China beating the US in military technology
- February 19, 2022,
Representational photo:
People look at LY-80 surface-to-air missile weapon system displayed at
the China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, or Airshow
China, in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, China on 29 September 2021.
REUTERS
The Americans are fighting with their domestic airline industries about implementing 5G internet and the Chinese are already progressing onward to 6G internet.
With the advent of fifth-generation (5G) internet technology and
China’s dominant role in that area of technological development, the
United States and China have already begun a new race to develop
sixth-generation (6G) internet technology. Of course, the world is only
just now starting to roll out the 5G technology that China has pioneered
for years and there are many issues to be worked out as the civilian
economy increasingly adapts 5G. Yet, this has not stopped Beijing from
yet again leapfrogging their American rivals in the nascent 6G research
field. And unlike the Americans, China’s first breakthrough in 6G has
direct military implications.
Last summer, Beijing shocked the world when it successfully tested a hypersonic glide vehicle. Travelling at more than 3,800 miles per hour, a hypersonic glide vehicle can travel in any direction and overcome most known air defence systems. Armed either with conventional or nuclear weapons, and able to avoid both detection and defence, a hypersonic glide vehicle can wreak havoc on any country in the world. But there are technical limitations to this destructive new technology.
For example, whenever a hypersonic vehicle travels at five times the
speed of sound (or faster), a communications blackout occurs for at
least ten minutes as a plasma bubble forms around the hull of the
hypersonic vehicle travelling at those hypersonic speeds. Standard
communications signals cannot pass through this “black barrier”, meaning
that for ten minutes, the hypersonic vehicle is approaching its
potential target without any control whatsoever.
Not only does the plasma shield prevent communications from penetrating
it but that “black barrier” can also mask the radar signatures of any
incoming hypersonic vehicle from traditional air defence systems. So, if
a method could be found for an attacking country to have continuous
contact with its hypersonic vehicles while on their attack vector, these
weapons could prove to be the nightmare weapons that many Pentagon
defence experts fear they may become.
Chinese scientists at Tianjin University now claim to have overcome the communications deficit. Their solution uses a laser trained at the hypersonic vehicle to penetrate that plasma shield with powerful electromagnetic waves. As it happens, 6G internet requires electromagnetic waves to function. Essentially, the Tianjin researchers believe they can have complete communications and control of China’s hypersonic glide vehicles courtesy of China’s early investment in 6G internet technology.
Meanwhile, the Americans are fighting with their domestic airline
industries about implementing 5G internet and the Chinese are already
progressing onward to 6G internet. Now, the 6G development is still in
its infancy. However, the fact that China has working experiments in 6G
and in the hypersonic fields—and that China is now fusing the
technologies together in a potentially lethal package directed at
America’s ailing military—means that Beijing is likely ahead of the
United States in the race for next generation technologies. This, as 60%
of the world’s patents for 6G-related technologies are held by Chinese
individuals and/or companies.
For too long the Americans have assumed that their technological
advancement would prove decisive in deterring any challenge to their
global primacy. Thirty years ago, when America’s power was at its apex,
this was a fair assumption. Yet, in the intervening years, the Americans
have squandered their Cold War victory on ruinous and inconclusive wars
in the Middle East.
As that occurred, Washington abandoned its support for high-tech
research and development, leaving it to a private sector that was
incapable of prioritizing strategically important innovations over more
cost-effective, less strategically vital ones. This explains why China
in a single decade has outpaced their American rivals in critical
high-tech industries, such as 6G internet and hypersonic weapons—even
though the Americans have invested in R&D for both these
technologies for far longer than China has.
America has dithered while China has engaged in a long march to what it believes will be global dominance. Beijing has married the desire to spearhead the next industrial revolution to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) need to rule the world. The primary goal for Beijing is to first be able to keep the Americans from projecting power into what they view as their sphere of influence, the Indo-Pacific. Therefore, China’s new hypersonic weapons capability along with the advances in 6G could prove decisive in holding American military power back. If Washington knows that China has a functioning arsenal of hypersonic glide vehicles that can threaten any location on Earth, against which there is little defence, American leaders might be more restrained in their application of power beyond their shores out of fear of being made to endure such a brutal attack.
Of course, China’s leaders know that Washington would retaliate in a significant way if Beijing ever did launch a hypersonic attack on the United States. Although, fortune favours the bold and the technology in question not only increases the risk of attack on the United States but the fact that the Americans lack their own working hypersonic weapon or that they have a defence against these systems gives Beijing clear advantages. It also gives China’s leadership the all-important escalation dominance. And from these technological advances that Beijing has masterminded, more will come—as the Americans are left behind.
Allowing for such game-changing technology to be left in the exclusive possession of the People’s Republic of China is hugely destabilising in the context of Sino-American relations. Already tensions between the two juggernauts are at all-time highs. Beijing has consistently proven its commitment to asymmetrical forms of warfare as a means of undermining America’s overwhelming conventional military dominance. The presence of active hypersonic glide vehicles with a reliable command-and-control system in China’s growing arsenal is a clear-and-present danger to the United States.
We hear often about a “Sputnik Moment”. Well, here it is. And if Washington does not respond; if America does not take high-tech research and development more seriously than it has, we risk being defeated soon by China and their next generation weapons technology.
Brandon J. Weichert is the author of “Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower” (Republic Book Publishers). He is a geopolitical analyst who runs The Weichert Report: World News Done Right and can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.