (I think) be stronger incentives for models to be extremely efficient. As it is, right now it's in the interest of AI service providers for their models to be compute-heavy – sure, it is costly, but it lets them run back to their investors and spin a tale of how much demand there is for the product.
I'm not sure if this explains the verbosity of the models but I've certainly wondered if it plays a role.
Shrike
19hr ago
I don't think Iran was done as a 5D chess move to distract from negative immigration news bites, but I wouldn't be surprised if, now that it is kicked off, the Trump administration (or at least some factions within it) aren't (contra what you would expect from Reading The News) desperate to end it in any rush exactly because it is generating narrative top cover as you describe.
I also do think that the blockade will continue to pay off over the long run and the admin is probably in less of a rush to "win the war" than one might imagine for that reason as well.
Shrike
1d ago
In some sense it may be better for Trump['s project] to be unpopular due to the war than something like immigration enforcement. If you think that some degree of unpopularity was baked in, the unpopularity of the war is something that the administration can to some degree steer (and also that future Republican nominees can more easily disavow).
Shrike
1d ago
The Iran-Oman agreement bans US warships.
If you are reading @coffee_enjoyer's comment without clicking through on the links, you might have been under the impression that this "authoritative information" was based on a done deal, the details attested to by both sides. In fact it is based on an interview with a member of Iran's foreign ministry about a deal that has not been signed.
South Korean decapitation strike on the absolute monarch of an insecure nuclear power seems like a very risky ploy.
Well, tell it to the South Koreans. I don't think that North Korea and China are joined at the hip the way you seem to think they are (ditto for South Korea and the United States), nor do I think sending some guys to Ukraine, at roughly zero risk to the North Korean regime, is any indicator of how they will behave in a potentially existential situation.
If swarms of relatively cheap Shaheds and FPV drones are the way of the future, then it plays into China's biggest strengths in industrial scale
Now you're just taunting me. You know that FPVs are not the future of naval warfare.
The Chinese economy grows faster than the US, they're breaking into more and more markets globally, everyone started bitching about overproduction.
I wouldn't be so confident about the Chinese economy if I was you – but this is a positive reason why China may decide to sit around and do nothing. And yet if they do that, I think there is a good chance that the US is actually able to procure enough missiles, mines and torpedoes to make shutting down the strait a ~foregone conclusion. China can try to build more ships than LRASMs, more interceptors than the cheap hypersonic and LUCAS cruise missiles the US is producing, but they will be on the wrong side of the cost curve in doing so.
Even their geography has its advantages, they're right next to the places they'd be fighting, whereas America is on the other side of the world.
Sort of - in some ways, the US has the best of both worlds here. Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines host US bases, and if a war kicks off, the entire Chinese navy will be ranged by missiles based there, while portions of the US Navy will be safely out of range of conventional Chinese missiles. China does have strategic depth, but it is mostly for their land and air forces.
Shrike
1d ago
(Also I conceptualize Korea getting dragged into a US-China war one way or another, so there would be a major ground element where shell production is significant)
It seems fairly plausible that South Korea will get dragged in to some degree or another (possibly below the level of kinetic action), but it's unclear to me what advantage it would be to North Korea to get involved kinetically. South Korean doctrine at the moment is built around "KILL KIM JONG UN" if the balloon goes up and I think the rational move from Kim is to try to extract concessions from both sides and basically nothing else. I am certainly open to alternative takes, but it seems common in Western thinking to assume that if China suggests North Korea jump, the North Koreans will ask "how high?" because they wear the designated villain hat, and I don't think actual North Korean decision-makers have any emotional attachment to being committed to being part of the Axis of Evil. I do think they have emotional attachment to not ending up as paste at the pointy end of a South Korean ballistic missile.
You raised some qualitative edges in weapons systems but the Chinese already have similar systems in development. If America can make a missile, so can China but China will have more engineers to juice them up and more production capacity to produce them at scale, just by virtue of this huge industrial base and economies of scale. Unless the missile-edge enables the US to win in a pre-empting war then what good is it, it's only moving the goalposts. China can then jog closer and score, they're faster at running than the US is at moving goalposts (with the exception of space and AI).
Again, you're sort of missing the main point here. The USA does not need to match China to win; it already has the "offsetting advantage" which is the status quo (and geography). China needs to overmatch the US of A because it is starting from a geographically disadvantaged position. I think that there is a good chance that China does nothing while the US painfully rectifies its munitions production and stockpiles issues over the next 5 - 10 years precisely because the risks of acting even when China is at the apex of its power relative to its potential enemies are still extremely high, and Xi does not want to gamble with his empire.
