Vessels claiming to be Chinese warships are messing with passenger planes Australian airline Qantas issued standing orders to its pilots last week advising them that some of its fleet experienced interference on VHF stations from sources purporting to be the Chinese Military. The Register has confirmed the reports. The interference has been noticed in the western Pacific and South China Sea. Qantas …
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Well, I'll give you one upvote at least.
GPS is useful but no aircraft relies on this exclusively because there are places where its unreliable. Its primarily a US military system so there's always the possibility it will be either interfered with or deliberately switched off (or worse, 'bent'). The receivers used in civilian applications are also constrained, the rules being set at the time so that they were not useful for weapons guidance. Because of this relatively low update rate altitude information isn't useful near the ground so planes also use radar altimeters during approach and landing. (Remember 5G and interference?) Because technologies are potentially unreliable all aircraft carry a basic set of conventional ("round") instruments and all pilots are required to be able to fly with just them. So losing GPS while on a high altitude flight path isn't a big deal, especially as the loss is temporary (and the pilots were advised of this through radio).
So what we've got here is another case of spinning a tale for the 'rubes, hamming it up a bit to suit national priorities.
The whole anti-China thing is a bit weird because trade between the US and China is increasing even as the our government comes up with more ways to harass the Chinese. (Sorry, but Canberra is just a branch office -- sure, you're allowed to drive on the wrong side of the road down there but all important policy decisions are left to DC ) This has now significantly impacted sales of major US corporations, including GM and Ford (and apple). It will be interesting to see how far this will go before corporate American puts it collective foot down.
the paris flight was flown into the ground by an incompetent or deranged pilot. that wasn't situational awareness fail it was an idiot in command and his friends in the cockpit didn't realize until too late. feel free to read the transcripts. a normal pilot in that situation wouldn't have blocked the controls and flown into the sea.
Not quite. Pilot believed one instrument only because their training and Airbus attitude is the computers are right, pilot is wrong company. It was a known issue with pitot icing. Senior pilot arrived in cockpit too late to change results. The switch to change control authority seems to have been forgotten in the crisis. Same root cause issues happened to Qantas flights whose pilots are trained to look at all instruments, flying by attitude. Airspeed high, BUT, angle of attack normal, engines at cruise for this altitude, therefore airspeed indicator malfunction. This is why you never heard of incidents, Nothing newsworthy happened.
As for the article, messing with aircraft instruments is a serious issue, not matter how many workarounds. Effectively, it seems some group has decided they override international agreements. That cant end well if history is any indication. As for the economics of US/China trade, what the manglement classes do versus what the plebs are told have no correlation and never has. Last leader I can think off who said its going to be hard, painful and bloody was Churchill.
BTW, dont assume all commercial pilots can fly manually now. That was found out post AirFrance crash and scared a few airline operations managers. One hopes something done to ensure all pilots of heavies can handle a Cessna or equivalent, but we all know how manglement behave usually. Fortunately many commercial pilots fly privately for recreational purposes and are highly competent.
This us one of those times I wish I had more than one upvote to give. The Air France Flight 447 crash was a tragedy with as usual multiple causes but the pilots were not incompetent and calling them deranged borders on defamatory. Thanks, Denarius for setting the record straight.
It's primarily a US civilian system. Developed for civilian navigation after the Russians shot down an American airliner that had strayed into Russian airspace.
So, not only a civilian system, a civilian system specifically designed to give general location awareness to civilian airliners.
Yes, the American military piggy-backed on the civilian navigation system. That's what they do: any civilian navigation system is also useful to the military. You may remember that during WWI and WWII, the military was collecting postcards of foreign beaches. It was not that "postcards of beaches" were "primarily a military system".
"Originally military but IIRC it was Clinton who fully opened it to civilian access."
GPS (the US version) isn't "fully" open for civilian access. Commercial signals can be shut down with only encrypted military signals available if there is a threat to the US. In the US there are times when the military is testing jamming/denial tech and NOTAMS are issued to pilots that GPS can be unreliable or unavailable in a certain areas when they are. Pilots are trained to navigate using other methods, but satnav is the first choice. Even NASA was training Apollo astronauts to navigate with a sextant by taking sites out the window. I don't think they do that anymore, but a competent pilot should be able to plot themselves for a while when cruising using strong radio stations, the sun/moon, etc. In Boy Scouts, we were put in a field of tall corn and given a destination, a watch and a compass. That was some fun and everybody made it back, just not always on target.
A non-certified GNSS receiver is available on the open market for under 300 USD as a proto board if you want a package the price leaps to 1500 USD. Of course Qantas in its local area has both the Indian and the Japanese systems available so the only need to say and stay GPS is lacking awareness of the variety and availability of systems. Of course there is the fabled Galileo that we working works good. It stated purpose was to a pure non-military system(?) to avoid a shut down in case of hostilities [Special military operations don't count based on HIMARS results]. The Chinese have been playing this game for quite a while. A decade ago several in a navigation journal it was reported that several vessels sailing from way point to way point suddenly veered off course when in the same vicinity though at different times. So the more time past the more the present mirrors it!
