Well, as I said, it does have ICBMs. That is a rather impressive global "power" projection ability that keeps them in the "top" tier.

Only on paper. ICBMs only have deterrence value. You're not really projecting power with it when its use will cause the immediate end of your power base.

Until China has shipping, the size of their army is largely irrelevant to the Western Hemisphere. Russia's gotta be a bit nervous, though.

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Touche`

Does this count?
China to test space weapon in launching moon satellite

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Yeah, that´s what I mean. I don´t think ICBMs will ever be used by any power.

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

Even if they are - they only have a disruptive effect.

Until and unless you're willing to put someone's boots on the ground, you can't begin to conquor.

You can, admittedly, cause a lot of hate and discontent with an ICBM.

Does this count?
China to test space weapon in launching moon satellite

The article discusses controlling satellites from a submarine. Color me skeptical. Satellites are usually controlled using radio frequencies that don't penetrate water. Would the submarine have to surface to control the satellite? Radiating a lot of RF energy and/or surfacing is the submarine equivalent of screaming, "Kill me! Kill me!" Submarines survive by stealth. This idea doesn't sound at all stealthy to me.

Maybe China's found a way to radio submerged?


About the 25 million Chinamen with no future. India, will/is going to have a similar number of surpluses.

I think I have the plot to the next Dolph Lundgren movie. A small island south of China has to fight off hordes of Chinese male invaders...I smell an Oscar.

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Maybe China's found a way to radio submerged?

That's like saying "maybe Chine's found a way to break the laws of physics." Ultra low frequency (ULF) and very low frequency (VLF) RF signals can penetrate water a fair distance but as the frequencies increase, penetration decreases. When you get into the high megahertz and gigahertz ranges, RF energy pretty well stops at the surface. ULF and VLF frequencies require extremely large antennas and have very low data rates. When I worked at a VLF transmitter site (1980-82), our high speed data rate was 50 bits per second. Our antenna was just 10 feet shorter than the Empire State Building and we radiated something like 100,000 watts of power. Those radio frequencies propagated via ground waves. I don't even know if they would penetrate the ionosphere to be received by a satellite.

One possible way to sign signals to a satellite from a sub would be to mount a small dish antenna on the periscope or some other retractable device. You could briefly raise the dish above the surface, point it at the satellite, and get off a quick set of commands before being detected. It's at least theoritically possible.

I've read that US subs do something of the opposite for communications. They receive a signal via VLF communications to come near the surface, raise an antenna, and downlink a communications signal from a satellite. That's a lot more stealthy than radiating an uplink signal, though.

When I was doing satellite operations, we used large (32', 40', or 60' diameter) remote tracking station antennas. When we needed to uplink ranging signals or commands, the antenna went active with 1000 watts of RF energy. The antennas had extremely narrow beamwidths (< 0.1 degree, IIRC) and very high gains (> 60 dB), so the effective radiated power was over 1 gigawatt. That was used to work with geosynch satellites. Given the very small TT&C antennas on the satellites, the signal strengh received was still extremely weak (< -80 dB).

Communicating with LEO satellites wouldn't require as much power but you'd have a very hard time using an extremely narrow beamwidth high gain antenna from a moving platform. More likely, you'd have a beamwidth of maybe 2-3 degrees and a gain of perhaps 30-35 dB. That would require you to radiate quite a bit of RF power even to communicate with a satellite a few hundred miles away. You might as well send up fireworks and light up strobes. You're going to really stand out - something subs hate doing.

Ya know, the more I ponder China, the more a very well documented, yet seemingly unrelated issue may yet threaten their viability as a global power.

Pollution.

Arguably, the Soviets were just as bad about this matter, but their land use footprint was significantly smaller than China's by a far margin as well as their substantially less efficient industry methods. China matches Communist disregard for human health with Western industrial efficiency. They're literally killing themselves in the effort to keep up with the West's demands for their production capability.

If armageddon comes to China, it will most likely be a self inflicted wound that causes it.

As witnessed by the recent lead and gluten fiascos.

We do considerable business in China. They want very much to westernize their industrial capabilities, but are willing to overlook worker and community safety to do it.

Their attitude toward people is that they are easily replaced. Anyone injured on the job will be recompensed, even have a job for life; if someone dies, their family is recompensed and the children will have jobs. But, people are replaceable.

The CPI in the US until recently had a moraturium on buying any piping or vessel components that were manufactured in China because they played fast and loose with quality standards. For a while, they even stamped their parts as "Made in India" to try to get around the moratorium. (If you looked closely, you could see where "China" had been machined off and "India" stamped in its place.) Now you buy Chinese parts only with rigourous inspection.

Heck, on some of our projects it was actually less expensive to buy equipment and parts manufactured outside of China and import them than to buy cheaper domestic goods and pay to bring them up to standards.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
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Yeah, that´s the kind of challenge I mentioned. There´s also a looming natural resource shortage. If they run out of resources before having consolidated their 'power projection' capability they´ll be in trouble.

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If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

I know I'm late to this party, and this is an older post, but it raised a point for me.

I agree with farmerjumperdon that the "king of the world" title will probably change in the future. As a citizen of the US, my reaction to that ranges from "so what" to "good". I'm rather tired of the role - sure, there are perks, but the responsibilities are large. I'd just as soon let someone else lead for a while. Norway, for example, has not been leader of the world since maybe Viking days, if ever, yet they have one of the top standards of living in the world. That would be fine by me.

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One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

Recently some American businesses (Mattel, etc) kow-towed to Beijing and "admitted" that the problem wasn't one of Chinese manufacturing - but of insufficient design by the American business.

I'm not convinced.

Nevertheless - if Mattel and others want to profit by using Chinese labor/manufacturing (and are willing to take the blame for a Chinese company's actions) - The U.S. plaintiff's bar can assist.

At least when the financial pain from lawsuits reaches the Boardrooms / stockholders - the execs might put a little pressure on their Chinese counterparts to make safe products.

The US can't dictate Chinese manufacturing safety procedures - but we can control what we import.

Hypersonics might be used for missiles first---no sense in that however, as the old all rocket Skybolt was simpler.

Misc. news...

http://www.space-travel.com/reports/...dated_999.html
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Rayt...ystem_999.html

Check out the latest issue of Pop Sci.

http://www.darpa.mil/tto/programs/Falcon.htm
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviatio...ccdrcrd/4.html
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/0...wift-retu.html

Oh, and by the way--the Air Farce wants a new nuclear bomber and new ICBMs.

I'd rather have Ares.

Come celebrate America's 50 years in space in Alabama's rocket city
http://sev.prnewswire.com/aerospace-...2122007-1.html

China is only a military juggernaut in China. China doesn't have the capacity to field the entirety of its military force other than in China. They lack the infrastructure required to keep such a force in the field for any prolonged length of time. If China did go to war with anyone, the defender would merely have to disrupt the Chinese supply lines in order to blunt the attack.

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Currently conducting pre-deployment training, shortly followed by mobilization to Iraq. Note that PMs may take a long time to be responded to.

Assuming their goal is occupation, yes. If their goal is just to cripple a country, they could do that quite easily.

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