How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Beleg85]

14 hours ago, danfrodo said:

Hitler wasn't a fascist as much as he was a hitler-ist.  Stalin used communism to get in power but he was a Stalinist, wanting control for himself at any cost or method or means.  Mao was mos def a Mao-ist first and commie second, though he was probably more of a true believer than the other two mentioned here.

Just to add finnishing touch to this discussions- I really don't get where people have this idea that Stalin was not a commie. He was penultimate communist, writing a dozen or so works on the topic*, by all evidence till the end of his life considering himself a theoretical and practical embodiment of communist world. That is simpy what this inhumane ideology leads to, if unhinged- it takes away all normal ethics, means and barriers of social cooperation in order to achieve its (unachieveable) goals of building New Men. It is religion in fact, and Stalin was Highest Priest of it, ruling from a palace with windows on a pyramid erected around mummy of its Prophet (literally- he wrote several times how much inspired confidence body of Lenin gave him in "difficult" times) . By far the worst element was this disguisting, artificial and hectic new-speech they forced on people, turning them into zombies mumbling for hours. And lies, constant, never ending formalistic lies that ravaged soul of every society communism was enforced upon- one never knew what was true, because truth itself was just ad hoc line of the Party/First Secretary/Juche/whatever. If one never lived in such system, it is even difficult to comprehend the level of hypocritical self-denial it could bring; we still tackle this mentallity of living in half-realistic, improvised society 30 years after communism fall.

 

*My old mother still have shivers when recounting how they forced her to memorize, like on milions of people here, fragments from the works of Stalin (Dialectical and Historical Materialism it was...), during her student exams. And it wasn't worst in this regard in Communist Poland when compared to other places.

 

If we comapre it to Putin's ideology, the latter seems almost bare. To be frank, it looks like machiavellic Putin never liked his own ideological yadda yadda and generally distanced himself from fanatics. It is circumstances (his own war) that force him pretend he mean something except from pure power politics.  This is chief reason why this entire Z generation movement looks so artificially dumb, at least for now- they are going there fast, though.

Edited April 25, 2023 by Beleg85

[The_Capt]

8 hours ago, dan/california said:

I just can't shake the feeling that they have tried too hard to modulate to a just so outcome, and not quite hard enough to outright win this thing and let Russia figure out how to lose it. It is also possible that my spine being a borderline disaster area is making me dyspeptic and grouchy.

Edit: and maybe we are about to see some stuff that will actually surprise us...

As was noted before Ukrainian victory must include engineering a Russian defeat.  This is tricky.  I strongly suspect that the US is working very hard to engineer a just-soft-enough landing for Russia in this war.  So what looks like waffling or weak knees is more likely simply due to the fact that for the US there is a lot more on the board than simply kicking Russia’s bum nice and hard - that one is already pretty much covered.  There are other less absolute dimensions to this thing.

[kraze]

27 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Just to add finnishing touch to this discussions- I really don't get where people have this idea that Stalin was not a commie. He was penultimate communist, writing a dozen or so works on the topic, by all evidence till the end of his life considering himself a theoretical and practical embodiment of communist world. That is simpy what this inhumane ideology leads to, if unhinged- it takes away all normal ethics, means and barriers of social cooperation in order to achieve its (unachieveable) goals of building New Men. It is religion in fact, and Stalin was Highest Priest of it. By far the worst element was this disguisting, artificial and hectic new-speech they forced on people, turning them into zombies mumbling for hours. And lies, constant, never ending formalistic lies about reality that ravaged soul of every society communism was enforced upon.

My old mother still have shivers when recounting how they forced her to memorize, like on milions of people here, fragments from the works of Stalin (Dialectical and Historical Materialism it was...), during her student exams. And it wasn't worst in this regard in Communist Poland when compared to other places.

 

If we comapre it to Putin's ideology, the latter seems almost bare. To be frank, it looks like machiavellic Putin never liked his own ideological yadda yadda and generally distanced himself from fanatics. It is circumstances (his own war) that force him pretend he mean something except from pure power politics.  This is chief reason why this entire Z generation movement looks so artificially dumb, at least for now- they are going there fast, though.