“ GPS is useful but no aircraft relies on this exclusively because there are places where its unreliable”
Bulldust. I’m an IFR pilot and I use GNSS all the bloody time. There are error checking systems which kick in automatically if the system isn’t working for whatever reason. It’s also a requirement to do a manual GNSS RAIM during certain flight phases (including approaches which require RNP). Other approaches and ground based navigation systems are available, but discussions of when you would use these in preference to GNSS or when you’d use GNSS in preference to them are outside the scope of this post.
GNSS -Global navigation satellite system, IFR - Instrument Flight Rules, RAIM - Receiver autonomous integrity monitoring, RNP - Required navigation performance
Also, never, ever forget that you don't have to just destroy the signal and make the GPS lose lock! An adversary like China, with high powered military systems, can subtly alter the GPS results, which puerile might not notice nearly as easily. Tweak a few signals so the plane ends up 2 degrees off course, and at 0 altitude, over a long ocean flight, and bang... (yes, redundant systems should pick up on the ground proximity warning system, etc. Should...)
I'm beginning to wonder if we've reached peak China and their leaders getting increasingly bolshy (for want of a better word) as they find themselves staring into the abyss.
Demographically China already has some serious issues - even a few years ago there were reports of labour shortages - and Covid has made much of the old developed world realise that they can no longer rely on China as a manufacturing site so have started to diversify. The current leader of the China seems dead set on rolling back the changes that Deng Xiaoping made and that enabled the country to become what it is today.
I think it is a real pity - a decade and a half or so ago I worked with quite a few Chinese colleagues as the company I was working for at the time had an office in Beijing and I found them to be open, honest and hardworking so I had high hopes for China.
Whatever happens, it will take a while to happen as China is so big, but I hope for the sake of people there that things do sort themselves out.
I'm not sure you can blame China for this. Especially since Trump, China has been blamed for pretty much everything while at the same time still being used for cheap labour. Frankly, I would eventually get pissed off too. Now the US has started playing with embargoes again to falsify competition for political gains I think it was fairly predictable that China developed a bit of a "f*ck you" attitude, especially now it appears that the Americans have finally realised that the days of the dollar may be over if China gets its act together - and it can.
I see this sable rattling more as a heads up by China to the US that it cannot be bullied into compliance by war as it has so often done elsewhere (Iraq being a classic example), they can and will respond. As US doctrine is one of overwhelming force (as in not having the bottle to engage in a fight where the sides are equally capable), it pretty much rules out standard warfare so they're trying the economic variant, including blackmailing or bribing (more the former, cheaper) other countries into going along and sadly, some do instead of standing back.
No, I'm not a China fan, but on the other hand I dislike bullies, liars and BS and the motivations of the US appear increasingly suspect here. I am saddened by this because they used to be better than this but it appears Biden has decided to ride along with what Trump started, which has in turn forced China closer to Putin's Russia. I note they're still keeping their distance somewhat as a signal that they're not just going along with what Putin is doing, but overall it's not good IMHO.
Bullshit. China has been trying to bully countries around South East Asia for well over a decade, this has got nothing to do with US foreign policy.
There are vast swathes of what's known as the the South China sea where countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines have territory and accompanying territorial waters, yet China seeks to claim sole rights to said territories and waters, and to bar international maritime traffic.
This is more of the same.
-> Bullshit. China has been trying to bully countries around South East Asia for well over a decade, this has got nothing to do with US foreign policy.
Well. The USA turned Vietnam into a death camp. Then there was the bombing of Laos and Cambodia. Which country came to their aid in each case? Answer: China.
If anyone has been bullying South East Asia it is the USA and its bullying is called war.
I have multiple relatives in Oz and India (and other former outposts of the Empire Upon Which The Sun Never Sets, mostly because God knows better than to trust an Englishman in the dark) and they tell me that Vietnam is a founding member of the We Really Don’t Like China Club. Apparently Vietnam has Not Liked China for a very long time. Something about China invading every ever so often.
China was aiding Vietnam? I think you may have to check the history books... URSS came to the aid of Vietnam while China has managed to invade Vietnam in 1979(see the SinoV-Vietnamese war of 1979-1981). If you check, US and Vietnam have normal relations and Vietnam is the biggest benefactor of US companies seeking alternatives to China sourcing...
China was aiding Vietnam? I think you may have to check the history books... URSS came to the aid of Vietnam while China has managed to invade Vietnam in 1979(see the SinoV-Vietnamese war of 1979-1981). If you check, US and Vietnam have normal relations and Vietnam is the biggest benefactor of US companies seeking alternatives to China sourcing...
The Vietnamese still haven't forgotten about a thousand years of Chinese occupation.
I mean, the stories referenced in the book "This is how they tell me the world ends" talk of China's global quiet posturing on the digital stage and, as to their 2011/12(?) hack of Google, finally being able to tie the nation-state to the rampant IPO and data thefts that had been committed increasingly by them over the decade prior.
I'm not saying it's just them. The excellent Register live event in 2011 where Bruce Schneier discussed the multinational arms race to place back doors should remind us of that. But it did (does?) seem that China had a particular push on international collation and local redistribution of IPO that other countries seek to undertake less.
Soi you are stating these didn't happen?
