• CommCat [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    you know what’s hillarious? Chinese weapons were unproven because they were never used in real world combat. It’s because China has not fought or invaded a country. NATO weapons are “proven” in real world combat, because they are always invading weaker countries. Now you have the overhyped and overpriced French Rafale fighter jet, top of the line in European technology. It’s big selling point is that it was proven in real world combat. You know what that real world combat is? Bombing Libya, a country with a weak airforce and little if any air defence!

    In it’s very first Air to Air combat against a modern jet, it was defeated 3-0 by China’s J-10C fighter jet. Europe’s top of the line 4.5 gen fighter jet, was defeated by China’s mid teir fighter jet (China has better jets including 5th and already testing their 6th gen). This is a Sputnik/Deepseek moment for Chinese military hardware.

    The Rafale and Eurofighter typhoon are considered NATO’s top 4.5 gen jets, only behind 5th gen F-35 and F-22. India pulled out of Russia’s Su-57 and went with the "proven’ Rafale fighter, spending a whopping $200+ million USD on each Rafale, absolutely got ripped off by France! Big corruption into the Rafale purchase no doubt. $200+ million French jets got taken out by $40 million Chinese jet lol.

    Just before the flareup with Pakistan, India agreed to purchase 20 more Rafale jets for their Navy. Wonder if it’ll be canceled lol

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.ml
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      18 hours ago

      Before Ukraine, NATO hardware hasn’t been tested against a peer adversary since the Iran-Iraq war at least. Since then it’s hard to argue any NATO tech is more “battle tested” than any firing range trials

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      19 hours ago

      F-35s are already unwanted. This whole article is projection. Like there’s a whole ass Wikipedia article on F-35 accidents and failures lmao

    • eyyImwalkin [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      You know what that real world combat is? Bombing Libya, a country with a weak airforce and little if any air defence!

      we know crackers can’t think in more than 2 layers of convolution

    • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 day ago

      Is there any truth to the claim that the Rafale that India deployed were an older version/generation than the current 4.5gen Rafale?

    • miz [any, any]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      This is a Sputnik/Deepseek moment for Chinese military hardware.

      it so obviously is that they had to address this by quoting some shithead from MIT to say it isn’t

      it’s wrong to call the J-10C’s potential success a “DeepSeek moment” for China’s military, said Fravel, referring to the artificial intelligence chat bot that surprised the world earlier this year, noting that the jet’s design wasn’t new.

  • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    Oh person writing for bloomberg, this is a good thing for china. A proletarian dictatorship should not become a major arms trader. It should design and stockpile weapons primarily for its own defensive use. American arms manufacturing has to deal with a myriad of issues due to its nature as a global supply chain and global war machine.

    I find it reassuring that despite having such a massive economy and export dominance in almost all industries, and despite having such large quantities of arms production, virtually all of it is for defensive purposes. Although this may just be cope.

      • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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        1 day ago

        It is not a problem to help nations trying to defend themselves from imperialists. I don’t think there is anything wrong with selling weapons to certain countries like pakisthan who need defending from India.

        However, becoming a “major arms trader” is a different thing. It is problematic for many reasons.

        1. You need to start putting money into R&D for a lot of different weapons, each suited to a different situation to satisfy the diverse needs of your diverse clientele.
        2. The above also makes scaling up production a challenge, as you have more product lines.
        3. Selling weapons to lots of countries creates a political problem. The public of the countries you sell to will question why they are relying on you.
        4. It creates perverse incentives. Consider this psychotic shit for example.
        • Eiren (she/her)@lemmygrad.ml
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          22 hours ago

          Note that perverse incentives come from all arms selling, not only if it’s major.

          You will now only give significant support to those countries which need it the least (rich ones), need to engage in predatory economics or outright imperialism to efficiently manufacture arms (else you’ll strip your own resources and may not have enough to defend yourself), passively (if not actively) encourage those who buy from you to engage in more war (as they will know they can acquire more weapons if needed), and create a reputation for yourself as responsible for global violence (people will notice it is your weapons being used to exterminate their loved ones, and that you did it for money).

          There is never a net benefit to making death into a market.

  • miz [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    “China attracts customers for its military equipment with cut-rate pricing and financing but there are hidden costs — especially when gear malfunctions,” Cindy Zheng, then a researcher at Rand Corp., wrote in a research paper just before joining the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in the latter stages of the Biden administration.

    cope

    Cindy no matter how hard you shill for empire, you’ll never be white

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      2 days ago

      I just find the whole crying about state subsidies really funny in principle. Literally the whole argument for using markets over having a planned economy is that they’re supposed to allocate resources more efficiently. Yet, now we constantly see economies that defer to markets complain that command economies are able to produce things more efficiently than they are.