The Pentagon assesses China's hypersonic missile, is it really only 600?

What's funny about the "Pentagon briefing claimed that China has 600 hypersonic missiles" story?

Let me put it this way: For a long time, whether it's American think tanks or the Pentagon, their assessments of the number of various types of missiles China possesses have always been filled with a ridiculous logic of "that's as far as it goes," meaning they completely ignore China's current industrial capacity and naively assume that China, like Iran, produces missiles one by one.

This leads to the U.S. think tanks and the Pentagon's reports on China's military capabilities consistently underestimating the number of various types of missiles possessed by the People's Liberation Army (PLA). For example, the recent Pentagon brief exposed by The New York Times claims that China "has already acquired 600 hypersonic missiles," as if after reaching the number "600," China would no longer produce any more hypersonic missiles.

The reason why U.S. think tanks and the Pentagon make such assessments is essentially an "ostrich mentality." On one hand, it allows them to hype up the "China threat theory," and on the other hand, it allows them to acknowledge China's lead in shipbuilding and conventional military areas, but they resolutely refuse to admit that China's certain advanced military assets (such as hypersonic missiles or nuclear weapons, although the U.S. still doesn't have hypersonic missiles) have surpassed the U.S. in quantity, quality, and production capacity.

Because the U.S. military myth has always been built on the foundation of "U.S. military technological superiority," once it acknowledges that China's advanced military assets surpass those of the U.S., it would undermine the U.S. military myth. The Pentagon and U.S. think tanks certainly wouldn't do something that would "undermine their own prestige," so they can only pretend not to see China's industrial capacity, and deliberately underestimate the number of missiles equipped by the PLA, rather than calculating based on industrial capacity.

Original article: toutiao.com/article/1851477913524236/

Statement: This article represents the views of the author alone.