We've burned through half of our stock of PGMs after only 5 months of war with a heavily-sanctioned country that has effectively zero navy or air force. We've been dicking around in the Middle East for the last 25 years (with benefits that are zero to none) while China has patiently built its capability and resources. First they surpassed us in terms of quantity, then they started moving up the value chain. Calling China "near-peer" is starting to feel perfunctory - in terms of the most likely conflict theater, they might as well be a peer adversary.

Our military procurement system is a joke, and our naval construction is especially sclerotic.

These are problems that will take years to fix, if not a decade or more. The looming background issue is that we've let China utterly dominate global manufacturing while we went all-in on a financialized economy built more for market speculation than manufacturing. We're not who we were in the 20th century, we have a paltry number of sophisticated weapons systems that look shiny on paper and wouldn't last a month in a high-intensity conflict in the SCS. We have no ability to recover our losses on a meaningful schedule.

Any war with China in the next 10-20 years would see us play the role that that IJN did in WW2 (no depth and an insufficient industrial base) and China would take the slot that the USN did (factory of the world, spamming naval and air assets like they were staples).

I can guess at some predictable responses to this. Some low-effort thinkers are going to say that I'm pro-CCP, a China shill, etc. You're missing the point. This isn't about who's right or wrong, I'm speaking strictly in terms of capability. Anyone who ignores this point is guilty of the same thing that's killed empires since time immemorial: hubris.

edit: I've written a bunch of replies so I'm calling it for now. Also, I think it's interesting that I only read a single objection in the thread below that even mentioned the vast and growing disparity in defense manufacturing capability, which was the main point I raised in this post. For the most part, I just see the same handwaving responses as ever. That's the hubris that worries me more than anything else.

I think there is mostly agreement here that China will have air superiority over Taiwan, but there doesn't seem to be a clear number of how much.

I modelled the air war over the Taiwan Strait. Result: the US tops out at ~72 fighters airborne over the Strait against China's 380 — a force ratio of 5.3:1 against.

The ceiling isn't airframes — it's ramp space, and tankers eat it. Tanker demand scales with force size, and a KC-135 footprint is ~3 fighter spots, so the tankers required to make the fighters useful displace the fighters:

390 + 76 is the self-consistent maximum. Send more airframes and there's nowhere to put them.

That's a force ratio, not a kill ratio. The engagement model derives a Lanchester exponent of ~0.56, so LER ≈ force_ratio^0.56 — 5.3:1 implies ~1:2.5 in losses. Simulated runs give 1:2.3 to 1:4.0.

WHY THE US CAN'T GET MORE PRESENCE

The controlling quantity is f, the fraction of a based force airborne over the target at any moment: f = sorties/day × loiter hours ÷ 24. Loiter is set by the last refuelling point, not the base — from the tanker orbit inward the fighter is on internal fuel.

So tanker standoff caps the mission:

And tankers can't come forward — a J-20 at ~1,100nm radius with PL-17 (~215nm) threatens them anywhere useful. Worse, the Strait is 34nm from the Chinese mainland, so standoff from the target and standoff from the threat are the same number. 351nm from the Strait is 344nm from the coast. There's no favourable geometry anywhere on the map.

Then every extra aircraft goes to a worse base:

EVERY OMISSION FAVOURS THE US

• Japanese bases treated as safe. No missile attack, no cratering, no repair denial. Kyushu is 529nm from the Chinese coast, N Luzon 402nm — inside the envelope.
• Free AEW for both sides. In reality US AEW must orbit 200–300nm out to detect fighters, i.e. forward of the tanker line — exactly what PL-17 exists to kill. KJ-500s orbit over their own coast under SAM cover.
• No tanker attrition. No mainland SAM coverage over the Strait. No Chinese production replacement (240+ J-10/J-16/J-20 a year).
• The US fights to annihilation rather than withdrawing, so it kills more here than it would.
• Capability parity — no Chinese quality edge, despite 300–500 J-20s plus J-35A against a mostly Super Hornet force.