Shrike
1d ago
Thank you! I've liked RUSI's stuff on Ukraine that I've reviewed, I'll check these out.
Not sure if the Carnegie links are different, but it looks like the second one is missing.
Shrike
2d ago
I haven't really heard that perspective outside of the red flag propoganda-dripped areas, and I know that's not what you base your opinion on.
There was a report by the Swiss Centre for Military History and Perspective Studies that concluded that India came out on top, which is the closest thing I've seen to a thorough write-up by a Western source, and is probably be where I got my impression, at least in part. (Interestingly, as I recall, the Indian chest-thumping accounts seem to focus on the later Indian actions, which suggests strongly to me that Pakistan treated them pretty roughly at first and would corroborate CHPM's account.)
However, I'm not sure if CHPM's account is actually all that great – it's been a while since I looked at it (sorry!) but I think I recall feeling like it was not the final word on the matter – maybe it relied too much on biased sources or guessing for my taste, I'm not sure.
If you've got a good write-up or source, I'd be very interested in reading it.
Shrike
2d ago
This alongside the parallel discourse, also loud and proud on TheMotte, of men saying that in all justice the life of a woman should be to bear as many children as possible in quick succession, then look after them 24/7, while being the material provider (read: office-job attendance, open evenings, intact body, full nights of sleep) is the maximum expected from a husband.
I just want to flag a few things:
- If your wife is having kids nonstop, you aren't going to be having the full nights of sleep unless you are a literally absent father (as in, in a different house) and you aren't going to be having open evenings either (at least not all of the time) unless you are a figuratively absent father (as in, tuning out after dinner and refusing to help with the kids at all).
- Guys are more likely to have their intact body become not that way on the job compared to women – however the rates are pretty low.
- Notwithstanding the above, taking care of kids nonstop is hard work and while I suspect women are at least marginally better suited to it than men (and men likewise at least marginally better suited to e.g. office jobs than women) I think it's at least in some ways "harder work" than a 9 - 5, at least when you are dealing with multiple children, of which at least one an infant or toddler. Having "as many children as possible in quick succession" means that this is pretty much always the case.
I don't think the Motte's trad/pronatal corner is (generally) calling for exactly what you are suggesting (in part because many of them actually have kids and spouses that they actually like) and are aware both that women should not be treated as child production facilities and that in functional households the man bears part of the burden of parenting, just the same as the woman. (But if you are reading Terracotta's post and thinking "heck yes, that's exactly how things should be, you forgot the gigachad image" then, well, I think you are wrong.)
Shrike
2d ago
Is there any good understanding of how the recent dust-up with Pakistan went?
The sort of muddy impression that I have right now is that Pakistan gave India a bloody nose and India turned around and drop-kicked Pakistan across the ring. But finding objective Western documentation of the conflict seems difficult.
Shrike
2d ago
The Russia-Ukraine war demonstrates that second world armies facing second world air defences don't fly fixed-wing warplanes in anger, so destroying them doesn't hurt Iran much
What? There have been lots of fixed-wing warplanes operating on both sides in the Russia-Ukraine War on both air-to-ground and air-to-air missions.
Shrike
2d ago
If they all hit, then the war will be over in four hours. (But note that Raytheon says they intend to scale up to 1,000/year.)
It's hard to tell how much is enough because a lot of it is about the timeframe (1/year is fine if you started building around the Jurassic period, for instance), effectiveness, intended target, delivery vehicle...much of which isn't know.
My thinking is that China's window is closing, but they have a respite with the Iran war. Right now it looks to me like that window is about five years, but that's a guesstimate and could change due to further actions by the United States or China or third parties.
Shrike
2d ago
I honestly expected both Russia and Ukraine to become smarter and be able to produce more stuff to throw on the battlefield.
I think they have, it's just been... gestures largely low-end stuff (with the occasional Russian Command & Conquer super weapon thrown in).
I do not think that the United States would ever attempt to take and hold ground within China, both because China has effectively unlimited warm bodies to throw at the problem along interior lines and the United States does not have either of those things, and because if the war was going so badly that China was in serious danger of being occupied it would resort to nuclear weapons to prevent regime change.
The US cannot credibly threaten to seize and hold territory inside of China (raids might be another thing, but realistically if attempted I expect that would look like DEVGRU derping around in the bushes with a laser designator or something, not anything kinetic) and procuring more 155mm shells does not change that. Furthermore, because the United States is in this dynamic attempting to preserve the status quo, it has no real need to take and hold territory. The US can credibly threaten to use nuclear weapons, and that's about it.
