By David Crane
defrev (at) gmail (dot) com
August 1, 2011
As if Chinese military-grade electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons, anti-ship ballistic missiles (i.e., “Kill Weapons“), and torpedo-armed submarines aren’t enough, enter China’s new aircraft carrier development program, consisting of “refitting” an “imported” Soviet-era empty aircraft carrier shell weighing 60,000 metric tons from the Ukraine.
The shell is headed to a shipyard in the port city of Dalian for its maiden voyage. Dalian is located in China’s Liaoning Province. Once they finish the refit job, China will become the fifth permanent member of the UN Security Council to have an operational aircraft carrier.
The new “refitted” Chinese aircraft carrier, once completed, will be a conventionally-powered, medium-sized ski-jump carrier, as opposed to a catapult-launch carrier, and is being developed, according to the Chinese, for “research and training” purposes.
Seems innocuous enough, right? However, let’s not forget Chinese President Hu Jintao’s little visit to Moscow, Russia in mid June aimed at “deepening pragmatic cooperation between China and Russia” and “inject fresh impetus into the sustained, healthy and stable growth of the China-Russia strategic partnership of cooperation in an all around way.” Well, doesn’t that sound positive.
DefenseReview (DR) is sure there’s nothing to worry about. After all, it’s not as if Russia and China have been acting in any way counter to U.S. military defense interests regarding U.S. enemies like Iran and North Korea in the past few years, or that China has been using it’s lender status to put considerable economic pressure on the United States, or anything of that sort. Defense Review is sure a Sino-Russian economic and/or military alliance will be perfectly harmless. Since China and Russia care so much about our economic and military wellfare, and their respective governments consist of such nice people, DR is sure we have absolutely nothing to worry about. We’re sure we’re perfectly safe.
O.k., so we’ve warned our readers about the possibility of having to engage in nation-state warfare against the Russians or the Chinese at some point in the future. How bad could a Sino-Russian military alliance really be? It’s not like they have any kind of significant military defense technology between them. Again, nothing to worry about.
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