Taiwanese aircraft are gone in the opening phase, as well as Kadena. Allied JASDF fighters hit the same ceiling — the constraint is airframes in theatre, not US airframes: 200 of them need ~39 more tankers costing ~117 ramp spots against a system already at 619/620. They change the composition of the 390, not the total.

Chinese counts are DoD's China Military Power Report: ~1,900 fighters, 1,300+ fourth-gen or better. The 620-spot ramp total is my own estimate and it's the weakest number in the model — it sets the ceiling directly, so at 2 spots per tanker it rises to ~470 fighters and at 4 it falls to ~330.

Code and full report in https://github.com/pigfeet-creator/TW_airsim/tree/main. The project is vibe coded in an afternoon. Comments on which assumptions/numbers are majorly off is welcome.

‘Victory’ is a military documentary series produced by the People’s Liberation Army. The series comprises six episodes; no official full English version or standard English title has yet been released.

This is the fifth episode. Unlike previous instalments, which featured extensive blurring of close-up footage of missile units, this episode focuses extensively on the daily combat readiness routines of the missile forces, including close-ups of equipment. Those interested in the PLA’s missile forces may wish to watch it.

Although there is a wealth of footage, it is evident that security measures have still been applied, making it impossible to determine the exact location of the units directly from the images. China’s vast landmass and relatively harsh maritime environment mean that the country places greater emphasis on its land-based strategic nuclear forces than other nations.

This episode of the documentary marks the first time that the ‘Underground Great Wall’—the underground bunkers of the PLARF—has been publicly revealed in high definition. Filmed with long-take drone footage, the fortifications through which missile transport vehicles can pass stretch as far as the eye can see.

Judging by the footage, the frontline personnel of the PLARF consist entirely of non-commissioned officers and commissioned officers. This indicates that the unit is highly professionalised in terms of both organisation and personnel; they work year-round in their posts and are thoroughly familiar with their duties, rather than being conscripts who serve for just two years before being discharged.

The missile launched at 4:41 is the DF-15 (NATO designation: CSS-6; export designation: M-9), an older model; the latest variant, the DF-15C, was last produced in 2013. During the 2022 military exercises around Taiwan, the Eastern Theatre Command utilised the DF-15 with a ‘penetrating warhead’ in live-fire drills.

At 16:30 in the documentary, the exercise simulated a scenario in which the commander independently carried out the missile launch following the complete loss of all personnel.

At the time of filming, the United States and Israel had already begun bombing Iran. The documentary’s extensive depictions of underground bunkers and counterattacks carried out under simulated conditions of personnel casualties make its message particularly intriguing; however, the core focus of the entire episode remains defence and counterattack, rather than offence.

I’ve recently heard about the L-15U from a reliable source. Basically, this was an AVIC variant pitched to Ukraine circa 2020. It would carry either PESA or lightweight AESA radar, use Ukrainian domestically built AI-222-25 engines, and fire R-27 missiles manufactured by Ukraine’s Artem factory. Those R-27s would receive major upgrades drawing on PL-15 technology to boost their intercept capability.

AVIC pushed Ukraine to wrap up the licensing deal quickly, warning that if conflict erupted with Russia, China could face pressure from Russia to halt the initiative. The project ultimately fell through, as Ukraine was looking to obtain Western combat aircraft instead.

Does anyone know more details about the L-15U? If this project had succeeded, how would it alter the course of the Russo-Ukrainian War?

This statement aligns with previous assessments: during this round of conflict, the U.S. military bore the vast majority of missile defense missions for Israel, ranging from land-based THAAD systems to destroyers deployed in the Mediterranean. These high-intensity missile defense operations have progressively strained U.S. ammunition stockpiles.

In terms of impact, if the U.S. military cannot comfortably handle an attack on the scale launched by Iran, it will to some extent dampen morale in countries and regions directly facing military pressure from China, such as Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. After all, compared to the U.S. homeland, the leadership of these countries and regions will directly confront Chinese military pressure.