USA illegal involvements
1949 Syrian coup d'état
1949–1953 Albania
1951–56 Tibet
1953 Iranian coup d'état
1954 Guatemalan coup d'état
1956–57 Syria crisis
1960 Congo coup d'état
1961 Cuba, Bay of Pigs Invasion
1961 Dominican Republic
1963 South Vietnamese coup
1964 Bolivian coup d'état
1964 Brazilian coup d'état
1966 Ghana coup d’état
1967 US manufactured coup in Greece
1971 Bolivian coup d'état
1970–73 Chile
1980 Turkish coup d'état
1979–89 Afghanistan, Operation Cyclone
1980 -1988 material support for Iraq against Iran
1981–87 Nicaragua, Contras
1983 Grenada
1996 Iraq coup attempt
2001 Afghanistan
2003 to 2011 Iraq War
2011 Libyan civil war
2011–present Syria
Panama?
IRA
"Whenever the West does something not great it's not relevant .... got it"
It's more about people complaining about oil companies or wind energy companies getting handouts when the discussion is about EV subsidies.
I don't think at this point EV subsidies are needed in the US and I'm also not for oil companies getting free money either. I do see merit in subsidies from time to time. Early EV subsidies were useful to kick start the industry and move things in that direction, but mission accomplished so no more should be on offer. Same with wind and oil companies do well enough that they can start losing some of those special accommodations. Other subsidies are beneficial such as Amtrak. It would make more sense to me for the military to lose some of their allowance and put that money into Amtrak to expand the network and schedules so it is more useful. It's already quite popular. Without it there would be no passenger rail service and an argument could be made over national security and disaster relief. If being more energy efficient and lowering emissions is important, trains are a very good resource for travel and too big of an investment for any private company.
"No, I'm not a China fan, but on the other hand I dislike bullies, liars and BS and the motivations of the US appear increasingly suspect here."
Good for you. But you seem unwilling to apply those dislikes to evaluating the actions of China and Russia?
". . .it appears Biden has decided to ride along with what Trump started, which has in turn forced China closer to Putin's Russia."
No one is forcing to do anything. The Chinese leadership could choose a path of economic co-operation, respect for IP and Human Rights. Instead, it has chosen another path, one you condemn when allegedly pursued by the US.
"I note they're still keeping their distance somewhat as a signal that they're not just going along with what Putin is doing, but overall it's not good IMHO."
Yes overall things are not good. Surely you are aware that Xi is now visiting with Putin. which can hardly be seen as keeping their distance.
Unsurprising, as it is instability that is not in the Chinese economy's interest. They already have a problem with a property bubble that they've had to address. If this Ukrainian war then shifts both Russia and the Western world into recession then that means suddenly China's customers aren't buying. It didn't help that this was all started during China's Olympics so kinda insulting to them deliberately stealing their moment on the world stage.
"Unsurprising, as it is instability that is not in the Chinese economy's interest. They already have a problem with a property bubble that they've had to address. "
Err. They have, after a fashion, 'addressed' it, but only to apply a sticking plaster over the whole mess.
The bubble is still there and they have done nothing to fix it.
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Even if we assume that China has become more confrontational lately thanks to the policies of Trump (which were long overdue and had bipartisan support anyway) China did act like a bully even to countries like Australia thinking that they can force the OZs into obedience, so they've more than earned what's coming to them. OTOH threatening civilian airplanes is not only not gonna earn them ANY sympathy anywhere in the world (I think that we still remember what happened to the KLM flight that flew over Donetsk), it'll also attract even more attention from US warships and submarines.
@Anonymous Coward Agree with you here - I think largely the US has been "forced" to act in this manner as their very existence as a super power is being threatened and they've woken up to that realisation - and now they will use any and all justification to maintain their position and ensure any competitors can't get close.
Mark my words - in this situation if China were replaced by A.N. Other country - the same thing would occur - reasons would be found to not trust them/do business with them and ties would be cut.
As other posters have pointed out, the US did this to Japan - citing security concerns relating to LCDs in the 80s - but again - this goes to the point I've made often which is that for some reason the West treats countries that it has beaten in war differently to those it hasn't - I don't recall Japan ever being seen as much of a threat as China is/was - in my view this was because the US knew it could literally flatten Japan again if it had to. Also Japan knew this and didn't "poke the bear"
China has become Xi Jinping's fiefdom. He's surrounding himself with loyalists - i.e. yes men who tell him what he wants to hear. We've seen this often enough to know how it ends; one only needs to look at Russia. It didn't have to be this way. But he seems to have made too many enemies and left himself with nowhere to go.
Xi (I have heard) is obsessed with stability. Nothing must rock the boat.
And having seen Russia's post cold war transition to whatever-form-of-capitalism-you-call-that, you can see why that would be a concern
And so dissent, or even cultural differences, that might cause divisions are to be crushed. And since news about crushing them would also cause instability, that has to be suppressed too.
So mass surveillance to check there is no dissent, and to scare those tempted to dissent into compliance.
So in that context, having people who are entirely on same page policywise around him is logical.
By comparison Putin's isolation is due to paranoia and concern over his position
You're right, Xi is obsessed with stability and is therefore unlikely to do anything which would "rock the boat" as you say, but there's a couple of counter-points to this.
One is that he may believe (rightfully or not) that the West is already rocking his boat and therefore he needs to do something about it..
