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I think that means that America failed to get any concessions from China.
The one thing they seemed to get was resumption of direct military to military hotlines. Not sure how useful that's gonna be if they piss the Chinese side off though. Not hard to order the generals to pick up the phone, listen to the yank, then say "okay" and hang up.
It's definitely useful for when the americans are doing their stupidly fucking dangerous freedom of navigation missions through chinese territory. During these missions the US ships have to turn off various monitoring equipment among other things. It's so fucking easy for one or the other side to misinterpret one another if they ever do something they're not expected to do in those situations, without communication they will default to assuming the worst and that's where it gets hairy, everyone starts shooting, and then everyone else in the region starts shooting because everyone is shooting. Launch after launch will happen because there's no de-escalation channel or way to just say "shit that was a mistake we're sorry" when something actually goes wrong.
Imagine when a ship gets spooked, does something unexpected, then some scrambled jets get shot down, then even more shit happens, and every single asset in the region just acts independently based on the information they have at hand (the ship/jets nearest to me just got blown up, we should release our payload into the target). It's a huge cascade.
Communication really matters to avoid this.
Conversely, if you know China isn't taking your calls, you have no choice but to avoid large provocations. I think refusing the back channels and forcing US foreign policy to be all out in the open was a good tactic.
You don't need to do large provocations for this cascade to occur. Freedom of navigation operations have the potential to spiral out of control extremely easily.
This video poses this scenario very well: https://youtu.be/vJXWJ-Px5tU
I don't necessarily agree with all the interpretations of effectiveness of weapons/missiles etc in this video, but as an example of how officers in charge of each of these assets will act independently on incomplete information about the situation it's a very realistic example of how this shit could cascade on a complete misunderstanding. The particularly interesting part of this begins at 6:00 but the lead up is important in establishing the list of assets in the region in the scenario. An emergency phonecall in this situation would have resulted in the US knowing "this is a mock attack as an exercise, not a real one" and the spark that lights this cascade of events would not have happened. But without that phonecall, the training exercise jets are shot down, and what follows is a cascade of events leading to devastating losses of both sides as every existing asset interprets the nearby events as existential and releases their full capabilities. Whether the interpretations of the effect of these jets/missiles are correct is not really relevant compared to understanding how this cascade could easily happen from routine exercises that happen regularly without a line of communication.
Can't believe I watched the whole thing, god the entire video is so... masturbatory.
PL-15, literally the newest A2A missile ever fielded and a significant kinematic advantage over AIM-120. Nope, can barely score two hits with a 20 missile salvo. Also always launched from max range to minimize chance to hit I guess.
PL-12, estimated to be equal to AIM-120C. Scored like 1 hit after a 100 something missile salvo.
AIM-120D, don't ever misses, downs dozens upon dozens of aircrafts while barely taking losses. "Once again proves the united states's advantage in missile technology".
Evasive maneuvers against modern A2A missiles: If the F-18s do it, it always works, 98% effectiveness against anything. If the flankers do it, it never works. They might as well be flying straight, would have the same results.
Missile salvo of 30 sea skimming cruise missile toward a carrier: All intercepted, no problem.
A small salvo of Harpoons, pretty much the most obsolete ship to ship missile still in service, okay the 054A made a valiant effort but can't intercept them all. Also the CIWS can do nothing against a subsonic target.
DF-21D. From the late 2000s and highly experimental. Not perfected until DF-17 and 26 from recent years. Functions flawlessly at max range and we only lost the carrier due to this wunderwaffe.
Okay we lost but we are against overwhelming odds also we intentionally placed multiple handicaps on ourselves. And we still had an exchange ratio of like 1:50.
Everyone in comments: OMG this simulation is so accurate! But as a navy man here we would've never had those handicaps and we would've totally wreaked havoc on their obsolete military guys.
This thing had the plot of a top gun movie but is presented like a simulation done to the last detail. Just... strange. Gives off a big "elite waffen SS against soviet human wave attacks" energy.
Yeah it's absolutely masturbatory, I did warn about the estimates being off. It's interesting in that it's a pretty fair estimate of how these assets might react in such a situation though.
Yup. How the thing started felt pretty realistic. Not without precedent, cough Iran Air Flight 655 cough
Is this criticizing the video or a real life assessment?
The video of course. CIWS is literally built for those. I don't think it's simulated at all in the video. But once again I think the 054A only had a single one of them? So maybe it wouldn't have mattered much.
Thanks for the clarification, “ CIWS is literally built for those” was where I was coming from.
Also, thanks to AlyxMS for summarizing the video
I mean, isn't the danger part of the point? If it's very risky to do stupid shit like playing "i'm not touching you" with chinese waters because you can't just call the chinese and say "hey this extremely threatening thing we're doing is just for kicks, don't worry", you're less likely to play dangerous games. Forcing the duplicitous Americans to show their cards publicly for any communications is the best deterrent.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
US FONOPS are actually insane. They broke the decades-old status quo that established the Taiwan Strait as Chinese territorial waters under the CPC-KMT consensus.
I heard they did get the Chinese to stop supplying the chemicals used to make fentanyl to Mexico. (as I understand it previously Chinese companies were selling chemicals that have legitimate and legal industrial uses in larger quantities than the legal market can support, similar to how American gun manufacturors make 40% more guns than the legal gun market can support)