The latest Pentagon budget proposal shows that the number of army personnel will be reduced to 445,000, reaching the lowest point since 1940. Interestingly, the Marine Corps has received a special appropriation of $4.8 billion for procurement of the "Naval Strike Missile", a precision-guided weapon with a range of 185 kilometers, which is being密集ly deployed at the Guam base. Recent training images of mobile missile launchers in Subic Bay, Philippines, are strikingly similar to the NMESIS system tested by the U.S. military in Okinawa. This modular design allows ordinary container ships to instantly transform into missile platforms.
The cost-cutting behind this transformation is evident; the funds saved from scrapping all M1A2 tanks can just about cover the purchase of 1,200 "Tomahawk" Block 5 missiles. Lockheed Martin's new "Piranha" cruise missile has a unit price compressed to $500,000, only one-third of its counterparts, and this cost-effective strategy clearly draws on experience from the Yemen battlefield. However, think tank reports indicate that the 13 new ammunition depots constructed by the U.S. military in the Asia-Pacific region face supply challenges; it takes five days to transport missiles from Guam to the Taiwan Strait frontline, while the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force can cover the same area in just 12 minutes.
Upgrades to the defense system hide technical vulnerabilities; the "Homeland Defense Radar" deployed on Iwo Jima claims to identify objects as small as soccer balls, yet it has mistakenly identified civilian airliners passing over the Japan Sea as ballistic missiles twice this year. More troublesome is the high-speed weapons race; the U.S. Army's "Dark Eagle" missile failed three out of five test launches, whereas China's publicized waverider wind tunnel experiments have reached speeds of up to 10 Mach, creating a technological gap that leaves the Pentagon anxious.
The competition behind military gamesmanship is a battle of industrial strength. Chinese shipbuilding accounted for 67% of global orders in the first half of this year, and the newly launched Type 054B frigate equipped with the YJ-21 anti-ship missile, a hypersonic weapon capable of covering the second island chain. While the U.S. military is still experimenting with unmanned transport vessels, China's intelligent ships have achieved 5G remote-controlled transportation in the East China Sea, perhaps this capability of converting civilian technology is the true game-changer. The information originates from U.S. Department of Defense budget documents and data from the China Shipbuilding Industry Association.
Original Source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1828702160370883/
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