Two is that however powerful he is, Xi will not be in power forever. He is mortal just like the rest of us, and so I'm not so much worried about Xi Jinping himself, but his successor - who will inherit (or perhaps steal) absolute power. What sort of man (or woman - unlikely but not completely impossible) will that be? Will they be as level-headed as Xi Jinping, or will it be a current head of the military that takes over? In which case, see icon, curl up into a ball, and kiss your arse goodbye.
> I suggest he himself is rocking the boat by trying to undo what Siu Deng achieved.
Apparently he was the guy who ordered the Tianmen Square massacre? i.e. if the people are unhappy because they are starving while the corrupt politicians get rich, shoot them.
I would have thought Xi Jinping is a breath of fresh air compared to that?
Mind you, with Zero Covid and his Xinjiang gulags for anyone who disagrees with him, he could be heading in the same direction?
Whatever his motivation, the effect will be the same: whenever he makes a wrong decision, there will be no-one to rock the boat, just a lot of placemen determined to maintain "stability" by concurring. And age tends to impair our decision making processes.
We all know a dial on gauge can neither be over-damped, nor under-damped, if it is to be useful; so, too, governance.
"Xi (I have heard) is obsessed with stability. Nothing must rock the boat."
Not unlike the history of Russian leadership, until they decided that now they were stable, they might start rocking someone else's boat. Before their invasions, they were focused on stability. Economic stability, improvement of Russian infrastructure, destruction of movements inside already-held territory that were opposed to them, making sure they'd never have to worry about elections. They had a lot of chaos from the 1980s and 1990s to sand down and it took a while to get that. After they started messing with their neighbors, they realized the risks of sanctions and therefore cooled down a bit between Syria and the 2022 full invasion of Ukraine to get a few more things stable, such as reducing their international debt and storing up money and resources for their domestic economy. Newly stabilized, they resumed the tactic of turning up the instability on others.
I'm sure Xi wants stability. That's going to cause enough problems for anyone unfortunate enough to live in China. The problems for people outside China will come (well, they're already here, so get worse) when he's comfortable that he has the stability he wants. At that point, he will have the insulation he needs to start playing with other people, generating chaos that he hopes won't affect him too much.
Well, it's the Great Experiment coming to a head, isn't it? Can a brutal dictatorship sustain competitive advanced technology to challenge the high-tech forces of a free-thinking capitalist democracy? Or are its internal tensions too destructive of creative thinking?
Ronald Reagan used Star Wars to break the USSR and win the "Great Game" (as historians call the centuries-old conflict with Russia), but can Biden do the same to China? Has he left it too late? Have the Chinese outsmarted the West by playing Mr Nice Guy until they could undermine its technical superiority and economic independence too deeply? There's only one way to find out. The Higgs boson's got nothing on this ride....
Probably not because the the impact on most of what we term "The West" (which in realities includes the likes of Australia) is that stopping using the source of manufacturing that we are so dependent on is going to hit many in the general population very hard.
As soon as all those consumer goods and many other products that relay on materials or components from China start to be hit, the reality is going to be different.
Back in Reagan's time the shift to China for most manufacturing was still in it's infancy. Very little came out of Russia that could not be sourced elsewhere. You only have to look at the European gas debacle to see how things have changed.
Look now at how dependent everyone is on manufacturing in China. Some can be moved to other localities in the Far East but that is likely to just create a new set of problems. China is in the enviable position of being very rich in resources or sympathetic neighbours that will provide. It is a huge landmass and the elite are very rich. They care very little for the impact of what they do on others both internally and externally.
Perversely, removing huge amounts of manufacturing out of China to more friendly Far Eastern neighbours because it is still cheap could ultimately be even worse than moving it back to the West.
> You only have to look at the European gas debacle to see how things have changed.
Actually those pipelines were (mostly) laid down during socialist times, so that's not a brand new problem at all. And the power of "Star Wars" wasn't only in the COCOM (although that was admittedly a big part of it as well), but also the act of tricking the USSR into using all of its resources to finance something (i.e. a space race) which they just simply couldn't finance. And this approach might actually work right now just as well as it did ~40-50 years ago.
.> It is a huge landmass and the elite are very rich.
The same could be said about Russia too and look what happened...
The question about technological superiority is interesting. China's technological prowess has increased dramatically over recent years, but how much of it is actually home grown?
There's no real question that a lot of their advances are based on IP stolen from western companies manufacturing things in China, or via hacks and other means. So, the question is - will they be able to overtake "the West" technologically if they continue to base their advances on Western advances?
And then there's the issue of "build quality". China is still known as a location to get poor quality goods. The goods that are good quality, made for western companies, are good quality due to western specifications generally. There's a few companies appearing which are focusing on quality, but they're still fairly rare to see outside the country.
There's still a regular trickle of news stories about collapsing infrastructure in china as well due to quality issues - concrete stuffed with newspaper, sinkholes from badly managed tunnelling projects etc...
Like the OP, I have my doubts about them progressing much further down the road to global leadership.
@localzuk That's the thing about the Chinese - you cant live 'em and you can't kill them - well .... hang on a minute now! :)
So well done for falling into the classic Western thought process of "Chinese stuff is rubbish - it's all due to Western stuff only that China makes good stuff".
