They just approach things differently
I keep seeing all these articles on China’s rapidly increasing capabilities.
Now, in the past, manufacturers called the Chinese the best thieves on the planet – not innovators at all, but let a prototype or plan each them and they would “liberate” the designs, and have a version of the product hitting the market within months. May not be the greatest version, but to make up for it, their product would probably cost a fraction as much. Or, they could be a bit cheaper, and offer the same or better product. Just depended on which company you were dealing with. Think they can’t build high-quality product? Call me on your iPhone, email me on your Dell or HP computer – btw, those were all at one point made by one company – when they are tasked to and want to, Chinese manufacturing is quite frankly AT MINIMUM as good as ours.
So when I see them claiming the impossible, I tend to take them a bit more seriously than, say, Iranian stealth fighter claims.
Latest from them is interesting on a couple of counts:
A research team led by Chinese scientist “Crazy Li” has equipped small drones with the ability to emit powerful metal-cutting laser beams—a feat once thought impossible.
The research envisions a scenario where a single small drone could confront a squad of fully armed soldiers by emitting a near-infrared laser 200 million times more powerful than a beam of 1080 nanometres wavelength, capable of causing blindness with just five microwatts of power.
Such power is sufficient to vaporize subcutaneous fat on contact and cut through metal, according to findings published by Li Xiao and his team from the National University of Defence Technology of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
And it just gets better.
Conventional wisdom dictated that a small platform, such as a consumer drone, could never carry such a high-powered laser weapon or the energy supply it demands, the South China Morning Post reported.
Li and his colleagues overcame this limitation by inventing a compact, lightweight device that enables drones to receive powerful laser beams from the ground and redirect them toward enemy targets with precision.
To overcome weight and size limits, the drone reflects a laser sent from the ground onto the target. This boosts the drone’s laser power to 30kW or more and allows the beam to bend around obstacles like buildings, striking targets at their weakest points. Interesting Engineering
Some seriously forward thinking. Wonder how you say “SkyNet” in Mandarin?
Fear not, though – we innovate as well.
The Army is testing a Stryker upgraded with NBC-detection drones.
The Stryker Nuclear Biological Chemical Reconnaissance Vehicle (NBCRV) is fitted with the Army’s new Sensor Suite Upgrade (SSU), which makes it a next-generation NBC detector.
The SSU allows the US Army to equip a drone on its Stryker vehicles. The SSU also supports the warfighter by performing reconnaissance on the battlefield and enabling informed decisions that can save lives.Intelligent Engineering II
Cutting through the PR-speak – send a drone out over a suspicious location, the drone makes a few passes overhead, and lets the operator know if something invisible and nefarious is afoot there. Given that in the past much of our NBC reconnaissance has been manual (“go through that area and let us know if it’s hot” this could potentially save lives, right?
H/t on this one to a single redhead I know..whose bite is DEFINITELY worse than her bark. But she isn’t batshit crazy. My protege for about three decades now, who has far surpassed me.
And… after Saturday we get to highlight the Navy’s strengths. They announced their ill-fated Littoral Combat Ships will now sail with Mk70 missile launchers…strapped to the decks. The 70 is a welcome upgrade – after all, the Littoral Combat ships weren’t well armed for – well, combat – and this gives them a bit of punch. Let’s be charitable and say this is a way to change configurations in a hurry… and not what folks have called in the past a “censored rig”.
Gotta wonder what adding what looks like a shipping container on deck does for the radar cross-section? Go Navy?
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Army, China, Navy
Who the hell can you believe anymore? Our Government and media certainly aren’t very credible at all.
Interesting
So, the Chinese drone is nothing more than a drone with a mirror. Not a bad idea. With that wattage, it must be a big truck carrying the laser emitter and power generator, a priority target on the battlefield. I wonder how far ahead of the laser emitter the drone can be deployed and still be effective.
Drone denial systems will be at a premium in our next war.
The vast majority of computer chips are from china. That situation has been going on for years. Yet few in power at the US try to change that situation. The current “administration” is hardly antagonistic to china’s antics or capabilities. Then again when your employer wants results you are supposed to give it to them, just like biden did.
The ChiComs build cheap crap that works and we build high priced crap…that may and/or may not work. That sound about right? Not hard to build a state of the art high efficiency plant when you’re not concerned with NIMBY/EPA or other regulations. Globalist manufactures sold out to them years ago. And it’s easy to keep your costs down when you’re stealing (or being given) designs/specs of the latest whiz bang widget and you’re using slave labor. Make no doubt about it, some of our foreign enemies want to destroy us, but the ChiCom Plan is for World Domination.
Prepare
I see two littoral combat ships that took longer to build than the others. One is still in production. I was wonder what was up with the extended stay. Maybe they added some new merchandise to the ships that others have to be refitted too.
The Army had the blinding technology down pat in the 80s but congress voted it down as inhumane. Fucking war is inhumane already.