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Who will surpass the USA in military tech?

  • 07-01-2008 11:08am
    #1
    cold_filter
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 744 ✭✭✭


    Ok so I'm relatively new to this but China has a pretty large army but how long will it be before they get themselves up to a level technological playing field with the US in terms of miliary hardware?
    Or will they ever?


    Or will it be Russia with a lot of new oil money to invest?


Comments

  • #2
    Manic Moran
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 16,808 Mod ✭✭✭✭Manic Moran


    The US is not always at the bleeding edge, and is not against taking off other people, Discovery Channel documentaries notwithstanding.

    Take my M1A1 tank. German gun, British armour, Canadian fire control system, Belgian machineguns, Italian sidearms and an Irish commander. The only thing American about it is the engine and and overall (25-year-old) design. There are quite a few other countries whose 'standard tank' is better than the American 'standard tank.'

    Part of the US advantage is that they have the money to throw at the problem. I don't doubt that the British or French could, if they wanted, make a stealthy air superiority fighter like the F-22 Raptor, but the things are so bloody expensive they went for a reasonably affordable, if less capable option.

    There have been several periods of time in the past that American technology was outclassed by their opposition. Usually when these cases occured, either the US would simply buy the technology off whoever invented it (Brits, Germans, Israelis, whoever) or within a few years come up with something better on their own. (You wouldn't have wanted to be a US tanker between... oh.. 1978 and 1984). The other problem is that a lot of the latest generation of equipment was cancelled by budget cuts. As a result, most of the current stuff is legacy equipment originally designed in the late '70s or early '80s, which has been retrofitted and upgraded, as opposed to built or designed new. The Chinese and Russians have a different problem. They've been developing and deploying brand new gear, but at such a slow rate that the vast majority of their stuff is the same legacy era, or even older, but without the upgrades. However, I expect them to start catching up within the next ten years or so.

    NTM


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