I don't have an exhaustive list - because I don't care that much - whatever you or I say, the world will do what it does - what we say matters not a blot - but companies like DJI, Zhiyun, Huawei, ZTE, Oppo, OnePlus make very high quality (and expensive) equipment and are entirely Chinese.
The reason why you think what you think is because almost all the cheap end stuff that is manufactured in China that the West consumes is imported exactly because of that reason - it's cheap - whatever Western company imports it, then marks it up and sells it for a profit. I recently bought a few IP based CCTV cameras from Aliexpress and they were orders of magnitude both better in quality and tech specs yet cheaper in price, than anything I could get from shops selling stuff in the country I'm in. The margin to do this with expensive stuff either doesn't exist or is a lot less - so you generally won't see that type of equipment unless it is made by a Chinese company.
However - I do like anti Chinese propaganda - so please continue with the "Chinese stuff is rubbish" conversation
China has both. Cheap and terrible, and world beating (in some areas) and still cheaper than the West.
But then, slave labour and high education levels (from overseas) will do that for a country... Combine with the trick of sending lots of students overseas, then tapping them* for knowledge later, and IP theft becomes rather easier.
*knowingly or not!
If you watch China's actions through the lens of HONOR (or Face) in the oriental sense it simplifies the guesses about the plans of both government and the PLA. Think how they built the biggest dam, the most high speed rail and roads that fall into the superlative description. It is a pointed reminder the Opium Wars, the donations of cities to European countries were aberrations and that fact is being broadcast. Since the Chinese have built their first ice breaker who do you think is on the list. The big worry is that they start to believe their own propaganda.
"Demographically China already has some serious issues - even a few years ago there were reports of labour shortages - and Covid has made much of the old developed world realise that they can no longer rely on China as a manufacturing site so have started to diversify. The current leader of the China seems dead set on rolling back the changes that Deng Xiaoping made and that enabled the country to become what it is today"
^ Exactly this. It's not only Covid that's done damage to the Chinese economy but also Xi Jinping himself with his none too subtle attacks and restrictions against China's tech sector so he has been effectively strangling the goose that lays the golden eggs for China.
His more Maoist centralised control policies will mean less freedom to innovate and there is no way now that China's economy will ever equal and surpass that of the USA and the longer he stays in office, the more damage he will do especially since the relatively pragmatic and well-informed Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, has now been replaced with the Xi Jinping loyalist Li Qiang meaning that there is now no one to speak up for business and economic interests.
A smaller Chinese economy will also ultimately mean that there's less money around to pay for all things military unless they want to print money and that never ends well.
> It's not only Covid that's done damage to the Chinese economy but also Xi Jinping himself with his none too subtle attacks and restrictions against China's tech sector so he has been effectively strangling the goose that lays the golden eggs for China.
Oh yeah. Just when the whole West was holding their breath and worrying that China might actually surpass them in terms of technology development the Chinese have successfully shot themselves in the foot so the West can now breathe a sigh of relief. It was a close call but with their insane measures against their own tech sector they might be done for for a while. We all have the Dear Leader Xi to thank for that!
restrictions against China's tech sector
that is no "tech sector" that's only software and Internet ! It has been around for more than 30 years. You have no clue what real high-tech is if you think that AliBaba or Google are "technology". Yes I know this is a computer journal but even here it is talked about space race and hypersonic missiles : now THAT's high-tech. But drawing pixels here-and-there is NO high-tech, I've done that when I was 15.
So China isn't putting restrictions on its technology sector, it's putting restrictions on its propaganda sector. You might object to that, but I don't think they're doing much worse than the state-imposed covid propaganda of the "west".
China has been bullying it's neighbours and laying claim to territory and indeed oceans to which it has no right, so nothing has changed there.
One problem for China that doesn't get widely discussed in the western media is India.
There is a pattern in manufacturing which has been repeated around the world. A country gears up for high volume, low quality manufacture, if the country is populous and wages are low this means economies of scale result in very low prices. The country then moves more towards better quality and higher prices, but still undercutting other more established countries. However the rate of growth gets hit a some point by the law of diminishing returns. One problem is that as the country becomes more prosperous and the population becomes more skilled wages go up. Various countries bordering the pacific have gone through this process over the last few decases, China was the most successful perhaps because it was the most populous (economies of scale) with a population that only a few decades back was little more than peasants (cheap labour).
India quitely became more populous than China and quietly began gearing up for high volume low cost manufacturing. They're making all sorts of things in India now. Their own stuff and stuff for western companies. Fancy an iPhone or an electric guitar? All the stuff China likes to make.
It's not just about India, but you can see that China is aware that the writing is on the wall. They've gone from the one child per couple rule to desperately trying to grow their population, but even with Chinese labour laws it's not so likely that these policies will have an immediate effect on the size or cost of the workforce. But maybe annexing some territory might...
Bullying through an increase in military presence in places it doesn't own ... oh wow! All countries do that, all with reasonable navies anyway. Look at it globally - Chinese sabre-rattling or American&NATO sabre-rattling. Sabre-rattling causes more sabres rattling. Annexed territory? LOL Stop blaming the boogy-man and blame the whole damn system.
