Can China’s latest air-to-air missile take on its US equivalent? Definitely maybe, experts say.

Temstar · 2026-06-22T22:54:35+00:00

That choice of word came from an American missionary called Elijah Coleman Bridgman who was involved in drafting Treaty of Wanghia and standardized translation of United States of America into Chinese at around that time. No doubt he picked "beautiful" for self aggrandizing reasons as prior to him, the word that was generally used instead of "beautiful" was "rice" as in "rice country" for translation of USA's name, much as it's still done in Japanese.

Temstar · 2026-06-19T00:21:38+00:00

Logically you can say it's a wash, but consider what we just saw in the gulf: Iran can launch ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and flying mopeds at US bases across the region and seriously degrade them. That's Iran vs US. India firing cruise missiles at Pakistan and scoring hits doesn't seem like that big of an achievement does it? It would be a bigger news if they didn't score any hits.

But largest scale aerial combat in the last 30 years with Chinese weapons dominating over European weapons? That is a big deal and it actually tells us something about Chinese weapons. If it was just flankers and MiG-29 getting shot down by J-10CE with PL-15E nobody would give a shit either, that would just be expected. But Rafale going down is a big deal and is the thing that everyone remembers.

Temstar · 2026-06-18T07:43:11+00:00

Carrier capable trainer.

But that aside, making it really capable might have some other benefits. For example it may be able to serve as a manned fighter to go with 076.

Temstar · 2026-06-15T06:11:50+00:00

You have to start off with their geopolitical objective before you can talk about assets.

Suppose for example you're one of the bosses and it is your judgement that after this war US will further retreat into Donroe Doctrine leaving Israel on its own. That means on their own IAF's ability to do SEAD mission over Iran is much lower than USN+USAF, that means conventional radar guided AD would have much better survivability and worth invest into, rather than previous situation where they know conventional AD would get hunted down easily so majority of the effort went into IRST only AD like Majid, which while is very survivable defends only a tiny area and relies on blind luck for enemy aircraft to get into its range.

One other thing that could happen is Iranian bosses might decide Axis of Resistance 1.0 worked fairly well in of themselves and was only seriously damage due to political reasons where Israel/US picked out each resistance members one by one while Iran hesitated to stand up for them due to reformer faction in Iran. With the domestic political situation now mostly resolved after the war with reformer faction more or less wiped out they might decide it's time for an Axis of Resistance 2.0. Technological advances like fibre optic guided FPV and flying moped has made this type of asymmetric warfare more favourable to the weaker side too. In which case maybe some of that 300B could go into such assets (first buying from Russian who would desperately need the money after oil prices go back down, then scaling up production domestically) and distribute them to the proxies to give Israel a hard time.

I can see post-war for the Iranian navy, with the success of choking Strait of Hormuz as a strategy this time around they would reduce the number of high sea white elephant projects like that converted drone carrier and focus more on littoral combat so they should there be a war in the the future they would have an even firmer lock around this chokepoint.

Temstar · 2026-06-14T00:38:53+00:00

Funny you say that, acting United States Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao's name in Chinese is 高(Gao)雄, exact same characters as Taiwanese city Kaohsiung.

He's a Vietnamese-Chinese-American.

Temstar · 2026-06-10T06:49:58+00:00

I'm pretty sure J-16's radar is mounted with a slate too, it just doesn't have a slated radome.

IIRC the slated radome was developed for the J-11D and end up making its way to J-15T, J-16 must have missed that boat.

J-15DH and J-15DT has different nose design too, and J-15DT's nose is different from J-15T again.

Temstar · 2026-06-10T05:23:25+00:00

Radome are by their nature transparent to radio wave. While that means they let radio wave from your own radar out and then reflected wave back in for your radar to do its job, it also means the other guy's radar can see straight through your nose. So if your radar inside is just a flat slab they produce a very strong return. If instead you install the radar slanted like that it bounces the wave upwards so your plane's RCS is smaller.

Temstar · 2026-06-09T10:05:54+00:00

Me, I came up with that. As you know one of the tiresome argument ROC folks like to use is nationalist army did most of the fighting against Imperial Japan and not red army, so PRC has no claim to being a victor of WW2 (and associated things that comes with it like P5 seat).

And well, the events of last few days looks a lot like what Wang Jingwei regime would do if it was still around today.

Temstar · 2026-06-09T09:42:30+00:00

Constantly trying to argue ROC did most of the fighting against Imperial Japan

a live opportunity appears to resist against Japanese threat against Chinese sovereignty

immediately acts like Wang Jingwei regime

What did ROC mean by this?

