AI

In World War 2, the Japanese government knew that in a longer war they would lose due to the overwhelming manufacturing capabilities of the US. Capabilities that supplied the Pacific and European theatres in parallel, as well as the shipments to the Soviet Union. That manufacturing capability has now been thrown away and China has now risen as the manufacturing Goliath of the world with one third of the globe’s manufacturing capacity. The US is considered to have 16% of the capacity, but a more accurate accounting would increase the Chinese share and reduce the US share. As it dominates one critical area of high technology after another, China has also developed the capabilities to excel in advanced weaponry.

At the same time, Russia (once derided as a “gas station with a nuclear arsenal” [by none other than warmonger Neocon John McCaine}) has displayed a level of manufacturing capacity greater than any of the European nations; making a mockery of Western assessments that consider it only has 2% of global manufacturing capacity. It should be considered to be on par with Germany at 4.8%; Japan has 6.5%. As Chinese competition (e.g. in cars and machine tools) and the US import tariffs destroy large chunks of German and Japanese manufacturing capabilities they may very well sink below those of Russia. Another country that is greatly under-estimated is that of Iran, that has shown itself capable of developing and manufacturing a vast array of advanced missile and drone weaponry.

Recent conflicts have pointed to the real military balance of power between the West and Russia, China and Iran being in the latter’s favour, with even small nations being able to fend off US military power. Those conflicts have not shone a positive light on Western capabilities, and have shown the world the reality that the West cannot military beat Russia, China and even most probably Iran; especially if those nations stick together. The Germans may think that through massive new war spending they can match the Russians but this is merely a pipe dream that will only serve to enrich the Western MICs while accelerating the deterioration of German society and its economy.

The cat is out of the bag and cannot be put back into it, the military weakness of the West and the hollowness of its bluster can be seen by all. Including the militaries around the world that purchase weaponry from abroad. More and more they will look to China and Russia, and develop the deeper linkages that are inherent in the arms trade at the expense of the West and its weapons producers.

Ukraine War

The Ukrainian Army is the biggest in NATO and has been equipped with the best training and weaponry that could be provided. It has been methodically destroyed over three years of fighting by a Russian army that has used the conflict to greatly improve its doctrines and tactics, the quality of its soldiers, and its weaponry and munitions. The loss ratio is around 10:1 in Russia’s favour, and Western aircraft tend to stay well clear of Russian air defences and Russian fighter jets. One Western wunderwaffe after another has been shown to be easily destroyed or countered by the Russians, whether it be aircraft, tanks, armoured vehicles or missiles. For example, when tracking Ukrainian losses one can see a new batch of tanks and armoured vehicles being delivered to the Ukrainians only to be destroyed within weeks. In this article Russian experts describe the Leopard 2 tank as “German Trash” which has suffered heavy losses in Ukraine:

According to Oryx, a Dutch open-source intelligence blog that tracks equipment losses in the Ukraine War, Ukraine lost 18 Leopard-2A5, 26 Leopard-2A4, and 13 Leopard-2A6. These figures are based on visual confirmation of tank destruction or abandonment, which means that the actual number of losses could be higher.

The Leopard’s much weaker top and side armour make it a sitting duck for attacks from FPV drones and anti-tank missiles launched from both ground and air. The same outcomes for the British Challenger 2 and American Abrams. Their extreme weight (75 tons for the Challenger, 74 tons for the Abrams, 63 tons for the Leopard 2), especially compared to the Russian tanks (45 tons for the T72 and T80, 48 tons for the T90), together with over-complex components (e.g. the Abrams gas turbine engine), make them unsuitable for a peer-peer war where roads and rear repair facilities are open to extensive attack from drones and missiles. Even many of the Ukrainian bridges cannot support their weight and they may have severe difficulties operating in the “season of mud”. Unlike the Russian tanks, the Western tanks do not have autoloaders, which requires an additional crew member and leads to a lower rate of fire (8-12 rounds a minute for the autoloader vs. only 4 for the human loader).

The “Kursk Salient” was a graveyard for masses of Western tanks and armoured vehicles. And now Russia is even rapidly overcoming the shortcomings it had in drones while also developing advanced anti-drone electronic warfare systems and anti-drone surface to air and air to air systems. Western drone technology is quite unimpressive compared to the developments from the hot house of the Ukraine War.

It is also very telling that the Ukrainian air force was wiped out extremely rapidly during the first weeks of the war, and ever since the West has been loath to put its own aircraft at risk against the Russian anti-aircraft systems and Russian aircraft equipped with air-to-air missiles that outrange their Western counterparts. Only a small number of much older F16s have been provided, and already three of perhaps sixteen have been shot down. It would be extremely embarrassing to see more advanced Western fighter jets get shot down, as has happened in the India-Pakistan War (see below).

The West may make this happen if they ever implement a proposal called SkyShield (somebody has been watching too many James Bond movies!) to put 120 Western fighter jets into Ukraine to protect Ukraine’s Black Sea coast from Russian missiles and drones. “Make my day” is probably what the Russians would think about this idiocy.

