Re <<Coal ... natural gas ... Putin>> presumably makes Britain Great Again.
... besides playing with Putin in a way to dictate a particular reaction function from Putin, al downside and little upside, UK also said 'no' to China nuclear plant theasset.com w/ its Huawei 5G accompaniment, preferring instead to show China, Britain's largest trade partner euronews.com where to get off of its lone aircraft carrier reuters.com so as to make happier like-minded folks who could not be bothered w/ Britain. Again, all downside and no upside.
A puzzle.
The same like-minded recently got a hint of what China thought of like-mindedness, and once the China Underwater Great Wall extends from S China Sea to E China Sea and then infrastructure-outward-bound to beyond the second island chain and into the arctic sea, invading aircraft carriers might as well operate inside of San Francisco Bay. Upon nuclear parity, invading aircraft carriers might still be able to operate inside the Great Lakes.
China working on details to land hypersonic drones so that such can be used over and again, instead of one-way hyper-drones to search for, cross-check w/ satellites and micro-satellites, and acquire pinpoint 'hello' coordinates for visitation by DF21 / DF26 sort-of-drones.
Do not yet know if China tested the fish / shark drones and the air/submarine drones this time. We wait for revelations.
Team Germany is apparently playing it safer, presumably on orders of its joint chiefs of staff, General Porsche, VW, and BMW, and admirals Siemens, Daimler, and BioNTech, and by wish not to see joint Russia-China exercises on the eastern front asia.nikkei.com
In any case, as I earlier guessed Message 33452065 ... drone games
The greater risk is that, during wartime, Chinese drones might succeed in pinpointing allied carriers. The U.S., British and Japanese navies combined possess more ships, more missiles and more planes than the Chinese navy does. But that advantage could slip fast if the PLARF, aided by manned and unmanned surveillance aircraft, manages to draw a bead on the big decks.
forbes.com
When A Huge Allied Fleet Gathered Near China, It Had Company—A Bunch Of Chinese Drones
David Axe
08:00am EDT
Sep 1, 2021,|27,196 views
A Chinese TB-001 drone.
Japanese defense ministryWhen the American, British and Japanese navies surged three aircraft carriers and a helicopter carrier into the waters south of Japan this month, the Chinese military responded with a surge of its own.
A drone surge.
On no fewer than three occasions, Chinese surveillance drones shadowed the allied fleet, prompting the Japanese air force to launch fighters.
The intensive robotic surveillance, which comes after years of growth in Beijing’s drone force, hints at how Chinese forces might wage naval war in the Western Pacific.
To keep enemy carriers away from the Philippine and China Seas, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force deploys hundreds of anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles. But those missiles are useless without accurate targeting data.
That’s where the drones come in.
The allied flattops converged from separate directions. HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy’s new conventionally-fueled carrier, along with her British, American and Dutch escorts for several weeks now has been crisscrossing the Pacific.
The 919-foot carrier with two squadrons of F-35B jump jets aboard—one from the Royal Air Force and another from the U.S. Marine Corps—departed the United Kingdom for her maiden cruise back in May and, a couple months later, reached the Pacific via the Singapore Strait.
In mid-August, USS America—an 844-foot U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship with a conventional powerplant— along with the 646-foot Japanese navy helicopter carrier JS Ise met Queen Elizabeth in the Philippine Sea south of Okinawa.
America, which functions as a light carrier when she embarks a squadron or two of F-35Bs, sails from Japan, usually in the company of destroyers and other amphibious ships from the U.S. 7th Fleet. The conventional Ise heads a naval squadron that also includes destroyers.
The America, Queen Elizabeth and Ise naval groups combined into one multinational fleet and spent 12 days in mid-August sailing and training together. America and Queen Elizabeth even refueled each other’s F-35s in a so-called “cross-decking” exercise.
While the three carriers operated together, a fourth big-deck ship—the San Diego-based nuclear supercarrier USS Carl Vinson—passed nearby with her own escorts.
The 1,092-foot Vinson is the first of the U.S. fleet’s 10 supercarriers to embark a squadron of big-wing F-35C stealth fighters. Vinson didn’t actually join up with America, Queen Elizabeth, Ise and their escorts south of Okinawa. Rather, she sailed around the group on Aug. 25, bound for the port of Yokosuka in eastern Japan.
In any event, the presence of four carriers in the same patch of ocean underscores the sheer weight of naval firepower the United States and its allies can bring to bear for, say, a fight over Taiwan.
They’d face opposition.
The Chinese military long has possessed maritime surveillance planes—such as the quad-prop Y-9—that could track down these enemy flattops, relay their coordinates to PLARF batteries ashore and potentially help to chip away at the allies’ combined strength.
But it would be dangerous duty. Aircraft carriers are some of the best-defended warships in the world.
Drones could probe a carrier group’s defenses without risking a crew, however. To that end, the People’s Liberation Army, PLA Air Force and PLA Navy have been developing a wide array of new unmanned aerial vehicles.
Two new drone types flew at least three sorties in close vicinity to the four allied carriers on Aug. 24, 25 and 26. It’s possible the missions technically were test flights for the new UAVs.
On Aug. 24, Japanese forces tracked a single TB-001 drone flying a loop over the East China Sea west of Okinawa. The 32-foot, propeller-driven TB-001 is China’s answer to the U.S. military’s own Predator drone. The camera-equipped drone can carry lightweight weapons over a distance of around 3,000 miles.
The next day, the Japanese spotted another drone—a BZK-005—this time flying south of Okinawa in the company of two Y-9s. The 30-foot, prop-driven BZK-005 like the TB-001 can fly thousands of miles with a modest payload potentially including cameras and a radar.
On Aug. 26, a second—or the same—TB-001 returned to the waters south of Okinawa, this time with two Y-9s. “There was a risk of violation of air space,” the Japanese military’s joint staff tweeted. Japanese air force fighters—F-15s, apparently—sortied to keep tabs on the Chinese aircraft.
The greater risk is that, during wartime, Chinese drones might succeed in pinpointing allied carriers. The U.S., British and Japanese navies combined possess more ships, more missiles and more planes than the Chinese navy does. But that advantage could slip fast if the PLARF, aided by manned and unmanned surveillance aircraft, manages to draw a bead on the big decks. |
