No? Flat out arming proxies is literally the point of overt proxy warfare. Sometimes one tries to to be deniable and source other weapons, but other times it's just, enjoy quagmire, cry about it. It's like suggesting PRC going to start blowing up Lockheed plants if they ever lose anything to US munitions.
Yes, if mainland China is successfully invaded by a country being supplied with American military equipment and having their fixed infrastructure destroyed - like described in the article - you can be dead sure that they will try to destroy American military plants.
None of the super power countries will ever accept defeat in their homeland and being conquered without using all means possible to hinder it. That's why the USA has strong opinions on how the Ukraine uses long range weapons in the war with Russia.
That's borderline nonsense scenario. Superpowers aren't going to be existentially invaded via lesser proxy. We're talking about being quagmired in war of choice where proxys being supplied. Lots of escalation rungs up the ladder that run before looping into superpower vs superpower peer conflict.
That's the scenario of the article. He suggests putting all US infrastructure in tunnels, bunkers, and in space, to protect it from Chinese drones. I say, how about bombing the drone factories. Which idea do you think is more realistic? Have you started digging?
The scenario being unlikely doesn't make the OP's point irrelevant: the situation you see today is because that scenario doesn't happen, and it doesn't happen because countries are relatively circumspect about the way in which their military aid is deployed for exactly this reason.
Against subsonic, low supersonic threats, short / medium term it's still about magazine depth and interceptor economics and sheer attrition math, i.e. PRC can build cheap interceptors at scale... has magnitude more targets due to sheer size, many of which are hardened, entire underground civil/mic infrastructure etc etc.
Physically, there is nothing preventing near 100% interception rates on subsonics and low supersonics. But once high end supersonics proliferate, things get spicy.
Missing most important piece which is detection/target. Article making rounds a few days ago: Chinese engineer shared trick to shoot F-35 fighters just days before Iran’s strike. Not to credit PRC because this something Iranian STEM can figure out, but premise is simple - recognize vs air superiority overmatch that tradition antiair sensors not survivable via SEAD. So build mesh of cheap, PASSIVE distributed dual use commercial sensors, i.e. marine multi spectral pods with electro optical / infrared. Have enough for coverage and coordinate zerg rushing / shoot & scoot with fast / attritable surface to air launchers. Basically UKR's COTS acoustic sensor mesh for drone detection. Recognize US/high end operators tries to break Find in F2T2EA (Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, Assess). As long as can find, upgrade with modernish IR seeker, on paper 40+ year old legacy missile tech is more than kinematically sufficient to take down modern multi role.
Now this can be circumvented over with standoff munitions, but now you're increasing ordnance cost by magnitudes, and theoretically this can be scaled to hit subsonic standoff munitions, so on paper negate / require even more premium munitions.
The none poverty version coming online is mega constellation ISR, throw enough SAR in space to make sky completely transparent.
More loss for US, as in customary US not winning fast is functionally the same as losing.
Heavy weight boxing a teen it should have brained in round 1.
Teen lands a few punches back is embarrassing.
Teen slapping heavy weights protectorates more embarrassing.
Teen surviving week 4 is like heavy weight failing to brain teen by round 7.
At this point it's looking like we're going to round 10 TKO, whoever "wins", US loses. People still going to wank over if US wins on TKO because muh K:D ratio or something, but real signal is teen's strategy was to survive hits and ultimately 10000s of heavy weight hits weren't haymaker strong enough to brain a teen. At >2% of GDP of PRC, Iran is basically teen/toddler territory that drew down significant % of US active force and munition stockpiles, so there's also layer of US losing more based on relative effort expended.
To China, the conflict is a clear demonstration of the impotency of the US war machine. Before this "military operation", one could imagine the US defending Taiwan.
Now, it's a laughable thought. It couldn't even if it wanted to.
Remember that the defender has home team advantage. That’s precisely what you see happening both in Iran and Ukraine. That advantage exists with Taiwan. There’s a reason that China hasn’t made a move in all these years, and the US is only one part of that equation.
Homefield advantage is relative, between Ukraine - Iran - Gaza, Taiwan is closer to Gaza, which is to say not much after mitigating outside spoilers. Maybe less than Gaza vs force disparity involved. US is/was one part of equation, but big part of equation.
