Rommel had learned by 1942 that if you don't control the air you don't control the battle. By mid 1944 that lack of control put him in a hospital.

You will note that the emphasis of the articles is on fixed based aircraft. That is a problem that is solveable in part politically. What politics can't solve is aircraft carriers. We have 2 more on the way.

Actually, missiles can solve those too. This is another reason the Chinese are worried about missile defense plans - they will allow America to project power to Taiwan, Korea et. al. without being deterred by a Chinese "missile umbrella" intended to keep their conventional forces at arm's length and establish a clear Chinese sphere of influence.

RE: "2 more carriers on the way"... Pentagon procurement policies ensure that we may have the carriers, but we won't have the aircraft. Like every other part of the military, Naval aviation is already below capacity. Unless they turn those 2 carriers over to Marine aviation (hmmm...), they'll probably move to mothball 2 of the old non-nuclear carriers shortly thereafter.

Joe,

Go read my article link to Jerry Pournelle's site.

The most important part of missile development is an independent test and evaluation system to wring out the technical bugs.

The Chinese test and evaluation system is hopelessly compromised and so are its missiles.

In 1944 Rommel was a consultant to the Atlantic defense in France. Von Runstad (Sp) was the actual commander. Rommel had experience allied air power in the African campaign and realized that the defeat of the invasion of Europe had to occur on the beaches. Von Runstad wanted to keep his tanks in reserve and move them to the invasion spot once it was clear where that would be. Rommel realized that allied air power would make mincemeat out of moving tanks and they would never get to where they were needed. Fortunately for the Allies on D-Day, Von Runstad's carried the day and when the allies invaded they were able to get ashore in strength. Of course, Hitler loved it when his generals were arguing over strategy. In addition to sleeping through the early hours of D-Day, he also chose to listen to the wrong general.

Trent:

I looked for the link to Jerry Pournelle site, couldn't find it. Went to Chaos Manor, looking for missle testing, etc. but no luck. HELP!!

Charles: Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt.

Phil,

This is the relevant section:

"Even assuming a "Paramount Leader" could arise to control the factions in the near future, the Chinese still couldn't pull off any of these strategies. The PLA Air Force is known as the "Center of Corruption in the PLA," according to James Dunnigan. The independent budget and testing oversight that force test after test of American weapons is lacking in the PLAAF. Tests are expensive and an embarrassing lost of face if they uncover failure. Testing is kept unrealistic, and done as few times as possible, as a result. A good historical analog is the performance of both American torpedoes and the U.S. Naval Ordnance branch early in WW2.

Then there is the final threat to this scenario: the Chinese version of the "DOT COM" brain drain. The foreign joint venture companies are raiding the Chinese military industrial complex for talented engineers and managers.

The brain drain of the "Dot Com" economy is blamed for several recent U.S. space launch failures. Reports are that the same is happening to the Chinese military in a much more threadbare industrial economy, as its technological culture is "one deep." That is a major drag on any Chinese military buildup and ensures what they build cannot be maintained.

"Building missiles" does not mean, "building missiles that work." This is a fact the Chinese are well aware of in light of their reaction to the possibility of American strategic missile defenses.

The wonderful thing about building ballistic missiles rather than a large air force or navy is that you can parade junk and it looks threatening. That is why American ballistic missile defenses are so fundamentally unacceptable to the Chinese. They neutralize the implied political threat those missiles represent, and destroy Chinese illusions of power because they will believe our defenses work while their missiles won't. When you combine the brain drain problem with the rampant corruption loose in the Chinese PLAAF, and lack of direction above, the odds approach certainty that any long-range missile built by the Chinese, and launched by the regular military under combat conditions, will fail.

Remember that even in our checks and balance driven procurement system, the USA did not build reliable SLBM/ICBMs during the Cold War.

The Polaris missile had corroded safety interlocks that rendered its nukes inert until the mid-1960s. A Titan 2 missile blew up because someone dropped a tool on a fully fueled missile in the 1980s. Only 3 of 7 "combat ready" Minuteman were successfully launched from active silos in early 1980s realistic tests ordered by then Defense Secretary Casper Weinburger - realistic compared to the standard phony tests from Vanderberg AFB silos of carefully reworked Minuteman ICBM's. Our MX Peacekeeper ICBM's were rendered unusable for half a decade because of a defense contractor defrauding the government with faulty guidance gyros.

The kicker here was that the Soviets missile serviceability rates were half what American ballistic missiles were.

If we had such problems, and the Soviets' were far worse, how reliable will Chinese ICBM's be? How much of drain on China's economy will an attempt to build lots of land-based ICBM's be?"

Phil,

For the whole article over on Jerry's, try this:

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/special/sdi1.html

Thanks, Trent.

My dad is a former airforce fighter pilot and his mantra is that pilot quality is directly proportional to the amount of flight time they receive. Flight training is expensive and everything I've seen indicates that Chinese pilots don't spend nearly the time in the air that US (or Taiwanese) pilots do.

Well now, PLA has no Air Force worth a damm. Their navy is a joke. The Army is famous for their ability to trade man for bullets (their ONLY capability). Unless they decided to nuke Taiwan with terrorist, there is no way in hell they can even get close to Taiwan.

Rommel was appoited by Hitler in early 44, to inspect the Atlantic Wall. He found the defenses in a poor state, except at the Pas de Calise, were the 15th Army was based. At the time of the invasion Rommel was the Commander of Army Group B which had responsibility for the Normandy coast. It was in this capacity that Rommel was serving when the Hawker Tyhpoon shot up his car.

Just to further the Rommel digression... As Terry notes, Rommel was commander of the Army Group in Northern France at the time of D-Day, with von Rundstedt overall Wehrmacht commander in the West. This meant that, short of direct intervention by Hitler, von Rundstedt controlled the frontal level strategic reserves, and did indeed keep them centralized over Rommel's objections. Rommel, contrary to von Rundstedt's strategic directives, crept his own Army Group's assets progressively closer to the coast. By D-Day, 21st Panzer was southeast of Caen, within a dozen miles or so of the British landings. 12th SS Panzer was a bit further east, but still quick to respond. In the end, Allied airpower was so smothering that even these divisions couldn't muster effective counterattacks, though they did keep the British from breaking out of the beachhead. Rommel's plan at least recognized the air superiority problem, but I have doubts that there was any real solution available to the Germans.

Trent's comments on strategic missile operability are quite fascinating. I had always suspected that, given that they function entirely as bluff weapons anyway, it made little sense to spend much money and effort on making strategic missiles actually work. I don't know if any authors of post-holocaust fiction ever addressed the possibility that major population centers might have survived an all-out nuclear exchange intact, just due to the "dud rate". The fate of civilization would be a much... noisier... story in such a case...