Not quite. China actually lays claim to vast areas well outside its internationally recognised sea borders. They have literally built artificial islands and put military bases on them to take ownership.
I'm not aware of any other countries doing this level of "that's mine" land/sea grabs in recent decades.
Well, beyond Russia anyway, with their "Ukraine doesn't exist" nonsense.
NATO doesn't lay claim to areas - they patrol international waterways and protect the borders of their members.
The US is slightly different, as they seem to believe they have global jurisdiction. But, they don't generally "take" land, as such. They're more along the line of invading, and trying to replace governments - but that is not NATO.
If there wasn't a whole conglomerate of military powers operating there already nobody would be complaining. China is merely throwing its hat into the same ring to let others know they have a stake in parolling those areas too but those who already insist on their exclusive right to patrol start complaining that China are there now. It's a lolfest of domineering nonsense.
I'm no yellow star worshipper I assure you but the screeching complaints about China having military presence anywhere outside their borders are pretty hard to support.
Not quite. China is not just wanting to patrol. They want to claim ownership. Very different things.
The equivalent for the US would be them building an artificial island off the coast of Canada, and claiming their maritime border now covers all the way up to the edge of Canadian beaches.
The US quite rightly should have global jurisdiction - cause they're the only country that's worth trusting globally - they stand for truth, democracy, freedom and the rule of law.
Just don't mention what happened to Iraq and the Native Americans - or the child labour laws that they've recenrly brought into law domestically - but apart from that yeah - Rock on the USA !!!!!!! Woohoo - Bruce Springsteen and the American flag! Yeah!
"the old developed world realise that they can no longer rely on China as a manufacturing site so have started to diversify."
The US is finding that hard as most modern technology isn't made at all and base level components/materials aren't even made in the US anymore. As the greens ban mining, the US can't supply themselves with rare-Earth metals and something as simple as magnets. If you want something bleeding edge and price is no object, you might find a domestic supplier, but not cost-effective components in commercial quantities. China has been slowly putting companies out of business that deal in the most basic materials. Where they can't, the government will offer some company such as a mine a guaranteed contract for everything they can produce to tie up the supply. The Chinese government will then, in turn, make those materials available to Chinese companies at cost. That's tremendous for a small company when they can buy, say, Copper for a price that a company someplace else in the world would pay far more to obtain unless they were buying shipload quantities. It's good for China to do that. They get lots of smaller companies rather than 2-3 huge ones in a particular market segment all hiring people and paying taxes.
Yes. This.
The West have been asleep at the wheel for 20 years concerning this economic warfare. It's destroyed millions of jobs and everything has been outsourced to China for a small saving.
The speed with which China can now out compete anyone trying to manufacture in the rest of the world is startling. Look at the "hoverboard" debacle - they stole the IP, started making them in an lcd monitor factory which switched production to hoverboards in *2 weeks*, swamped the market, and by the time the inventor's company got a court date, the now massive Chinese factory simply bought his American company to make the lawsuit go away!
Meanwhile, I can't get a metal part (brass/nickel) plated in the UK for less than the cost of manufacture and finishing and shipping and import duties, via China!
The Chinese government subsidises electric, rent, and shipping, and even provides literal slave labour to solve the problem of "how do we outcompete the rest?"
For over a decade I've heard idiots saying "If China undercuts you, make something else". I think they've finally shut up now.
"The Chinese government subsidises electric, rent, and shipping, and even provides literal slave labour to solve the problem of "how do we outcompete the rest?"
That's a bit further than I'd accuse them of, but one thing you missed is how they don't have as complex of a regulation regime. Plating does use and create lots of chemicals that need to be handled responsibly, but when government goes on to have a dozen overlapping agencies to do that oversight all with different reporting and licensing requirements, the cost of the compliance staff makes it much cheaper to do out of country and just pay a few percent import tariff or none at all for a 'most favored nation' partner.
One thing I picked up while China was building Tesla a factory in Shanghai that was only lightly commented on was the presence of building inspectors full time on site. Deficiencies were identified and corrected in real time rather than waiting a week after calling for an inspection and then having to do a bunch of remedial work that would have been much simpler if caught earlier and then calling again and waiting again for a re-inspection. Just the delays caused by waiting for Government to do something can add a few zeros to any project.
Messing about with flight control systems is foolish in the extreme: international flights pass over that region and, God forbid, if something happens then the world will take notice.
One the plus side, aircraft have multiple systems to inform the crew of their position. While some are not as accurate as the GPS-driven ones, they'll give enough data to provide for straight and level flight over a fairly short distance (enough to take them out of range of the interference). Alerting pilots to the risk so they can plan accordingly is sensible while ATC will most likely increase the spacing margins to allow for any inaccuracy in positioning.
However: trying this idiotic stunt near a fog-bound airport and it really would be a disaster waiting to happen.
We can do a lot more than straight and level flight over a short distance without GPS - we could easily fly the whole route with no GPS at all. GPS is highly accurate but very unreliable. We never assume its going to work, and we trust it the least if it disagrees with other sources.
Messing around on 121.5 is really not good, though. Its the international distress frequency used by aircraft and sea vessels to request assistance. It should only be used in an emergency per international law. The same law requires us to act on receiving a transmission on that frequency, so it's not dissimilar to calling in a bomb threat. Even if we know its likely a Chinese vessel causing problems we legally aught to investigate.
