Message posted by Smythers (Member since 04/27/2023) on July 16, 2023 at 8:16:13 PST:
i) Sensors. US is 20 years ahead, and that ironically comes entirely from a stupendous hamstringing the Chinese defense estate do to themselves (In that they do not let younger engineers come up with solutions. It is always the Chief, and the praise flows downhill). ii) Airframes. US defense estate is vastly ahead. 15 years with ease. iii) Integration. US defense is be maybe 8, 10 years ahead max. Chinese are studying the joint all domain efforts and they want that pie. iv) Materials. This is where the US Dod estate is utterly dominant. Materials science at the level of raw naked genius that just cannot be stolen or duplicated by brute copycat behavior. I would stand on a hill and state that Chinese material science is 30+ years behind if it cannot be leveraged by espionage. Even with espionage they lack the ability to look at it from anything bar through a Chinese prism, and that distorted view is hampering them no-end. Yes, I am serious. Swarms, area denial, all came from logic first put into use for fire fighting. And it works, and it works horrifically well. In that respect? US DoD is a decade behind because they just cannot let go of the antiquated 'Pilot in the loop' mentality.
Fascinating question, and one that can be looked at in four separate categorize.
Now for the bad news.
if China puts its collective mind into making their UCAV as combined and able as their smaller unmanned efforts? Well, we have seen Ukraine, and then add in a layer of dominant area saturation drones that, ironically, learned their swarm tactics at the hands of scientists who mastermind forest fire mitigation efforts.
In Reply to: Re: Cranked-Arrow F-35? posted by Ginger on July 16, 2023 at 7:27:59 PST:
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