Shields up!

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Aircraft carrier commanders are still waiting for an effective defense against torpedoes. Now they will have to wait for an effective defense against these supersonic anti-ship missiles.

I predict this kind of technology will be critical in the coming decades.

Lets face it, confrontation between China and America is at some point inevitable simply because China is rising quickly and America isn't going to surrender its position as alpha dog of the planet without a scrap. And the most likely location for this conflict is Taiwan.

It'll be like the Falklands war on a much, much bigger scale - A more advanced military force projecting power against a less advanced local force. In that war, anti-ship missiles were critical and nearly lead to an Argentine victory. British commanders have commented that if HMS Hermes had taken a single exocet hit, the task force would've had to retreat and Britain would either have had to negotiate for peace or follow through on Thatchers insane plan for nuking Cordoba.

With China, there is no option of a one-sided nuclear strike, and the designers of the relevant anti-ship missiles won't be giving the US technical information on how to defeat them (as the French did in the Falklands)

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

I wouldn't be so quick to send the US and China to war. Remember that for more than 30 years the US and USSR teetered on the brink, but never went to blows.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Funny, I saw a program last night about the new super-carriers.

The best defense against are lasers, well, the best defense is denying the enemy range to fire those missiles at the carriers. That's their best defense against torpedos and missiles. Most of a carrier's 70 or so aircraft are used for air defense. However, the Soviets already had an effective way to counter American anti-missile systems. That is, fire a volley. Sure, they can shoot down one missile rather easily, but what about 20?

There's really no need for the US and China to go to war. Walmart would go out of business.

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Fields of Space

LOGIC, n.
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

In the Year 2525.

"One small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind".

If an astronaut doesn't need good grammar, niether does you.

Host of Seraphim

...directly. ---plenty of proxy blows via third parties, tho.

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(Rushes to put finishing touches on moon rocket.)
Anybody wanna come with?

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

Right now too much of the U.S. economy depends on China. At least the parts of the economy owned by Washington power brokers and lobbyists. Ditto for the wealthy semi-capitalist Beijing elite. It would take a lot more than saber-rattling to lead to a war between the Big Dawgs.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I am too lazy to search, but a colleague of mine once told me that there is a book he read which stated that no two nations with overlapping/inter-depended economies will ever go to war.(US and China fit that bill nicely)
As I said I am too lazy to search......

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This whole internet thing is probably not a passing fad.-Ronald Brak
While speech might be free, consequences cost.-Doodler

Nah, the western world's too cowardly to get into another global fisticuffs right now.

Taiwan will be conquered without much of a struggle because Americans simply lack the spinal integrity to involve themselves in hard fights for more than a few years before even negligible casualty rates send up screams of bloody murder and withdraw. The next Iron Curtain's gonna drop on the western Pacific coastline and the US and the EU will sit there, just like the western Allies did after WWII when the Soviet Union steamrolled eastern Europe.

Iraq will be the last major US engagement for a VERY long time. Europe and Southeast Asia had better take note if they want to survive against China and a resurgent Russia.

China's takeover of Hong Kong in 1954 demonstrates the impatience of China when it comes to gaining control over territory it sees as its own.

If it were going to be a battle over non-economic ideologies (such as religion), or if there were criminally insane despots running the show (that is not intended as an opening for criticisms of our leaders), then I'd say prepare for the worst our current weapons technology has to offer.

But we are too economically dependent on each other. A big war would hurt everybody too much. In a relatively peaceful transition of power, even the loser will gain more than the winner of an all out war. War between these 2 would simply be bad business all around.

I do believe the transition is irreversible at this point. I mean, anything that can happen might happen; but IMO the USA will at least be forced to share the mountaintop, if we can avoid being outright dethroned. No stopping it; our credibility in the eyes of too much of the rest of the world is shot. We had our chance to lead a new world order and got just as greedy and imperialistic as every empire that has ever come into being. To deny that is to be out of touch with reality. 400 years of existence ain't that big a deal, and our 60 or 70 years of domination ain't squat when set against the backdrop of world history.

