You may be a believer in taking a propagandist approach but I do not. Your repetitious claims of having directly addressed the question is not backed up by the contents of your posts. You are just making repeated claims – period.
Btw, you are making up stuff of what I might have said. For example, I did not say as you suggested “weapons could not be compared to each other". That is grossly false representation of what I said. I said weapon platforms cannot reasonably said to be comparable unless you know their respective capabilities and in almost all the cases with Chinese products you don’t know.
In addition, you are also acting disingenuously. Fortunately our exchanges are documented. For example, here is an example and the sequence of exchanges.
You posted the following :
You accused me of avoiding your comments.
“I was referring to two similar aircraft with the different price tag,” (Post #16)
https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/plaaf-flyaway-costs-thread.t8667/page-2#post-584892
In my reply (Post #17)
“What different price tag? Please point your post that actually has specific numbers.”
In your subsequent reply you just ignore the question. Basically you accuse and when challenged you avoid answering.
If Wing Long 1 and 2 are comparable why are there two variants? Would you consider the two to have comparable pricing? If yes, what is comparable pricing? Is it the same or not?
Extending that argument, do you consider J-10A and J-10C to be comparable?
You absolutely correct, it's unfortunate for you as all you said were documented, so, Let's refresh:
- Your first statement was "weapons could not be compared to each other because you don't know the capacities of the Chinese system", and gave a Malaysian Airforce example, which I will address separately.
- My response to this was: you can roughly compare two weapons by their functionalities if they were used to achieve a similar mission
- You then tried to fallacious proof my opinion with an example of comparing B-25 and F-117
- I then state this could be solved by adding more and more conditions of the mission, so there are going to be fewer and fewer weapons been used in each country, and those weapons are comparable.
- I also gave an example of RQ-9 and Wing Long, as many people believe they were comparable
- At this stage, the discussion of how to compare two weapons without known the specifics is over, as I have provided you with a solution. but instead, you start to focus on if "Wing Long 1 and 2 are comparable", "is Wing Long 2 and Wing Long 1 being sold at the same price", "If Wing Long 1 and 2 are comparable why are there two variants?", and even "Extending that argument, do you consider J-10A and J-10C to be comparable?"
- Dude, this is why I said you didn't read other people's responses, the entire idea here is that you don't need to know the specifics to know they are similar, and you still keep grasp this and ask me about details like price, different variants.
- Since, Saudi, UAE, Egypt and etc are using Wing Long exactly like how US using RQ-9, thus I consider them similar, and I don't need to know their details like price, payload and other specifications to know they are comparable weapons.
To answer your newest curiosity, YES, they are comparable. Just like your iPhone has upgraded from first gen to iPhone 11, weapons upgrade too. Although I don't know which iPhone I should use to make it a fair comparison, nevertheless, they all smartphones, they all comparable.
The idea I made for the whole time was "You don't need to know the specifics in order to know two things are comparable if they are doing the same thing", and all you were doing was keep asking me about the detail like:
In my reply (Post #17)
“What different price tag? Please point your post that actually has specific numbers.”
For the entire time, I kept repeating a common sense to you and said the details are in this case neglectable, and you just kept saying, details, details, please provide me more details, seriously, this is what you called reading other people's comments? If you think so you should really criticize your logical thinking.
OK, let's jump back to the Malaysian example, this part is even funnier, let me quote:
Malaysia bought around the same time a fleet of 18 MIG-29, 18 SU-30MKM and 8 F-18 D. More Russian units were purchased because it was cheaper on a per unit basis. Today, the MIG-29s are prematurely retired; as recent as 2018 only 4 of the SU-30MKM were operational. The 8 F-18 are still flying and 4 participated in the Australian Pitch Black exercise last year. In the end, you get what you pay for.
Here, you pointed out :
- Cost to operate
- Russian weapons are cheaper when purchasing yet retired first
Let's just skip the fact this example makes pretty no sense in terms of replying to my comments and just focusing on this example about Russian weapons retired earlier, and make your story right first.
We all know why Russian weapons are cheaper when purchasing during the 90s and earlier 00s, and that's also the reason how Southeast Asian countries could afford such powerful weapons in the first place. But these weapons required careful maintain, and a lot of spare parts which could be very expansive.
Therefore the major reasons for Malaysian Airforce to retire these Russian weapons are due to the cost, the cost to maintain, the cost to modernization (which essentially is buying new parts).
Then I repeated told you about the reason why using Russian parts in comparison to China and the US is not fair as their parts supply won't face a shortage, so the price won't go up as such.
You then start to say, yeah the Malaysian should have done their math right in advance, so they should anticipate these cost and its increment when they purchase in the place, anyway, let me just quote your latest comments
I said purchase of capital items involved a comprehensive process taking into account sustainability, serviceability, parts availability, support services, upgrade pathways et al
…. and your reply is “is not like what you said”. What the heck is that kind of reply? No basis, no facts and no reasoning - simply a claim. You considered that a cogent reply? Your replies to date are full of these nonsensical claims.
This just makes me laugh, clearly, you have no idea on how weapons are traded, you have no idea on why I'm using Taiwan as an example, and most importantly, you don't even get your fact straight over your Malaysian example.
Let me just get this straight real quick as I don't want to keep repeating myself over and over again. Clearly, you know very little about weapon trade. What you said: "account sustainability, serviceability, parts availability, support services, upgrade pathways et al" are not usually calculated for more than a few years or only last till the first maintains. Most importantly, in a lot of time, what you listed are not important at all, as the seller breaks the contracts all the time, there were practically no accountability in the weapon deals, as a lot of time, if you don't pay more money, you won't get what you want from anywhere. No judge is able to force Russian to lower their maintenance price if they called up a contract breaking number. The reason why I bring up Taiwan is that the weapons supply used to be stopped so many times by the American, and they were forced to reduce training hours and weapon usage, and you tell me Taiwan didn't do any account over that?
I don't want to overdevelop this which may cause another 10 pages tangling, nonchalant with you, but I will suggest you look into how Russian export their weapon these years, especially how their weapon trades with India. Oh, and since this is SDF, I will suggest you read about the story about Sino-Russian weapon trade as well.
Weapon trades are very political, for this Malaysian story, I don't know if you have any awareness of how cheap they got those aircraft in the first place? What did they get beside the aircraft? When was the scheduled maintenance dates? Oh, a funny thing you should know, Malaysian planned to extend the services for those aircraft earlier last year? So your case is gone.
Here, I have told you why the cost is up, and tell you how weapon trades always not work the way as you buy some printers for your office. So please get the fact straight before you say anything.
This is another example of your dishonesty.
I did not say “Malaysians are morons",
I asked the question “Do you think Malaysians are morons?” There is a big difference between a statement and a question. If you don’t even understand simple language construct I wonder why I am even wasting my time engaging with you
Dude, we all adults here, let's just be honest here if you are not implying Malaysians are morons or implying I was saying it, why you brought up in the first place?
Just like the Hongkong protestor keep bringing up the "Tiananmen square" and "64", just to tail it to them. At least they have the decency to admit on what they were doing, what you have done was either intellectually insult everybody who read this thread or implying "Malaysians are morons" and do not have the guts to admit it.