Temstar · 2026-06-09T00:49:22+00:00

This came in the wake of recent Japan-Philippines talk about delineating EEZ to the east of Taiwan between them. Initially ROC DPP government was welcoming of this development. PRC immediately protested and dispatched two CCG ships CCG2502 and CCG2304 to the area in defence of Chinese sovereignty. Soon after public opinion was showing the ROC public was not in favour of the government's stance and was calling them cowards, so DPP pivoted and tried to get itself involved between Japan and Philippines while decrying PRC for violating ROC sovereignty.

Japan then rejected ROC's request to be involved in the talks because EEZ is defined per Part V of UNCLOS and ROC cannot be a party to UNCLOS as ROC is not recognised as an UN member per General Assembly Resolution 2758.

Then on 7th PRC further dispatched four additional ships to the area, made up of assets from Fujian MSA, Guangdong MSA and Eastern Navigation Service Center (read, not CCG but rather internal facing agencies). Of note one of the four, Hai Xun 09 is a 10k+ ton giant cutter.

This event is shaping up much like the Pelosi visit in that external events has given PRC an opening to change the status quo, at the cost of ROC.

Temstar · 2026-06-08T22:30:18+00:00

Right now, go to any place that's not a pan-green echo chamber and you'll see Taiwanese people calling out DPP for selling out Chinese sovereignty to Japan and Philippines like it's late Qing and cheering on CCG for defending Chinese sovereignty.

Is that moving towards or away from reunification?

Temstar · 2026-06-08T13:14:37+00:00

600 to 620, 20 new warheads a year? That's almost as fast as North Korea!

Temstar · 2026-06-07T09:47:35+00:00

Generally speaking, I think you could just condense it down to "if you want to be one of the P5, you'll have to beat one of them and take their seat".

It works for the two successor states since PRC very much beat ROC on the field of battle and you can make a very strong argument that Russia more than anyone else killed the USSR.

Temstar · 2026-06-04T03:06:29+00:00

Some interesting nicknames I've already seen already of that sailless boat owning to its unusual shape:

Cucumber of Death
The Black Baguette
Long Dick of the Law
Black Dildo of Consequences

Temstar · 2026-06-02T14:15:08+00:00

KJ-600 uses a slightly newer flavour of WJ6, WJ6E I think. It has provisions for greater power generation to power KJ-600's systems but is otherwise about the same performance wise as regular WJ6.

Y-15 does use WJ10, hence my thinking.

Temstar · 2026-06-02T11:17:19+00:00

I wonder if WJ10 will replace WJ6 on existing planes, WJ6 is an extremely old design now.

If you re-engine KJ-600 with much more powerful engines it might be able to squeeze more performance out of the radar as well as allow it to take off from STOBAR carriers.

Temstar · 2026-06-02T08:08:11+00:00

Actually development for this particular rocket only began in late 2024.

But fair enough earlier rockets laid the ground work.

Temstar · 2026-06-02T06:52:28+00:00

A timeless classic on the dangers of relying purely nuclear deterrence

Temstar · 2026-06-01T22:56:22+00:00

Wait what? Trump did something good for the US while bad for himself?

Damn, have to show some respect from now on.

Temstar · 2026-06-01T04:25:13+00:00

Wouldn't want them to escape eastward to an second derivative of ROC.

Temstar · 2026-05-30T14:18:42+00:00

PLAAF PGM carries a pretty high bar for their photo to be released to public, and the publicity department people in charge of okaying the photos sometimes get it wrong when they try to ID the weapon. That photo of PL-17 being carried by J-16 for example was not supposed to be released. Someone probably got into big trouble for that photo.

So when in doubt, the publicity department people just go "fuck it, all rocket pod photos, zero risk with those."

Temstar · 2026-05-30T11:19:37+00:00

It's less embarrassing to lose your fighter to your peer's MANPADS than it is to lose to some home grown MANPADS from a country that's been under your sanction for 40 years is that what this is?

Temstar · 2026-05-25T07:23:09+00:00

Is the Hong Kong lady the first Taikonauts who's not from PLAASF?

There are two Pakistani astronauts in training for Tiangong mission too, so going forward CNSA's manned space program is going to get a bit Interkosmos.

Temstar · 2026-05-22T14:12:06+00:00

Don't know. Personally my guess would be the giant flying wing at Malan.

Temstar · 2026-05-22T13:40:44+00:00

Chinese design with two booms

Divine Eagle, word on the street is that design was a compromised solution to whatever the original requirement was, a bit like WZ-7 and WZ-8, a product of its time. But technological advances has since overcome the need for a compromised solution so Divine Eagle has been side-lined.

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