That's because russians create ideology for occupied, not for occupiers. Themselves they don't need any ideological reason to invade, rape or kill. If modern russian empire wasn't so incompetent and overly corrupt and instead succeeded at grabbing everything they wanted - you'd see whatever ideology quickly invented.

An average russian is still living in mostly the same conditions as he did during 18th or 19th century, any ideology would've been completely lost on him. Back then it was a leaky wooden barrack, now it's a leaky wooden barrack with TV. But an occupied Poland most definitely required it to stay put.

Edited April 25, 2023 by kraze

[The_Capt]

7 hours ago, Jiggathebauce said:

Have you heard about what's going on with cop city in Atlanta, how they murdered an activist and filed terrorism charges at others? How the CIA and FBI undermine activist movements and assassinate leaders like Fred Hampton, and more than likely MLK and Malcom X? Do you really think the largest prison population on the world is just criminals, and has nothing to do with being able to use free prison labor and destroy communities? The government  drugging people without their consent in twisted brainwashing experiments in the MK Ultra project? Do you not factor hundred of lynchings in the last 100 years of blacks, Italians and other minorities, the forced sterilization and experimentation on people by eugenics advocates? Do you recall the red scare, when socialists by and large were terrorized into silence in the US? I could go on, you can get thrown in jail just for trying to sleep in a tent or eat food from the garbage in this country. It is truly mind boggling how much injustice is directed at some people, while others will never run afoul of the system. For them, it's like a different country. 

There is a point on the circle where the far-left and far-right meet and this is pretty close to it.  The mechanics are the same, connect a whole bunch of phenomena, many of them that are in isolation of each other - e.g. homelessness and MKUltra.  Then tie them together with logic strings to create a unifying construct - in this case Western Satan.

The problem is that 1) many of these phenomena are in fact disconnected as there are no star chambers just people being mean to other people - the red scare violations of human rights is not in the same bin as lynchings.  2) the fact that anyone has access to these historical examples and can openly cite them is proof against a massive oppressive western regime that spans generations, and 3) completely misses all the good and right these western systems have done, worse dismisses it as social background radiation when in fact it was the main effort.

This method is a sort of reverse social contrasting because all one is seeing are the lynchings, CIA plots, cop shootings and homeless.  If one stares at that long enough it is easy to believe that is the core and not indeed the background radiation of macro-social evolution in the western world.  There are societies where these sorts of activities were far more central to maintaining order and control as has been noted.  They do not complain about police brutality and cite internet stories to back them up in North Korea because they are living in a truly brutal dictatorship.

I have worked defence and security my entire adult life - there is not massive conspiracy led by the far [insert villain] trying to control you through a weird Goldberg-esque complicated scheme. There is a government trying to keep 300+ million primates wired for fear response from killing each other.  While at the same time trying to keep the other 7.7 billion scared primates from either killing you, or each other too fast.  The good news is that this “sinister and highly corrupt system” has essentially worked.  We are better off now than we have ever been in history.  Do not believe me?  Google stuff like child mortality or literacy, or healthcare.  You wanna talk “big unfair prisons” do some research on the 19th century legal system.  

People are not “seeing the matrix” in spite of nasty government control, they are seeing it because of government protections - as imperfect as they may be.

[kevinkin]

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/silence-along-ukraine-s-southern-front-fuels-speculation-over-counteroffensive/ar-AA1ahgPt?cvid=e625628145254f4ca28f7db724df70dd&ei=40

This is also as decisive a moment for Kyiv. NATO has been uncharacteristically united and bold in its support and arming of Ukraine. This sort of clarity of purpose is an outlier in Western democracies, and one that elections, economic variables, and other distractions may dilute in the year ahead. Ukraine cannot count on this level of support this time next year, whatever the press releases today say.

The Ukrainians face an enemy weaker than it has been for months, with the Russians even sending wounded convicts back to fight on the frontline, according to accounts from convict recruits.

Kyiv’s forces have better weaponry and training from NATO than ever before. And they surely have good, real-time information from their Western allies to pry open any advantage.

And the silence that we see now – the near total absence of TikToks or commentary from the Zaporizhzhia front line – may be the clearest indicator yet that this vital step is afoot

It has been quiet. There must be a tremendous chess game being played out behind the scenes. Love to be a fly on the wall in those planning meetings. Air temperature seems OK in that sector, while it must be still a little wet. 