Even if we know its likely a Chinese vessel causing problems we legally aught to investigate.
Even if IATA investigates, nothing is going to happen. China can easily turn around and say, "You are flying over OUR AIRSPACE. `tis our airspace -- We can do whatever we want."
You mean that Iranian plane that was broadcasting on military frequencies, descending towards a US ship and refusing to respond to hails?
I would shoot that down without hesitation. The duty of the commander is to the lives on board his ship, not to the dead bodies put on a plane so they would make for good TV.
It seems you have evidence that the ICAO doesn't. Why didn't you supply it to the inquiry?
https://reports.aviation-safety.net/1988/19880703-0_A30B_EP-IBU.pdf
The plane was broadcasting a civilian transponder code.
It was flying its usual route in a civilian flight corridor.
It had been in a continuous climb from airport departure up to the point it was hit by a missile.
Most of the challenges were sent in a military frequency band that civilian airliners do not have equipment to receive.
The remaining ones were sent on a civilian band, but not on either of the ATC frequencies that the plane was monitoring.
@Ball Boy you speak as if pilots are unable to fly in conditions of low visibility without GPS. How do you think planes managed to fly before the advent of GPS?
And you mention of fog bound airports is also odd. GPS isn't going to help you land an aircraft in fog.
@jollyboyspecial: Oh they flew successfully without GPS, I don't dispute that. However, the modern glass cockpit encourages the reliance on tech (the clue is in the name) so messing with its data inputs is a bad idea. Pilots have enough to do already; adding constant dead-reckoning won't be welcomed by anyone despite having the skill to do it (as said, increasing separation distances will be the ATC safety response. In extremis, that will cause delays)
On the fog-bound runway issue: radio altimeters are very useful as one approaches ground - if they go U/S in fog, it'd certainly help focus the mind. Yes, there are work-arounds but it'd be safer to divert to somewhere with no fog.
It doesn't work like that in a modern flight deck. GPS jamming is commonplace, as this map (https://gpsjam.org) shows. Anyone flying east will lose GPS when passing between Turkey and Iraq.
The cockpit effects are mild, because in 2023 navigation is still dead-reckoning from a computer point of view, with the aircraft position fine-tuned from external sources. You'll see an advisory message saying that ADS-B (air-to-air and air-to-ground position reporting) is degraded. Eventually, as you go out of range of ground stations, the navigation will be entirely inertial.
You can also get an advisory saying that the look-ahead terrain warnings are inoperative - that's because they directly use GPS position. There has been cases where this system generated a false "pull up" warning at cruise altitudes, which is more likely to present a threat from the startle element than anything else.
Radio altimeters will recover once outside of an area of jamming (which would have to be over a relatively small range). It is obviously possible to get jam-resistant GPS systems but the expense isn't worth it for civil aviation. Or more likely it's considered technology that shouldn't be exported from the country of origin.
I don't know where you are getting this idea that GPS is our main tool for navigation. It isn't; it's a secondary source at best. GPS is jammed in many countries and by many governments (including the UK armed forces in various parts of the UK). Satellites go unserviceable all the time, leading to unreliable 3d fixes (not such a problem if you just need a 2d fix for car navigation). Not having GPS available as a data source is something that happens routinely. It is not adding anything to our task list - not least because when GPS is available we don't trust it.
GPS is not used in landing systems, it has no bearing on ILS approach procedures.
In pre-GPS times, my first solo flight away from my home airport took me over the wide open, uninhabited areas of Georgia (USA). When I turned around to come home, the sun was lower and there was a haze and I couldn't see a fucking thing. The airport had an omnidirectional beacon at the end of the runway though, leading to happy landings.
There is a history of similar sort of nonsense with PRC warships directing high powered lasers at Australian surveillance aircraft (and I think an NZ aircraft too.)
Not too difficult to join the dots between the recent AUKUS submarine arrangments and this foolishness.
I am not too impressed with the deal either - I figure in for a penny, in for a pound AU need to either go the full monty or forget it - a bit of a bugger for non-proliferation.
care to specify which treaties the AUKUS is in breach of? There are no nuclear weapons on the subs; the reactors are nukes but:
* They are sealed for the lifetime of the vessels
* They are similar to 'peaceful' nuclear power stations
* They cannot be made into explosive devices
* According to the UN China exported about 540$Billion of nuclear technology including reactors in 2021, this too would have broken you alleged treaty violations.
* There is no proliferation
* Get a life. Or at least one with some facts in it.
Hipocrisy is complaining that AUKUS is building nuclear powered subs that won't be nuclear armed, while ignoring that PLANSF has at least 6 nuclear armed ballistic missile subs, and at least 6 conventionally armed nuclear powered attack subs. Some estimates are as high as 16 nuclear powered subs.
Nuclear armed vs nuclear powered PLANSF subs are different classes of boat, and it's not immediately clear to me whether the nuclear armed subs are also nuclear powered.
This could be because "Voice of Truth" is the typical conspiracy flerf account where facts do not matter and all arguments very quickly degrade into "I don't like the evidence" or "I don't understand the evidence" which lead into immediate personal attacks in an attempt to undermine the validity of the person presenting the evidence.