[Edit to add: I think that some of the militarized reefs and such are potentially open to ground assault. But that's very different from mainland China.]
Shrike
2d ago
I'm fine with a differing opinion, and I 100% agree that artillery is under-appreciated. It's not glamorous and (ironically) is not expensive, but it remains extremely deadly.
However that doesn't get me to thinking it will be particularly important in a naval war.
Shrike
3d ago
"Oop! Well, artillery won't be involved!" doesn't make sense.
I suppose it is true that a war with China could in theory last until continental drift made 155mm relevant again, yes, but if that happens I think we will have plenty of time to spin up production lines. Otherwise, the amount of time the war drags on doesn't really change the basic dynamics involved with the tyranny of distance, does it?
If that's not the scenario you are envisioning, please explain to me the scenario you envision US forces using 155mm against China in. If you're trying to get me to concede that my I was overstating the degree of unimportance of 155mm (which I agree can plausibly be used by forces on Taiwan in an invasion scenario – and indeed the US and Taiwan are working on joint 155mm production, I assume with this in mind – or obviously if the Korean peninsula heats up – which is not a foregone conclusion in the case of a war with China) then I will happily concede that may have very slightly overstated the irrelevance of 155mm. But if you think that it is an important production item for the US military in a China contingency specifically, I would very much like to know how you think it will be used.
How many wars, not games, work that way?
It's not particularly unusual for the course of a naval war to be essentially decided in a single battle – this happened during both World Wars. This does not mean that the war is over after the battle, but the destruction of the Japanese carriers at Midway and the inability of the Germans to break out into the Atlantic at Jutland set the stage for the conclusion of the war. It's quite possible that any war over Taiwan would be decided in the course of 48 hours or so (if it is not, it's probably good for the US, as it means that the US qualitative advantage in submarines will likely become increasingly relevant.)
Shrike
3d ago
100 iskanders per month?
1200 Iskanders per year compares favorably to US production of 400 PrSMs per year.
Or want to - but they can totally make Taiwan flat.
I don't think anyone is denying that, but I don't think they want to do that.
Shrike
3d ago
Most people think of FPV drones (or maybe, like, Predator drones) in the military context nowadays, I think. I agree that "drones" (low-cost cruise missiles) like LUCAS/Geran are likely to be relevant.
Shrike
3d ago
overall rosy outlook on our munitions production
Ranger shifted goalposts. Munitions production and munitions expenditures are two different things.
it's laughable to think that standard artillery won't be relevant.
"Drones" as most people commonly think of them will barely be relevant in a war with China, and that's for the same reason that 155mm shells will barely be relevant in a war with China: they don't have any range to speak of. As the Japanese learned, the Pacific is very big.
The exception for both 155mm and drones in a war with China is for Taiwan because they will plausibly be fighting at the very short ranges that 155mm and FPV drones are relevant for if they get invaded.
Otherwise I invite you to take a look at a map and tell me exactly where the US Army will be shelling China from. The only plausible way to do that would be if the US conducts a REFORGER-style surge of troops to Taiwan. It's not impossible but for reasons I am happy to elaborate on I think it is fairly unlikely.
Shrike
3d ago
This is goalpost shifting. You said:
I'm sceptical of these narratives that the US is going to scale up munitions production to counter Russia or China.
I presented you evidence that the US in fact is scaling up munitions production to counter Russia or China, and in fact already had scaled up munitions production. Now you are claiming that the scaled up munitions production is insufficient, an entirely different argument that would be an interesting one to make, but as you point out a difficult one to engage in, because
Nobody knows how much production capacity China actually has for missiles
However, my position is that missile production by itself is a poor measure of how a war will go. Iran's missile production is very good, but this did not give them the power projection capability necessary for them to achieve a decisive and quick victory. Russia's missile production is very good, but this did not give them the power projection capability necessary for them to achieve a decisive and quick victory. The relevant question is actually about munitions production relative to the expected red target set and blue kill chain apparatus.
I don't think this is strictly speaking true. The US didn't need regime change in Cuba for the Caribbean to become an area of much less concern to it, for instance: sufficiently degraded capabilities suffice.
I do think this (or at least the specific example of Cuba) suggests that long-term sanctions that stick against Iran would probably be necessary in the alternative to keeping a major force presence, and I'm not sure if Iran could be as easily sanctioned as Cuba.
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