Not really sure why more people do not see that as clearly as they should. I think maybe too many Americans have only lived the small part of the timeline where we have been dominant and have not bothered to study history with an objective eye. Because they know nothing else, it is assumed the status quo will last forever. Maybe that is the point when states begin to act irresponsibly and with ever-increasing levels of greed. When those in power only personally remember being in power, and never have anything else to go on; the Empire starts behaving badly. Let's hope that those blindered folks are not the ones in power when the transition gets a bit painful economy-wise. They are the type that might pull the trigger as a result of seeing their loss of the right to wear the big foam We're Number One finger as a good enough reason to kill off a few million, or maybe a couple billion humans.

China will only be a temporary stand-in due to the lack of any nation even remotely resembling a party capable of advancing the world order. If and when they get crowned, it will only be as the least evil option; although even as a stand-in, they might produce some kernels of goodness that can blossom later. Kind of like the Greeks. A constantly warring group of city-states that trampled each other into the ground on a regular basis, but did so while at the same time developing during the short term of their rein the beginnings of ideas that would set the tone for the study of humanities and science for 2000 years. Who woulda thunk?

What comes after China? Who knows? Europe seems paralyzed by political correctness reining supreme over practicality and reason. The USA, or whatever it morphs into, will be a long ways off for their next try; but will most likely head down the same paralyzing road as Europe - being more concerned with looking good in priciple than doing good in practice. India?

Fun topic.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Sadly, yes.

Insert Santayana quote here.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

And most of the Greek city-states then willingly threw themselves under the jackboots (jacksandals?) of the Spartans because they throught the Athenian economic hegemony had too much power. Only to find that the Spartans, while good at war, were bad at peace.

Nothing new under the sun.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I read somewhere that there are in the neighborhood of 300 million more males than females in China, thanks to China's "one child" policy. If you look at that another way, it represents hundreds of millions of males that have no possibility of experiencing an exclusive sexual relationship with a female.

The reason I phrase it that way instead of saying "wont have sex" is because I'm sure they will have sex, just not exclusivity. I'm sure we'd all agree, the drive to reproduce is the most powerful of all instincts. We all feel it, even if we don't all act on it. There are a lot of men who choose not to have children, but I think most of them are convinced that they could have children if they wanted to, so that subconscious need is met for them. I think it was Dawkins who suggested that the purpose of the emotion love is to bond a male and female together for three years, long enough to rear a child. So if you've ever had a girlfriend for about three years, you've satisfied that instinct, even if you didn't have a child.

What happens to a heterosexual man with no possible way of doing that? He might be able to have sex occasionally, but never exclusivity, never the feeling that he could pass on his genes if he wanted to.

I'm sure there'll be a lot of depression and a lot of suicide. But I bet there'll also be a lot more risk-taking, a lot of aggression, a lack of concern for the rest of society (why should I care about recycling? The future means nothing to me!) and a lot more crime.

All of that is leading me to this point: China is about to have a ton of expendable soldiers, soldiers who don't care about themselves or think of the future. That's a pretty scary thought. Remember the old REM song, "I hope the Russians love their children too" well guess what, in the next cold war, the answer to that question will be that they have no children and no possibility of having children.

The song quote was actually from a Billy Joel song, Russians, I think.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Holy crud, people...It was Sting.

Paralysed by political correctness? I'd invite you to compare European attitudes towards, say, nudity with those of the United States.

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"I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive." - Carl Sagan, 1995

The exact expressions of it are different, but the effect is the same.

Europe is slowly becoming what in the US would be the "Democratic Ideal", plurality to the point of inaction, where the US is slowly becoming more arch-conservative, where we'll be paralyzed for fear of stirring up a hornet's nest of controversy for disturbing the status quo.

Political Correctness covers the whole ideological spectrum. It all boils down to populism ad absurdum.