Now reason without water, aka Israeli + GCC desalination. Iran with shit water situation is still less existentially water stressed. Iran 5% vs others 80/90%+ dependency on desalination = once Iran demonstrated survivable regional strike complex, they own the top end of escalation ladder that can take out everyone with them while coming out least harmed.
This not to mention, relative to US performance / conemps, i.e. going back to standoff munitions, there's not really enough discretionary high end munitions to take degrade all Iranian infra vs Iran has enough in reserve to take out all regional desalination. Nevermind US expending 1000s more TLAMs / JASSM(ER)s leaving it unprepared for any other near peer conflict. Reminder Iraq was 20% size of Iran, and so far US+Israel only flew ~20% of sorties via Iran than it has Iraq. Even factoring in precision munitions, US would have to expend more munitions than it has to actually cripple Iran on par with Iraq.
Not all landmass because most of Tibet/Xinjiang empty, but ~100% wireless coverage east of Heihe–Tengchong line where ~95% of population are. Including Tibet/Xinjiang remote areas, ~95%+ of administered population areas down to village level where poor farmers have access to 5g AND fiber hookup option by now.
Building infra and networking gear is cheap in society that knows how to build and carriers are required to install in administered villages even if it's not profitable. Fiber adoption rate actually higher among rice farmers because they get subsidies, 1Gbps gigabyte fiber for cost of 200 Mbps in city and because bunch of villages got hooked up in last 10 years - they skipped straight to fiber which was bundled with road/power buildout.
Meanwhile US so dysfunctional / can't brute force rural fiber, need to literally invent SpaceX to plug gap. Which TBH is good copium.
1. Iran was retarded and didn't preemptively strike US staging who had local overmatch and first mover advantage. Nothing to do but weather hits, chip away at regional basing and wait until US+Israel operation tempo goes down. Can't sustain surge sorties forever, especially with regional logistics wrecked. US pilots tired now, on stims, making mistakes.
2. Iran not remain retarded, was hide and bide, waited for US to get complement, gathering data / building tactics to squeeze out surface-air without getting glassed. Regardless, Iranian capability seems much less degraded than claimed. Who knows how many of the 20k+ targets hit was basically just drawing down highend munition inventory, which now forces flying closer on lower end munitions.
At the end of the day, Iranian mosaic forces are chilling in underground bunkers waiting for US+co to make mistakes. Consider Iraq, a much smaller country by every metric ate 5x more sorties from more carriers and sustained regional air campaign and fell because they hedged on centralized IADs. Granted most Iranian hits are precision munitions (more efficient per sortie), but we simply should not expect Iran doctrine built on distributed survivability to be remotely defeated relative to effort expended.
Also the US has been mostly using cruise missiles, which don't require to get close to the targets. Now that those ammunitions are gone, they have to take more risks and use gliding bombs with GPS kits, which have a much shorter range.
Last year PRC brrrted out enough solar panels whose lifetime output is equivalent to annual global oil consumption. AKA world uses about >40billion barrels of oil per year, PRC's annual solar production will sink about 40billion barrels of oil of emissions in their life times. This is at 50% solar manufacturing utilization. Once battery scales, can displace current global oil via solar ~10 years. Less if solar production also globally scales. Looking at 10/15/20 years to displace most global oil, lng, coal. Well the discretionary bits / economic consumption.
I feel like companies over certain size needs to have live support to pester.
I had my youtube premium (back when it was red) banned for violating community guidelines - impossible since account was only used for viewing videos. Appeals got auto rejected... can only repeal every few weeks... oh at time account ban = cannot access accounts page so they kept charging for months while I appealed. Had to cancel credit card.
For reference I also had wechat account blocked in PRC... and show how got to talk to a human being and sort it out within a few business days.
Eventually youtube account restored... 2 YEARS LATER, OUT OF NOWHERE. I think maybe I posted on youtube google groups and someone eventually got to it, but who the hell knows.
No? Flat out arming proxies is literally the point of overt proxy warfare. Sometimes one tries to to be deniable and source other weapons, but other times it's just, enjoy quagmire, cry about it. It's like suggesting PRC going to start blowing up Lockheed plants if they ever lose anything to US munitions.
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