Recently, the US media has once again hyped up the China threat theory, saying that China is developing too fast and poses a huge threat to the United States. However, this time the US media’s statement is quite reasonable, because in In this article, the US media said: China is already five times faster than the United States in acquiring new equipment; at the same time, Major General Cameron Holt, the US deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for procurement, also said: In addition to China's ability In addition to acquiring equipment at an extremely fast speed, the efficiency is also very high. For the same piece of equipment, China can often obtain the purchasing power of the United States for 20 U.S. dollars at a price of 1 U.S. dollars; Cameron Holt believes that if the United States cannot If the speed of the defense supply chain is improved and costs are effectively reduced, the United States will lose in this Sino-US dispute.
Regarding the reason why the U.S.’s defense supply speed and cost are higher than those of China, the major general believes that it is because of problems with defense equipment, logistics and the way of actually purchasing military needs. However, among these problems, the most important thing is the resource system. . The U.S. Congress often allocates a certain amount of funds for a new project, but the Pentagon will retain the right to mobilize this fund, which will prevent and reduce the development speed and potential of some new projects, thus diverting this part of the funds. Used in those old projects. Major General Holt believes that although such a system served the United States well during the Cold War, micromanagement allowed the United States to start the research and development of multiple advanced technology projects at the same time, thereby gaining an advantage in competition with the Soviet Union; Now this resource allocation system is no longer applicable.
Judging from the current situation, technology updates and iterate very quickly, and these new technologies can often quickly surpass old technologies. However, this resource system in the United States limits the research and development of new technologies in the United States; in this case , the R&D teams of various projects in the United States tend to maintain the reliability of technology rather than the advancement, so they often conduct a large number of tests, and the gap with new technologies is getting wider and wider. And with limited funds, their research and development progress is relatively slow. Just like the American hypersonic missile project, it took many years and experienced many failures, with very few successes.
China is different. China has invested a lot in research and development of new technologies in recent years. China can be seen in almost every cutting-edge field. In the field of hypersonic missiles, it has completely surpassed the United States. Not to mention, China has invested heavily in the United States. It has also made good achievements in the field of electromagnetic gun ; in addition, in terms of fifth-generation aircraft , electromagnetic ejection , and stealth carrier-based aircraft, China has relied on its extremely fast weapon update speed to achieve what the United States has achieved in just ten years. It took centuries to do it. What makes the United States even more uncomfortable is that China has surpassed the United States in some emerging fields, such as , artificial intelligence, , and network capabilities. China’s current unmanned equipment is prepared for the navy, land and air forces, and it also plans to build 076 unmanned aerial vehicles. As for the human aircraft carrier, there are a variety of powerful drones in the air, including the Wujian 8, the world's only hypersonic drone, and the Attack 11, the world's top stealth attack drone.
If this situation continues, there is no possibility for the United States to compete with China. Even if some changes are made to the resource system, the United States will not have this opportunity to compete with China in the next 15-20 years, especially in the There is a huge gap in purchases between China and the United States. When the US military proposed the construction plan of the Zumwalt destroyer, the price was US$1.4 billion. This price made many people find it incredible, because the Arleigh Burke class cost US$1.8 billion; and when this ship was claimed to be the most advanced destroyer in history When the construction of began, the price skyrocketed, and eventually reached a cost of 4 billion US dollars. In the end, only 3 ships were built and production was hastily discontinued. Including research and development costs, these 3 warships cost 22.4 billion US dollars, which is more than one The price of Ford-class aircraft carrier is even higher.
Looking at the history of weapon research and development in the United States in the past, we can find that although the cost estimate of the weapon is very good at the beginning, the price often soars sharply during the actual manufacturing process, and in the end it is even several times the cost price. This As a result, Congress had to allocate all the funds reserved to these projects, while other new projects were stalled due to lack of funds. However, this ever-increasing capital budget has not brought about the desired results. On the contrary, China has been able to achieve the same results as the United States with a lower capital budget. China’s military budget is only over 200 billion U.S. dollars, while the U.S.’s is as high as 810 billion U.S. dollars. Most of the U.S. military expenditures are invested in projects such as Zumwalt , which are not only expensive but also slow and have frequent problems. If this trend continues, China's military technology will develop faster and faster, while the United States will be mired in various resource problems and stand still.