[Harmon Rabb]

Russia's new T-14 Armata battle tank debuts in Ukraine - RIA (Reuters)

British military intelligence says that if Russia does deploy these tanks, it will be mostly for propaganda purposes.

Would be neat if Ukraine could take out a T-14 and get it on film for their own propaganda purposes.

Edited April 25, 2023 by Harmon Rabb

[paxromana]

12 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Would be neat if Ukraine could take out a T-14 and get it on film for their own propaganda purposes.

It would be even better if the crew would simply run away from the Ukrainian summer offensive and the Ukrainians could have it parade in the streets of Kiev on world news ... and see the Russians try to spin that ...

Edited April 25, 2023 by paxromana

[akd]

Additional footage from previously seen events:

 

[kimbosbread]

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Driving around blazing at the sky and giving one’s position away leading to PGM artillery killing you….check.  Logistical nightmare…check.  Better than nothing until C-UAS = other UAS…check.  Does it solve for UGS…no check.

Oh, but the nice thing is you don’t even need to have a person on here. Just leave it in place, give it a car battery and you can re-use software written 10+ years ago for tracking people and use it for drones. Essentially a remote gun turret that looks for drones, until it runs out of ammo. I still think detecting small drones is harder to do optically, and you need a loitering anti-drone munition that looks for the signal, essentially (either drone or operator). HARM, but for drones.

Alternatively, I really like the remote turret for static position defense. You don’t even need anything special or long range, even a pistol with a silly drum mag on a little tripod/servo mount would slow down a few guys trying to hop in. You’d be looking in even small production a cost of $1000 or less for such a thing (not including the gun).

[Harmon Rabb]

More pearls of wisdom from Mr.Peskov concerning the people of Poland. If the Poles were not a bunch of mentally ill lunatics they would be thrilled about Russia's actions in Ukraine.

Hearing this guy talk really does remind me of the phrase, "the lunatics are running the asylum".

[Battlefront.com]

6 hours ago, Phil003 said:

Perhaps this is a bit off topic, but I was always wondering what is the root cause for this quite popular anti-US/anti-west viewpoint, not only on this thread, but in many other places. My theory is that actually it is the 'good' things in the US and the west that make them 'look bad' at the end of the day.

This plus too much emphasis on hypocrisy and the usual petty Human issues (ignorance, jealously, greed, tribalism, etc.) that appear to be hardwired into our brains.

I'll share this one story that kinda illustrates this all.  While living in London for university schooling I had a history class with an excellent instructor.  At one point he said he was afraid of going to the US because of the chances of being shot.  This was at a time London frequently locked down due to IRA bombs (real and false) and from a man who lost a relative to an IRA bomb in Birmingham.  Even today I still shake my head because of how illogical it all was.

At the same time, I shake my head about my gun toting American neighbors can not conceive of way to live a safe life without 10 guns in the house.  To them safety can only exist if one is armed, and even then I get the sense that most still don't feel safe.  Yet while I lived in London I felt safer there than New York City (which was at a historic high crime level at the time) even though London cops were unarmed and at least once had to evacuate from a subway station due to a bomb threat.

As Tommy Lee Jones put it in Men in Black, "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals"

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

40 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Russia's new T-14 Armata battle tank debuts in Ukraine - RIA

British military intelligence says that if Russia does deploy these tanks, it will be mostly for propaganda purposes.

The mileage that Russia got out of the "fearsome" Terminators has apparently run its course.  To be fair to the Terminator, there's only so much some footage of them driving around behind the lines and shooting trees can do for morale.

40 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:

Would be neat if Ukraine could take out a T-14 and get it on film for their own propaganda purposes.

That would be awesome, but I suspect it would break down before it ever got near the Ukrainians

Steve

[DesertFox]

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

An example of what Ukraine is testing for drone defenses for frontline positions:

Nothing about this is revolutionary.  It's basically a light RWS with (apparently) an automated target tracking system.  I couldn't find any information on it.  I'm wondering how effective this might be armed with a standard small arm with standard ammo.  Proximity fused grenades would be far better, but that's a whole different level of complexity.

