Martyanov’s Dispatches: Fake culture, fake rankings.
DEFEAT CAPITALISM AND ITS DEADLY SPAWN, IMPERIALISM
ecological murder •
Andrei Martyanov
Andrei Martyanov
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
A Very Interesting List To Ponder.
It is the end of the year and many resources begin this routine of predicting shit for the next year and procuring all kinds of "Top" 5, 10, 25, "events", "economies", and "militaries" in the world lists. This one, however, is from September and it was done by the U.S. News and World Report magazine. I am not 100% sure what criteria have been used but here it is:
Even the United Kingdom has a claim to its place in this list due to its still significant remaining real expertise in many fields such as aerospace, advanced shipbuilding and in producing Mini Coopers, and being an electronics producer is by far not enough for placing Singapore in this list. Can Singapore produce a modern cutting-edge submarine? Of course not. But Italy, as an example, can. Granted that Todaro-class is a German Type-212 adapted for the Italian Navy. But then again, Italy has Fincantieri, which apart from being Europe's largest shipbuilder, is also the main contractor for the US Navy's FFGs.
It will take several large volumes just to list the required expertise and all technologies which go into manufacturing modern warships. But then again, does Singapore have an aerospace industry? And then again, do you see France on this list? Yes, yes, this funny country with the city of Toulouse, where they produce those Airbuses. You know, the ones Singapore Airlines loves to buy and fly. Yes, like this A-380, designed and built in Toulouse.
Airbus: a mostly French-built liner.
Can Singapore build a nuclear sub, which requires a monstrous volume of technological and engineering expertise? Here is a French one, the Triomphant-class strategic missile submarines which are fully designed and built in France, including their SLBMs M-51 and nuclear reactor.
France's Le Triomphant class of SSBNs. Builder: Direction des Constructions Navales /DCN (now Naval Group), Cherbourg, Normandy, France.
Not too shabby, right? Do I have to go into the expertise required for nuclear energy in general, and nuclear propulsion in particular?
Well, here is my point--the reason I elaborate on this issue (the list, you know) is because it is getting tiresome to constantly keep everything in perspective and TO SCALE. Singapore simply doesn't have and will never have all the required resources to be a truly technological power-house, and it takes an enormous effort to explain to a layperson the economic, scientific and industrial depth the nation has to have in order to be introduced into all kinds of Top-10 or Top-15 lists. It is a completely different game at the top. Can Singapore, or Switzerland build the International Space Station? Can they launch and operate something like GPS or GLONASS--this is as hi-tech as it comes--we know the answer. (Russia does, of course.)
It is a tragedy that a modern economy and true technological expertise have been trivialized and reduced to merely bean-counting of "investment" and stock market shenanigans and that this ignores completely an immense volume of technological expertise which goes into producing space stations, commercial and combat aircraft, ships, automobiles, modern extracting industries and massive machine-building complexes. A precise set of expertise that defines those very Top-10s. But, what do I know, right? Meanwhile, backward Rooskies started flight tests of another Russian engine, PD-8 and it will get the certificate in 2023 (in Russian).
But this is so non-glamorous, so not iPhonish.
The Country With [the] Tattered Economy (c).
Well, we can forgive an intellectual mediocrity with a community organizer background for ignorance, but the way Russia's economy which is supposed to be "in tatters" performs best is illustrated with things like these:
In other news from the "tattered economy", Russia reminded the Kiev regime today that she can continue to run out of cruise missiles as long as it takes. It was a reminder that one shouldn't (the message is for the US, really) try to launch shit--another one was shot down today over Saratov--against Russia's strategic objects, such as the Engels strategic aviation base--because, in the end, Rammstein is absolutely defenseless. RAND can wet-dream whatever it wants about "de-escalating" by attacking Moscow, but, I am positive, there are at least a few still competent people in there, who should understand that if Russia decides to go all in even in the conventional strike mode--most of NATO navies and HQs in Europe and US proper will not survive for long.
But then there is Russian saying: if you constantly need to forbid the language, to remove monuments, to destroy history--maybe you are building your nation on somebody's land? That is an excellent reference to 404 removing the monument of the founder of the Russian city of Odessa Empress Catherine the Great. So, before it looked like this:
Now, you can see this "composition" like this:
Pretty much self-explanatory and does not reflect well on 404, which is done as a country anyway, but on the puppeteers from D.C., who are lacking class, culture and history.
