Would the United States and China ever go to war?
April 25th, 2012 | China Flightlines History | Posted by Jeff Schogol
Senior Capt. Guan Youfei, deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Chinese Ministry of National Defense (center) and U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Charles W. Hooper, U.S. military attache in Beijing, greet the first of two U.S. aircrews delivering earthquake relief supplies to China in 2008. COURTESY U.S. AIR FORCE
A recent study from the American Enterprise Institute concluded that the U.S. Air Force lacks the stealth aircraft to successfully fight China.
One expert told Air Force Times it is unlikely China and the U.S. would ever go to war because their two economies are so interconnected, but a reader pointed out afterward that people said the same thing about Great Britain and Germany, which came to blows twice in the last century.
Prior to World War I, Germany’s biggest trading partners were Britain and France while Germany was also one of the biggest investors in Russia, giving rise to the popular notion that a major European war was unlikely – yet the war came, said Dean Cheng, a China expert with the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington.
Now, as then, economic interests do not trump national security interests, so China and the United States are not so interconnected that they will never go to war, Cheng said.
The reason the Chinese have bought hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. bonds is the U.S. economy is the only one big enough to handle all that money, he said. For both China and the U.S, the relationship is pure business.
“There’s nothing in the Chinese side of their actions to make them say, ‘You know, I’m willing to take something of a loss here,’ or, ‘I am buying American bonds in peace time because I want to help express sympathy for the United States; the same way nobody here buys Chinese goods – very, very few people – buy Chinese goods because, ‘Well, you know, I want to help China,’” Cheng said.
NYC to LA in 12 minutes
August 10th, 2011 | China DARPA Flightlines | Posted by David Larter
News broke today that China is launching its first aircraft carrier for sea trials this week fueling concerns about China’s rise as a military power in Asia. And while the jury is out on just how much China’s improving capabilities threaten the U.S. and its interests in the region, what is certain is that not only did the U.S. figure out how to use carriers 70 years ago, we’ve also got 11 of them.
Here’s something else for Beijing to ponder while it’s tooling around off its coast in decades-old technology: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency today at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., is scheduled to test a remotely piloted aircraft that can fly as fast as Mach 22 and can make the flight from New York to Los Angeles in 12 minutes. If you’re keeping score at home, DARPA says the Falcon HTV-2 can reach and sustain speeds of 13,000 mph. Called the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2, it is designed to eventually give the Air Force the ability to reach out and touch anywhere in the world in less than an hour. You can read all about the technology here.
A release from DARPA yesterday previewed today’s launch, the second test flight in the program’s history:
A technology demonstration and data-gathering platform, the HTV-2 is packaged in a special capsule atop the launch-ready Minotaur IV Lite rocket.
After the Minotaur rocket launches and nears orbit, HTV-2 will separate and fly at a hypersonic glide trajectory within the earth’s atmosphere Mach 20 speeds, approximately 13,000 miles per hour.
During the second flight test, more than 20 land, air, sea and space test assets will collect data needed to improve predictions, through modeling and simulation, of future hypersonic flight vehicle performance—ultimately leading toward the capability of reaching anywhere in the world in under an hour.
So while it’s been a somewhat depressing week here in the US of A by any standard, we can tuck this one away in the “positive development” column.
Update: Today’s launch has been scrubbed for weather and is rescheduled for tomorrow morning.