It seems more likely that Russia and China are still decades behind the US but considerably more willing to hype up technology they don't actually have. China has made some progress but they are a long ways behind. Russia, well, ... Ukraine is demonstrating how stagnant their military capability has become. I kinda wonder how many of their nukes would actually fly right now if they were crazy enough to push the button.

My impression was that Russia's failures in Ukraine mostly stemmed from failures in their logistics and doctrine rather than their technology.

> Russia's failures in Ukraine mostly stemmed from failures in their logistics and doctrine rather than their technology

Russia’s reactive armour had egg cartons in place of explosive. The same oligarchs are delivering these weapons. Meanwhile, Moscow’s “smart” weapons missed entire airfields.

> My impression was that Russia's failures in Ukraine mostly stemmed from failures in their logistics and doctrine rather than their technology.

Also lack of proper spending priorities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJkmcNjh_bg

And corruption: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9i47sgi-V4

It seems likely that no one in Russia knows how many working nukes they have.

And if any of them still work.

When developing advanced military capabilities, the US usually runs offensive and defensive programs in parallel. Beyond the "what if our enemy had this" aspect of the conversation, having a good model of what an advanced defensive system might look like informs design choices on the offensive side.

Too many people conflate the US deeming a weapons technology relatively ineffective given the (classified) capability matrix of their other systems with them not having the technology. Hypersonic endo-atmospheric guided missiles, for example, is an area where the US has deep design expertise going back several decades. They were designing and testing hypersonic guided missiles for battlefield(!) use in the 1980s.

This is entirely correct. A basic example is how the US doesn't prioritize SAM systems to the same degree as Russia. This doesn't mean the US isn't capable of producing similar or even superior systems at volume, it's just that it doesn't make sense given the overwhelming scale of the US Air Force. Likewise there's a similar relative de-emphasis on some forms of artillery.

Now after shaking off decades of counter insurgency warfare and pivoting to address a multipolar world instead it's not surprising they want to change up the mix. It doesn't mean there's some dire technology or capability gap fundamentally however.

Military stuff is entire operational systems vs other operational systems, yet nearly all these forum warrior conversations treat it as some sort of swipe left or swipe right pairwise comparison of two pieces of specific equipment.

Why would the someone develop anti-stealth fighter weapons when their opponents aren't flying stealth fighters? Same with carriers. Nobody else has a serious carrier fleet anymore.

China has two based on old Soviet designs for VSTOL aircraft, and is building a "Nimitz" style CVN with apparent plans to build a significant number.

You are simply mistaken on this topic, probably due to only reading click bait or nationalistic articles on the topic.

Carriers are by no means obsolete, and ballistic missile defense is one of the things the Navy prioritizes heavily, and has done, for ages. Even for the DF-21 a carrier strike group is a tough nut to crack.

China's carriers are still a couple generations away from being at parity to the US fleet.

Sensationalized bait headline articles are not a good source for learning about this stuff. https://twitter.com/RickJoe_PLA writes for the large media brands with some regularity, and is strict about sticking to a substantive factual basis for everything.

The new Chinese carrier needs a takeoff ramp and isn't even nuclear powered. Paper tiger.

That's not the _new_ Chinese carrier, that's the Type 002 class carrier _Shandong_[0]. Their latest carrier, the Type 003 class Fujian[1], was launched last month and has a catapult system, just like American and French carriers.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Shand... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Fujia...

You are correct. Got them confused.

No ski jump but still only conventionally powered.

Perhaps because China is focused on defensive capabilities, not offensive?

Has nothing to do with offensive/defensive capabilities (which is really a straw man). They simply are proceeding with their carrier development in an incremental fashion, learning as they go.

Almost every weapon or weapon system can be described as defensive or offensive, depending on the motives of the person discussing said systems.

What’s would be the defensive purpose of a nuclear aircraft carrier? The offensive part is obvious - makes a whole lot of difference when you are invading someplace on the other side of the world, which is what US Navy is optimized for.

You can defend international sea lanes (so shipping can go through), you can defend your territorial waters, etc etc etc. Defense is in the eye of the beholder.

And how exactly is nuclear propulsion necessary for any of this? Because it it makes a whole lot of difference when there are no allied harbors nearby, ie you are on the other side of the world, ie you’re invading someone again.

Funny how those international sea lanes that are important for world trade just happen to be far away? Because it's foreign trade you're protecting. Oil, etc. If all the US was protecting was US shipping going from US port to US port, then yeah, we wouldn't need nuclear power, though it still might make sense depending on the threat.

Funny how other countries manage to protect their trade without invading Middle East.

Innovator’s Dilemma in action :-)