The incredible scale and cost effectiveness of the Russian military industrial production of everything from artillery shells to tanks to guided bombs to missiles to drones has also been displayed. Russia can produce equal or better quality at much lower costs and much higher volumes than the West can achieve. With modern warfare being shown to be one of massive equipment attrition, this is a winning advantage. For example, three times the number of shells than the West combined at a cost of US$1,000 a shell vs. US$4,000 in the West, and that latter cost is escalating as attempts to boost production are made. Decades of Western neoliberalism and MIC profiteering and corruption have come home to roost; they are optimized to make profits not weapons.

It is an advantage shown on an even greater scale by China, for example, with its massive yearly output of new military ships and submarines.

India-Pakistan War

In the India-Pakistan War the latter was predominantly armed by China while the former was armed by the West, together with some weaponry and equipment from Russia. India’s air force was equipped with French and Russian multi-role fighter jets (46 Dassault Mirage 2000, 36 Dassault Rafale M, 59 older MIG-29, 259 Sukhoi SU-30) and 113 ground attack Jaguar aircraft. Pakistan shot down 3 Rafales (considered to be India’s best fighter aircraft), 1 Mirage 2000, 1 Mig-29 and 1 SU-30. These all seem to have been brought down by the Chinese-supplied single-engined multirole J10-C fighter jets employing the export version of the Chinese PL-15 air-to-air missile that has a range of 145km and flies at up to Mach 4. The non-export version used by the Chinese air force has a range of 300km.

This, together with the stellar performance of other Chinese military equipment in the hostilities, was a shock taken in by the world’s militaries and even the stock prices of the related Chinese arms manufacturers. It has shown that as in the EV space, Chinese arms are not just much cheaper than their Western equivalents but also better! For example a J-10C costs about US$40 million while a Rafale M costs about US$288 million. At such staggering price differences, a country utilizing Chinese weaponry could easily out equip one using Western weaponry.

The J-10 has been manufactured by China since 2002, and is said to have bettered the SU-35 in simulated combat due to its smaller radar signature (it's deemed to be a 4.5 generation aircraft). China has 608 of them in service. It also has 300+ twin-engined J16/D 4.5 generation strike fighters and 300+ J20/A/S fifth generation stealth air superiority fighters. Plus 370 SU-27, SU-30 and SU-35. The capabilities of the Chinese-made aircraft had been previously downplayed in the West, but the performance of the J-10C against the advanced Rafale M puts any doubts to rest. It would be logical that as China outstrips the West in so many high-technology areas, at lower costs, it would do the same with its weaponry. Especially when its military industrial complex is well controlled by the state and focused on producing good weaponry at a good price rather than profiteering and corruption.

US War on Ansar Allah

For example, on April 28th, major media outlets became abuzz with news that the USS Harry S. Truman - which led the Trump administration’s effort to crush Ansar Allah’s anti-genocide Red Sea blockade - lost an F-18 fighter jet and tow tractor, while executing a hard turn to evade fire from the Resistance group. While a US Navy press release on the incident made no reference to Yemen’s assault, nameless American officials briefed several mainstream journalists that God’s Partisans were responsible.

Showing a woeful level of battle readiness, the Truman’s battle group shot down one of its own planes in December 2024, then in February 2025 the aircraft carrier was damaged when it collided with a commercial vessel near the Suez Canal, leading the Truman’s chief being fired, and the ship having to spend time in Greece being repaired.

A previous mission in 2024 against Ansar Allah under the Biden administration had expended very large amounts of expensive missiles with little or no real impact, and the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower may have actually been hit; the US Navy denied this but the Eisenhower was seen suddenly and rapidly scurrying away from the battle scene. Pointing to the utter unreadiness of US Navy staff to a real shooting war, even with a poor nation using drones and home made/perhaps Iranian-made missiles:

Associated Press revealed participating sailors and pilots had found the experience “traumatizing”, as they “weren’t used to being fired on.” Many had repeatedly come within seconds of being struck by “Houthi-launched missiles”, before they were destroyed “by their ship’s defensive systems.” The Pentagon was thus considering providing “counseling and treatment” to thousands of USAF and Navy employees suffering from “post-traumatic stress”, and their families.

The US Navy’s utilization of relatively small amounts of very expensive missiles, both for self defence and attack, may be very profitable for the US MIC but was shown to be severely wanting as ship-based supplies were rapidly run down. The implications for a war with Iran (from the Arabian Sea) or China (from the South China Sea or Philippine Sea) are that such supplies would be rapidly denuded, blunting offensive capabilities and rendering the ships relatively defenceless to attack. A US aircraft carrier group would not survive long in such a war, and that’s not even taking into account the threat of Chinese submarines and hypersonic missiles against which the US Navy has no defence.

It has been a long-running joke that aircraft carriers are simply moving targets for modern submarines, and now they can also be seen as the same for modern drones and missiles. Much of US military power is dependent upon the ability of its 11 carrier strike groups to project its power around the globe, an ability now shown to be a hollow shell; a very expensive one at that.

With Russia showing that it can withstand the West’s “sanctions from hell”, China showing that it has the upper hand in any trade war with the US, one country after another showing that it can withstand Western colour revolution attempts, and Western militaries shown to be much less of a threat than previously thought, what does the West have apart from bluster to maintain its global power?