US military costs is not just high salaries but bloated equipment costs

US General Milley tries to make the case that China matches the US military budget because US salaries are so much higher than China’s. China is catching up to US military technology. The US military budget is bloated because of massive increase in procurement prices for each plane, submarine and other equipment. It is also …

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China claims it has designs for a mass production hypersonic engine

China has designs for a mass production hypersonic engine for low-cost planes or spacecraft capable of traveling five times faster than the speed of sound. The plant that would be built in Hefei, in China’s eastern Anhui province, could give the country an edge over the United States and Russia in the race to achieve …

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China is “sputniking” the US so the US needs to spread Elon Musk and SpaceX methods

China is “sputniking” the USA with military technology surprises. Technologies like hypersonic missiles, railguns, electromagnetic launchers and metamaterials. It is not that China got fast. It is that the USA got slow. The US rocket developers (Lockheed and Boeing) have been the same companies developing a lot of fighter planes and other military systems. The …

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China is "sputniking" the US so the US needs to spread Elon Musk and SpaceX methods

China is “sputniking” the USA with military technology surprises. Technologies like hypersonic missiles, railguns, electromagnetic launchers and metamaterials. It is not that China got fast. It is that the USA got slow. The US rocket developers (Lockheed and Boeing) have been the same companies developing a lot of fighter planes and other military systems. The …

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China is deploying metamaterials and railguns using SR-71 like development speed and flexibility

The United States has been able to lead in military technology for decades with DARPA research. DARPA and ARPA helped with the creation of * the internet * GPS (global positioning system) * stealth fighters * antimissile systems * M16 * stealth fighters There was research and development beyond DARPA with the Lockheed Skunkworks. DARPA’s …

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The USA is no longer guaranteed future military technology dominance

The US has enjoyed complete military dominance since about 1985. The Soviet Union and now Russia is competitive with the number of nuclear weapons. Th Soviet Union also had a total volume of tanks and armored vehicles which the USA and its allies would uncertain of stopping or defeating. There is now the IISS 2018 …

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US losing Navy tech lead because of electrical engineering, project management and corruption problems

The US is losing its naval military technology lead because of inadequate electrical engineering and problems with large project management and political and industrial corruption. The political and industrial corruption aspect is sen in the high cost of * the Zumwalt destroyer (nearly $8 billion a piece -4 times more than the Burke destroyer) * …

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Is China Railgun a Sputnik moment for the USA?

Just over 60 year ago the Soviet’s launched the basic Sputnik satellite. Sputnik was not a weapon but it showed that the Soviet Union was competitive with US military technology. On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite—Sputnik—into orbit. The Soviets had already detonated an atomic bomb in 1949. China has …

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If China is ahead deploying Railguns, electromag catapults and hypersonic weapons

China seems to have made a lot of progress making more practical electromagnetic catapults for aircraft carriers and such electromagnetic catapults could be scaled to launch large drones from smaller ships. In a presentation at the PLAN University Rear Admiral Ma Weiming told Chinese experts in electromagnetic research that China had made breakthroughs in key …

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Russian decline in world power will accelerate over the 2020s

Even though Russia has population of 144 million and has the legacy of the Soviet nuclear program and military technology. However a country with GDP comparable to that of Australia cannot afford to be a superpower, fight a protracted war in Syria, fight in the Ukraine and develop its own stealth fighter and other equipment …

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