China's Defense/Military Breaking News Thread

[Hendrik_2000]

(cont)
Some AI is already on the battlefield. The F-35, one of America’s most advanced jet fighters, uses AI to evaluate and share radar and other sensor data among pilots, expanding their battlefield awareness. AI stitches together information and highlights what is likely most important to the pilot.

The more that AI advances, the more nimble these battlefield networks will become at combining machine and human intelligence, according to current and former defense officials. “The F-35 takes in infrared intelligence, radar intelligence, all sorts of stuff, and it fuses it right in front of the pilot’s eyes,” said Mr. Work. “The machine is doing all of that, and the pilot doesn’t have to ask the machine to do it.”

The Pentagon wants to equip soldiers on the ground with this technology. The U.S. Army is working on tactical augmented reality systems—sort of a Google Glass for war—using goggles or a visor that could display video from drones flying above, current position and enhanced night vision. AI-powered computing could add information about incoming threats, targets and areas that have to be protected.


At Marine Corps Base Quantico, the U.S. is testing conventional “Huey” helicopters outfitted with AI systems meant to enable pilotless flight for supply runs. PHOTO: U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY JOHN F. WILLIAMS/DVIDS

AI used by the U.S. military in its Project Maven system—the initiative that gave the Pentagon its “Aha” moment—can already find potential enemies in a crowd faster than trained intelligence analysts. At Marine Corps Base Quantico, the U.S. is testing conventional “Huey” helicopters outfitted with AI systems meant to enable pilotless flight for supply runs. AI-controlled aircraft might someday jam enemy air defenses. “This is going to change the way we fight wars,” Mr. Work said.

AI also could vastly improve the effectiveness of airstrikes, current and former U.S. officials said. A commander, Mr. Work said, could order an airstrike on an air defense installation and launch a cluster of missiles at the target. Artificial intelligence could give each missile a distinct role: One flying at the ideal altitude to get the best radar picture of the target, another climbing higher to force the installation’s radar to point skyward, and other missiles staying low and approaching from different directions, some serving as decoys others attempting a direct hit.

China is developing similar technology. In January, the country’s military TV network broadcast footage of researchers testing such “swarm intelligence,” which could eventually link dozens of armed drones into an automated attack force.

‘In hyperwar, the side that will prevail will be the side that is able to respond more quickly.’

In its unclassified budget for 2017, the Pentagon spent roughly $7.4 billion on AI and the fields that support it, such as big data and cloud computing, up from $5.6 billion in 2012,

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

. This reflects only the known piece of AI defense spending; the Pentagon has additional spending that is classified. Defense officials say that the Pentagon is at work on a new AI strategy aimed at marshaling more resources.

Chinese spending on AI is even more difficult to track. Estimates for overall investment vary widely, though analysts agree that the number is rising quickly.

Some officials and analysts see excessive exuberance over AI in both China and the U.S. A daunting task still lies ahead for any military hoping to deploy AI: Winning a complex board game like Go is far different from winning on the constantly shifting terrain of a modern battlefield. “What will be difficult about conflict and warfare is that the rules are not well defined,” said Dr. Roper, who in late February became the Air Force’s new head of acquisition and technology. “As soon as the fight starts, everything changes.”

 

[timepass]

Breaking In !
China to support Russia against US . . . .

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[advill]

It is a Military strategic outcome that China will support Russia, like the US supports its NATO Allies. However, we hope Diplomacy covering security/military, trade, foreign affairs will be wisely used by the countries concerned. The major problem is following a Trade War, which was started by US President Trump recently, could develop into another "Cold War", or worst still military hostilities. Trump should learn from the philosophy of Confucius (551-479 B.C.) "Real Knowledge is to Know the Extent of One's Ignorance".

 

[timepass]

China Jammed US Navy Jet’s Equipment as It Patrolled South China Sea . . .

When the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier cruised through the South China Sea last week, one US Navy pilot encountered Chinese jamming technology interfering with his plane’s equipment, according to a report.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[Klon]

250-page

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

by Jane's for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on China's advanced weapon systems. I haven't read most of it, but the railgun section wasn't great for their credibility.