Steve

Good stuff. Brought back some memories from long ago:

 

 

[Battlefront.com]

39 minutes ago, akd said:

Additional footage from previously seen events:

 

The second video shows how difficult it is to knock out a bunker even at close range.  I suspect they had killed or seriously wounded everybody in there with the first 4 or 5 grenades, but even with that there was at least one guy on the other side that got up and tried to run.  It should have been obvious to him how close the Ukrainians were and they even gave him a chance to surrender, but he elected to try and run.  I don't know if that's the dumbest thing that guy ever did, but for sure it was the last.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Driving around blazing at the sky and giving one’s position away leading to PGM artillery killing you….check.  Logistical nightmare…check.  Better than nothing until C-UAS = other UAS…check.  Does it solve for UGS…no check.

Yup, this is OK as an interim solution to UAS, but it is definitely not anything I'd recommend investing in on a large scale.

However, these sorts of systems could be a good solution for combating ground attacks.  And yes, I mean Aliens style   Seems to me a good way to have a layered defense with slightly less personnel than would otherwise be necessary.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

43 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

Oh, but the nice thing is you don’t even need to have a person on here. Just leave it in place, give it a car battery and you can re-use software written 10+ years ago for tracking people and use it for drones. Essentially a remote gun turret that looks for drones, until it runs out of ammo. I still think detecting small drones is harder to do optically, and you need a loitering anti-drone munition that looks for the signal, essentially (either drone or operator). HARM, but for drones.

The major shortcoming is that flinging little bits of lead into the sky is unlikely to hit the drone.  And once the drone is between the gun and friendly units, there's a real risk of friendly fire.  If a bullet goes up, that means somewhere a bullet comes down.  Best not to have that be near friendlies or civilians.

43 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

Alternatively, I really like the remote turret for static position defense. You don’t even need anything special or long range, even a pistol with a silly drum mag on a little tripod/servo mount would slow down a few guys trying to hop in. You’d be looking in even small production a cost of $1000 or less for such a thing (not including the gun).

Oh, I think $1000 is optimistic   A modern tripod, no fancy gizmos on it, is costs more than that.  I couldn't find the acquisition cost of a M192 light tripod, but I did find someone selling used ones for $1000 a pop.  My guess is acquisition cost for a system like in the video is probably $50k-$75k range.  Depends on what optical systems it employs.  The Javelin CLU, for example, is $100k in large part because of the thermal imager.

Hence why I would not be investing money in these things at any scale.  Better to hold the money back and spend on something far more effective.  There are already several systems in the pipleline that look promising.  Lasers and anti-UAS drones for example.

Steve

[sburke]

8 hours ago, Phil003 said:

Perhaps this is a bit off topic, but I was always wondering what is the root cause for this quite popular anti-US/anti-west viewpoint, not only on this thread, but in many other places. My theory is that actually it is the 'good' things in the US and the west that make them 'look bad' at the end of the day.
 

yeah we are way off topic, but no I don't think it is a matter of the "good things".  I'd say first off there isn't one cause.  It all depends on the specific situation.  leaving out the indigenous population and the experience of minorities in the US for the moment, western economic power was largely founded on exploiting the resources and people of much of the globe, usually in pretty brutal conditions.  British economic power was largely founded on the opium trade which the west forced on China at gunpoint. Then there was the Atlantic triangle trade one leg of which was the slave trade.  One needn't go that far back either.  Belgium is still grappling with the legacy of the Congo.

Then you have the cold war where the west supported some of the most brutal autocratic regimes around.  Mobutu of Zaire, the US waffling around the anti apartheid movement.

Moving on you have the western involvement in the Middle east.  Between the Suez invasion, support for the Shah and being stuck in basically an unsolvable crisis in Israel/Palestine partly due to our own antisemitism (by that I mean I am not so sure Israel would ever have been founded if the west had reacted faster and better to Nazism. for example the turning back of the Passenger liner St Louis in 1939 to Europe).

All that being said, I think this perspective on an "ant western/Anti US viewpoint is a bit dated now.  I've travelled quite a bit over the past 15 years in a lot of different places and I can't say I've really felt a major anti western vibe.  The world has grown a lot different and there is a lot more competition, but other than the "we hate the great satan movement" largely led by conservative religious nuts stuck in the middle ages I don't think it exists in the same way it might have a couple decades ago.