In related news, I heard today Stephen Walt, of The Israel Lobby fame, gave an interview to Foreign Policy rag.
I read the gist of it. Good God, with "realists" like this who needs neocons? I am on record--the whole of the Political Science and International Relations diploma mill in the US is an absolute academic fraud. Walt should have continued with his biochemistry degree and avoided going into geopolitics with minimal, if any, understanding of global power balance and mechanisms which form it. But, hey, what do I know? I guess I need to write a new book on that, wink, wink).
Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Whoops!
Denis Manturov, the head of Minpromtorg, finally explained to TASS those "issues" with the CR-929 and they expose, quite well, the reasons why I am always stand-offish whenever I speak about joint projects with China. This "insight" explains it very well.
— Возвращаясь к теме международного сотрудничества, что сейчас происходит с совместным проектом России и Китая по созданию дальнемагистрального широкофюзеляжного авиалайнера CR929?
— Думаю, мы в первом квартале следующего года проведем очередные переговоры, выйдем на понятные перспективы и сроки. Но у наших китайских коллег на сегодняшний день в этом проекте присутствуют заявки на участие от различных производителей компонентов третьих стран. Мы же такой формат для себя не рассматриваем, с учетом сегодняшней ситуации и всех рисков, которые очень хорошо понимаем. Поэтому, чтобы с ними не столкнуться, возможно, примем для себя решение из партнера в рамках этого проекта перейти в статус поставщика агрегатов, компонентов.
Translation: - Returning to the topic of international cooperation, what is happening with the joint project of Russia and China to create a long-haul wide-body airliner CR929?
- I think we will hold regular negotiations in the first quarter of next year, and reach clear prospects and deadlines. But our Chinese colleagues today have applications for participation in this project from various manufacturers of components from third countries. We do not consider such a format for ourselves, given the current situation and all the risks that we understand very well. Therefore, in order not to encounter them, we may make a decision for ourselves from a partner within the framework of this project to move into the status of a supplier of aggregates and components.
In other words, geopolitical aims, and whenever speaking about aerospace we need to keep in mind that it is an industry of global importance, of Russia and China diverge here, and diverge seriously. Russia is pursuing, quite successfully, an autarkic model in strategic industries, China does not and the trend in Chinese commercial aerospace is very clear. I already presented here the composition of the Chinese C-919 and wrote about it recently. Remember?
I cannot emphasize enough when speaking about aerospace that China, for all its great economic achievements, is STILL not in the premier league of aerospace and, as an example, nuclear submarines, among a few other sectors. China builds her commercial aerospace with her eye on the West's markets, thinking, very wrongly, that practically all-Western aircraft produced in China, such as C-919, or even the joint CR-929, containing a truck-load of Western-made systems, will somehow grant China the entrance to Western markets or markets elsewhere. In this case, China sets herself up for failure, because the commercial aerospace market doesn't work like this.
Manturov is correct, that if China decides to go this way, Russia must simply withdraw as a partner from this project and contract herself as a supplier. It will release Russia's resources for development of her domestic wide-body aircraft which, most likely, will be redesigned and re-motorized toward two PD-35s iterations of an excellent IL-96. Never again will Russia depend on the combined West for anything, especially in such a critical industrial field as commercial aerospace. In combat aviation Russia remains one of the two leaders in the world, and, as today's events showed, Russia increases the production of SU-57s and today a new batch has been delivered to the Russian Air Force (in Russian).
As Lavrov stated today--the US informed Russia through diplomatic channels that they do not want to fight Russia directly. Sure, who would, but the US thinks it can exhaust Russia. Ah, naive and uneducated people they are in D.C. Not very bright, because they didn't study real economy and war. The same goes for Brussels. But I repeat myself.
ANDREI MARTYANOV is an expert on Russian military and naval issues. He was born in Baku, USSR in 1963. He graduated from the Kirov Naval Red Banner Academy and served as an officer on the ships and staff position of Soviet Coast Guard through 1990. He took part in the events in the Caucasus which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In mid-1990s he moved to the United States where he currently works as Laboratory Director in a commercial aerospace group. He is a frequent blogger on the US Naval Institute Blog. He is author of Losing Military Supremacy, The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs, and Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse.Print this article
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