 

[timepass]

Chinese Missiles Are Transforming the Balance of Power in the Skies . . .

For a quarter century, the U.S. and its allies owned the skies, fighting wars secure in the knowledge that no opponent could compete in the air. As tensions with Russia and China surge, that’s no longer the case.

Rapid technological progress in China’s aerospace industry, particularly air-to-air missile systems fired from an aircraft, is changing the game for Western air forces and the global arms trade. It’s also altering the picture for China’s neighbors such as India.

Russia took the lead in modernizing its air force, and has been more willing to use it. In the longer term, however, China’s roughly $13 trillion economy and growing wealth mean it is likely to pose the greater strategic challenge for the U.S. and its allies. In 2017, Chinese defense spending rose by 5.6 percent in constant U.S. dollar terms, while Russia’s fell by 20 percent, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. China spent $228 billion last year and Russia $66.3 billion, SIPRI said.

“We had an environment where we could do whatever we wanted in the air, and what the Chinese have done is to say you no longer can,” said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. As a result, U.S. commanders now have to take into account potential loss rates for pilots and aircraft that they haven’t had to face since the 1980s.

The U.S. air force remains the strongest by far. Yet the Chinese advances come at a sensitive time, as the U.S. appetite to continue its role as global policeman fades. Meanwhile President Xi Jinping has set ambitious goals to dominate advanced industries like robotics and artificial intelligence and to assert Chinese interests in the disputed South China Sea and beyond.

The catch-up by Russia and China has been a long time coming, triggered in each case by shock at the ease with which the U.S. air force demolished opponents in the 1990s, according to Vasily Kashin, a specialist in military aviation at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics at the National Research University.

For China, that moment came during the first Gulf War, when an American air campaign swiftly crushed the Iraqi military, at the time better equipped than China’s. For Russia, he said, the wake-up came in 1999, when a U.S.-led bombing campaign forced Serbia to withdraw troops and tanks from its own province, Kosovo.

Taiwan (which China considers a province) has also been a factor for Beijing. The U.S. called in two aircraft carrier battle groups to support the island during a dust-up with China in 1996 and has provided $18 billion in arms since 2008.

Some of China’s biggest strides are coming in air-to-air missiles, the weapons that for one or two million dollars can destroy a $150 million aircraft. That’s a cost efficient way of trying to level the playing field with the U.S.. China’s defense budget is well over three times as big as Russia’s or India’s, but still much lower than the $610 billion the U.S. spends, according to SIPRI.

In March, the U.S. Air Force awarded a half-billion-dollar contract to supply close allies with Raytheon Inc.’s latest long range air-to-air missile, capable of hitting enemy planes from 100 miles (160 kilometers) away. The Meteor, a new European equivalent, may be even more deadly. But China’s latest offering, the PL-15, has a greater range than either.

Airborne Warning
The PL-15 also supports an active electronically-scanned array radar that makes evasion difficult for the most agile of fighter jets. Russia has yet to succeed in equipping its own missiles with the technology. When the PL-15 was first tested in public, then-U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command chief Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle was concerned enough to call on Congress to fund a response.

Another Chinese air-to-air weapon in development, provisionally known as PL-XX, would strike slow-moving airborne warning and control systems, the flying neural centers of U.S. air warfare, from as far away as 300 miles. At closer quarters, China’s new PL-10 missile is comparable to the best “fire-and-forget” equivalents, meaning any dogfight would likely end with a so-called mutual kill, a significant deterrent.

“In the United States we’ve been on holiday for 25 years and maybe a little bit more,” Michael Griffin, under secretary of defense for research and engineering, said in a recent address to the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank. “We failed to continue to fund the practices that had gotten us where we were, which was at the very top of the technological heap.”

Griffin said he was especially worried by Chinese and Russian progress in developing carrier-fleet killing hypersonic missiles that the U.S., as yet, lacks the space-based capacity to detect in time to shoot down. The planes to deliver China’s new armory of missiles have also improved dramatically, with new fleets developed from Russian air frames. This year, the air force is set to receive the last of 24 state of the art SU-35S fighters from Russia, while China has begun deploying the Chengdu J-20, a home-grown stealth fighter.