 

 An interesting alternative view of where we are now

Sudan proves that the only thing worse than Western meddling is Western absence (yahoo.com)

Edited April 25, 2023 by sburke

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, kimbosbread said:

Oh, but the nice thing is you don’t even need to have a person on here. Just leave it in place, give it a car battery and you can re-use software written 10+ years ago for tracking people and use it for drones. Essentially a remote gun turret that looks for drones, until it runs out of ammo. I still think detecting small drones is harder to do optically, and you need a loitering anti-drone munition that looks for the signal, essentially (either drone or operator). HARM, but for drones.

Alternatively, I really like the remote turret for static position defense. You don’t even need anything special or long range, even a pistol with a silly drum mag on a little tripod/servo mount would slow down a few guys trying to hop in. You’d be looking in even small production a cost of $1000 or less for such a thing (not including the gun).

That may work but kinda kills manoeuvre warfare.  Unless you could pre-position ahead of an advance.  I mean better than nothing but it is not the solution.  It may be part of a broader system solution in what is going to become a pretty rapidly evolving rock-paper-scissors space to my eyes.

Oh and just noticed no human in the loop?  That will drive the lawyers nuts.

Edited April 25, 2023 by The_Capt

[dan/california]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Driving around blazing at the sky and giving one’s position away leading to PGM artillery killing you….check.  Logistical nightmare…check.  Better than nothing until C-UAS = other UAS…check.  Does it solve for UGS…no check.

At some level my argument is that if there is a drone overhead, it is about to start directing the PGM artillery anyway. I think, and the U.S. army apparently at least sort of agrees, that laser based systems are the best short to medium term solution to that problem. They at least have much more range, much better logistics, and don't have the spent round problem. Killing UAVs with other cheap UAVs is obviously the best plan, but it must be at least slightly harder than it looks, or the Russians wouldn't still be flying Orlans, and the Ukrainians wouldn't have to kill them with million dollar SAMs they don't have enough of.

The longer term question is whether or not heavy, and even medium mechanized forces are still a viable thing. That tipping point is probably much closer than previously assumed, just due to developments in AI since the war started. The state of the art is at least a decade ahead of predictions, is another jump imminent, or impossible, well nobody knows. So now we move into a classic military quandary, how much do we invest in a legacy force structure that is looking ever more obsolescent in the long term, and how much do we trust the new stuff, if the bad guys just say bleep it and go for a full scale, bleep the casualties attack.

[dan/california]

52 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

That may work but kinda kills manoeuvre warfare.  Unless you could pre-position ahead of an advance.  I mean better than nothing but it is not the solution.  It may be part of a broader system solution in what is going to become a pretty rapidly evolving rock-paper-scissors space to my eyes.

Oh and just noticed no human in the loop?  That will drive the lawyers nuts.

The Chinese are going to shove full autonomy into drones as fast as they physically/technically can. They idea that they will have moral qualms about it is laughable. At some point we are going to have to have a conversation with the lawyers, or just lose. Not that big an issue for this war, but it is going to loom rather large in the next one.

[billbindc]

5 hours ago, Beleg85 said:

Just to add finnishing touch to this discussions- I really don't get where people have this idea that Stalin was not a commie. He was penultimate communist, writing a dozen or so works on the topic*, by all evidence till the end of his life considering himself a theoretical and practical embodiment of communist world. That is simpy what this inhumane ideology leads to, if unhinged- it takes away all normal ethics, means and barriers of social cooperation in order to achieve its (unachieveable) goals of building New Men. It is religion in fact, and Stalin was Highest Priest of it, ruling from a palace with windows on a pyramid erected around mummy of its Prophet (literally- he wrote several times how much inspired confidence body of Lenin gave him in "difficult" times) . By far the worst element was this disguisting, artificial and hectic new-speech they forced on people, turning them into zombies mumbling for hours. And lies, constant, never ending formalistic lies that ravaged soul of every society communism was enforced upon- one never knew what was true, because truth itself was just ad hoc line of the Party/First Secretary/Juche/whatever. If one never lived in such system, it is even difficult to comprehend the level of hypocritical self-denial it could bring; we still tackle this mentallity of living in half-realistic, improvised society 30 years after communism fall.

