China makes military strides as Iraq fight rages

[TexasLawyer]

Source: AP

China makes military strides as Iraq fight rages

By Eric Talmadge - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Sep 29, 2007 9:04:46 EDT

KADENA AIR BASE, Japan — While the U.S. has been tied up in Iraq, China is modernizing its military and its air defenses are now nearly impenetrable to all but the newest of American fighters, the senior U.S. military official in Japan said.

Lt. Gen. Bruce Wright, commander of the roughly 50,000 U.S. forces in Japan, Washington’s biggest ally in Asia, said in an interview with The Associated Press this week that the Iraq war is reducing the availability of U.S. troops and equipment to meet other contingencies. It’s also eating funds that could go toward replacing or upgrading planes that are being pushed to their operational limits, he said.

China, meanwhile, is rapidly filling the skies with newer, Russian-made Sukhoi Su-27 “Flankers” and Su-30s, along with the domestically built J-10, a state-of-the-art fighter that Beijing just rolled out in January.

China has also improved its ballistic missile defenses and its ability to take the fight into space — as it proved in January by shooting down an old weather satellite at an orbital height similar to that used by the U.S. military.

Read more: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/09/ap_china_militaryprogress_070929/

---

And they're improving their Pentagon computer hacking skills, too.

[alittlelark]

1. Yeah... let's attack Iran...

Let's just follow the PNAC playbook.


.....right....?

[gateley]

3. What's PNAC? Thanks. nt

[Jeroen]

4. PNAC Project for the New American Century

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

[gateley]

8. Thank you! nt

[jillan]

2. Are we allowed to say FUCK at DU?

On January 20th 2009 we will only begin to find out how much damage has been done during the neo-con years.

[Downtown Hound]

5. Now this is interesting

I click on the link, and the page is gone. And this is navytimes.com. And this article is essentially criticizing how the Iraq War is draining our military resources. Could someone maybe not want people to read this? Hmmm....

[CGowen]

6. yep, it's gone AWOL, only on google cache (it was an AP article)

http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:gkiXUm3F70gJ:www.navytimes.com/news/2007/09/ap_china_militaryprogress_070929/+http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/09/ap_china_militaryprogress_070929&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

[TexasLawyer]

10. The article is still there

but looks like you have to access it through the news main page.

http://www.navytimes.com/news/

[CGowen]

12. AP changed the headline from "fight" to "war" n/t

[Posteritatis]

11. Or the URL's typoed; add a / to the end and it works. (nt)

[hack89]

7. Air Force budget posturing ..

Wright is an air force general - the Air Force needs a real enemy to justify not having Congress shift money to the Army.

[DavidDvorkin]

9. While Spain was bogged down in the 1600s

Trying to conquer Europe, England was quietly extending itself at sea and outside Europe.

But history never applies to us.

[hankthecrank]

Some pictures of the J10 links

http://drno.homeip.net/military/news08.shtml

Like some of the blogs are saying its a copy of Israeli Jet, kind of updated F16

[hankthecrank]

13. Delete