Combat modeling by think tank Rand Corp. found that China last year, for the first time, had achieved parity with the U.S. in air superiority for any conflict close to its mainland, including over Taiwan.

To be sure, China still has a long way to achieve conventional -- let alone nuclear -- parity with the U.S. at a global level. Its jet engine technology remains weak and reliant on Russia, while its suite of new weapons are largely untested in combat. So are its pilots, still considered inferior to their Western counterparts in training and tactical skills.

Yet Chinese pilots, planes and weapons don’t have to be better than their U.S. counterparts to radically change battlefield calculations. The J-20, for example, has poor engines and is thought by aviation experts to be more easily detected from the rear and sides than a U.S. F-22 “Raptor”. But it would be hard to spot on approach and has a large weapons bay capable of hiding anti-ship missiles. That makes it a considerable threat.

China’s new aircraft, combined with the latest air-to-air, cruise, anti-ship and Russian S-400 air-defense systems (considered the world’s best) “have made the ability of the U.S. to operate in contested areas very high risk,” said Tim Heath, a senior international defense researcher at Rand.

This shift isn’t just important for the U.S.. India has watched with trepidation as Russia supplies Beijing -- and Beijing supplies Pakistan -- with more sophisticated weaponry.

China and Pakistan have co-produced the JF-17 fighter since 2007, with Russia providing high quality engines. In March, Chinese media reported the JF-17 will be upgraded with active array radar, allowing it to detect and fire on targets from a greater distance.

According to Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, Russia’s potential approval for China to resell its jet engines to Pakistan was the most frequent topic of discussion at weekly meetings of the National Security Council when she was assistant secretary to the NSC Secretariat from 2003-2007. If Pakistan’s jets were equipped with the new radar and China’s PL-10 missiles, now available for export, India’s aging Russian MiGs would struggle to compete, she said.

The arms sales are symptomatic of a much more worrying regional realignment of Russia – traditionally India’s biggest arms supplier – with China, said Rajagopalan, now head of the Nuclear and Space Policy Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank. “The Russians are in a weak position now, and they feel it is better to be in the Chinese camp,” she said.

India last month put out an international call for bids for a $15 billion contract to provide 110 new combat aircraft. Pakistan has just over 100 JF-17s and is producing 25 new ones a year.

Beijing’s technological progress is also having knock-on effects beyond South Asia. China has moved from its traditional position as a provider of cheap small arms to poor nations, to become the world’s number three arms trader in volume terms. That includes the sale of armed drones to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and other nations to which the U.S. declined to sell its Reaper drone technology.

Some missiles China developed with Russian help are now considered as good if not better than the originals, and are on the international market.

Russia, at least, isn’t overly concerned by competition from the expanding military capabilities next door, according to Kashin. “They are certainly a growing power,” he said of China. “But they are not omnipotent, and they are Russia’s partner.”

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[timepass]

China now reportedly has a full set of Russia's advanced S-400 air-defense missile system...

"The first regimental set of the Russian-made advanced air-defense system known as the S-400 has arrived in China, a military-diplomatic source told Russia's official news agency Tass this week.

China became the first foreign buyer of the S-400 when it signed a contract in late 2014, and the first two ships carrying S-400 components from Russia arrived in China at the beginning of April."

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[nicky]

any details on airborne troops reform?

 

[Orthan]

This article mentions a meeting of the US house intelligence committee with experts, one of them rick fisher. It mentions that china has 396 ships vs 283 for the US navy and will have 550 ships in 2030. It also mentions that rick fisher said that "china has the world’s first fully nuclear-powered aircraft carrier battle group".

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

What do you think of this?

 

[Dolcevita]

This article mentions a meeting of the US house intelligence committee with experts, one of them rick fisher. It mentions that china has 396 ships vs 283 for the US navy and will have 550 ships in 2030. It also mentions that rick fisher said that "china has the world’s first fully nuclear-powered aircraft carrier battle group".

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

What do you think of this?

Too many so called experts in western MSM are not worth reading anymore. why even waste my time if can get better intelligence (vetted) on this website.