 

*My old mother still have shivers when recounting how they forced her to memorize, like on milions of people here, fragments from the works of Stalin (Dialectical and Historical Materialism it was...), during her student exams. And it wasn't worst in this regard in Communist Poland when compared to other places.

 

If we comapre it to Putin's ideology, the latter seems almost bare. To be frank, it looks like machiavellic Putin never liked his own ideological yadda yadda and generally distanced himself from fanatics. It is circumstances (his own war) that force him pretend he mean something except from pure power politics.  This is chief reason why this entire Z generation movement looks so artificially dumb, at least for now- they are going there fast, though.

Add to this that it's pretty absurd to say Hitler was more a personalist than a Nazi. He routinely put ideological concerns above self preservation or economic/political common sense. Strongly suggest reading Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism to all and sundry. It destroys most of the misconceptions about fascism's nature. 

[kimbosbread]

14 minutes ago, dan/california said:

The Chinese are going to shove full autonomy into drones as fast as they physically/technically can. They idea that they will have moral qualms about it is laughable. At some point we are going to have to have a conversation with the lawyers, or just lose. Not that big an issue for this war, but it is going to loom rather large in the next one.

The problem with person-in-the-loop is the signature: Thermal, or EM, or anything really. If land warfare is going to become more like submarine warfare where stealth is the overriding concern, autonomy is going to be critical. Also, in a war with China, you won’t be able to depend on a satellite or radio link.

There’s also the staffing aspect of it:

• If you have autonomous systems, it’s periodic training that’s pushed out to each unit, and everybody learns the same. In a war with China, will we be able to regenerate forces fast enough?
• In an era of demographic decline, obesity and all the other fun parts of modern society, we are having trouble recruiting enough personnel even in peacetime.
• If you don’t have to human rate a “thing”, it is way cheaper and easier and faster to build. The US simply cannot build ships or missiles or anything else with the speed China can. We need to be able to crank things out, fast.

[akd]

Charging trenches in your BMP with improvised dead guy armor is an interesting tactic.

Edited April 25, 2023 by akd

[NamEndedAllen]

12 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

This video surfaced today and I'm thinking it is related to the news that the US talked Ukraine out of attacking targets in Moscow.  This is purportedly a video of a Ukrainian drone flying around in Red Square:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarRoom/comments/12xfh5p/in_moscow_an_unknown_drone_conducted_aerial/

The flight might be part of a stunt that is being promoted by a Ukrainian businessman.  Which is to land a Ukrainian drone into Red Square during the May 9th celebrations.  Price is about $500,000:

https://www.insider.com/ukraine-war-russia-monobank-yatsenko-prize-land-drone-moscow-red-square

This stunt is brilliant.  It achieves much of whatever it was the US disapproved of, but in a way that the US really can't object to.

Steve

More on drones reaching nearly to Moscow

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-explosive-drones-are-getting-very-close-to-moscow  Several locations in Russia, including near Moscow - as well as Sevastopol on the Crimean peninsula it has occupied since 2014 - were reportedly hit by Ukrainian drone attacks Sunday and Monday, according to the Russian Defense Ministry (MoD), local government officials and various media accounts.

A Ukrainian UJ-22 drone packed with explosives was found near Moscow, in what appears to be the closest discovery of a weaponized Ukrainian drone near Russia’s capital. However, there was a discrepancy in reporting about exactly where it landed.

[sburke]

29 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

If you don’t have to human rate a “thing”, it is way cheaper and easier and faster to build. The US simply cannot build ships or missiles or anything else with the speed China can. We need to be able to crank things out, fast.

not so sure of this.  it's one thing to enslave a few thousand people to crank out our iphones.  it is another to crank out military equipment.  If what you say above is true I'm still waiting to see China's nuclear attack boats comparable to the Seawolf or Virginia class.  And their aircraft carrier capability is laughable.  If they want to outmatch our aircraft they better start cranking those out soon. Power projection by China is basically limited to mostly soft power.  Militarily they are pretty limited to near coastal.  They are a threat to our allies (Japan, Taiwan etc) and sea trade routes near their waters, but beyond that....