The account here could be unrelated but flerf and conspiracy accounts on YouTube have the same or similar name and the same kind of attitude to facts.
Nothing similar about them? they are nuclear reactors designed to control fission. You have invented the term nuclear war machine and decided that both a form of transport powered by a nuclear reactor and a nuclear bomb are in some way comparable. Please explain Mr Voice
Some idiot posted something stupid as the first comment on the story - and was downvoted into oblivion - so a moderator binned that part of the thread as it was irrelevant to the article and getting in the way of discussion.
We try not to get involved in moderation. We try to let discussions flow naturally. We want a high SNR.
If that idiot posted their mini rant after 50 or 100 comments on an article, it would have been buried and we would have probably left it alone. But when it's the first comment, it's just noise.
Since enough people are unhappy, we'll bring back that comment and thread. But as you can see, it's just nonsense. I don't think it fairly reflects the kinds of discussions we have around here.
I hope you can see why the comment was rejected, it's just dumb. This is the sort of chaff we trim out of threads to make the experience better for everyone.
C.
I wasn't complaining about moderation of posts per se. Merely that it was (a) unsatisfactory other non-offending posts were also deleted, and that (b) they (the original offending and non-offending) post disappeared entirely, without evidence that they even existed.
You have to moderate, fine. However, I do not believe that ElReg should have started to hide the evidence of that moderation. Why the change?
Cos having mysterious 'removed by moderator' messages in place of deleted posts, and with child replies that make no sense without the context, is just a confusing mess all round.
When we remove parts of threads, it's not done lightly. If there's a decent discussion going then we'll leave it there. But if it's just noise on noise, that's going to be tidied out of sight.
C.
If the issue was the visibility of the comment as first post, why not demote it to the bottom of the pile and make sure it stays there, e.g. by changing its timestamp to year 2038 with a flag clearly identifying the thread as Noise and let commentards decide if they care to join?
Whataboutism at its finest - even if it’s full of guns and daggers it’s still not nuclear proliferation (which has nothing to do with submarine engines or power stations)
Also, did you learn about how the average Vietnamese person regards the Chinese Communist Party - perhaps you might be open to accepting an update to your knowledge?
Under your doctrine Diesel engine are military and anything using it for motive force is for war. If so better get all those wheat grower back behind oxen. In WW2 when Perth was a naval operating base subs had to refuel from a barge off the northwest coast in order to have sufficient patrol time. The nuke power system does away with that limitations and will allow max opportunities to go where it must.
Radar altimeters are only useful near the ground. Most of the time altitude information comes from GPS.
GPS is primarily a military system and therefore isn't 100% reliable. All aircraft carry legacy instruments and the pilots are trained to use them.
ADS-B is an active transponder system which is handy for finding out where everyone is. Its mandatory on all commercial (and most private) aircraft in the US so I'd guess its used widely all over the world.
Like in the Black Sea, Russian warplanes against a US drone and unlike North Korea's little brothers that only both bark. Russia and China are subject to the power of the military caste that supports the despots that "rule" and that is the danger: an atrocious military action can be caused by any deranged russian or chinese. The US has responded by sending a superior capacity drone, what will happen? we will know but in the Chinese case, its repeated bullying bodes nothing good
Qantas has advised its crew to continue their assigned path and report interference to the controlling air traffic control authority.
Perhaps a better solution would be keeping a drop bear paratrooper aboard every flight, ready to be released over the source of interference...
Perhaps a better solution would be keeping a drop bear paratrooper aboard every flight
I'm extremely surprised that the Aussies haven't (as far as we know) developed snake / spider armed anti-naval cluster munitions. Wouldn't kill very many people, but would be a very effective way of getting half the crew of a target ship to jump into the sea in blind panic.
And one thing I'm really thankful for is that the Aussies haven't gone to the ultimate level of arms proliferation and developed thermobaric vegemite munitions...
Chemical weapons are banned (although a quarter time 4 'n 20 at the 'G comes close).
The Vegemite is too good to waste as a mere weapon of war. No, we save that for invasion,it can feed millions of Aussies, but any invader will be subject to scorched earth policy. Nothing edible for them unless flown in.
"I'm extremely surprised that the Aussies haven't (as far as we know) developed snake / spider armed anti-naval cluster munitions."
You mean like these cute little critters:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/22/world/giant-trapdoor-spider-species-discovered-australia-scn/index.html
We're working on it, OK
Amazing how fast these discussions degenerate into US bad / other countries not as bad or US good / other countries worse name calling. Rather than looking at what is happening.
Yes, the USA has a long history of using the iron fist inside the velvet glove to get what it wants. That doesn't mean that other countries don't also behave badly at times. The current Chinese administration is autocratic, secretive, bullies its own people, and is throwing its weight around in the region.
To dismiss this all as anti-Chinese propaganda put about by the perfidious Americans is no less naive than believing Uncle Sam always has everyone's best interests at heart. Interfering with the aircraft systems while they are in flight *is* serious and quite hostile and shouldn't be downplayed just because so far no-one has got hurt.
I wish people would grow up and stop looking at everything through the lens of whose "side" they think is right. We are facing an existential crisis from climate change, but it looks like the last two monkeys left on the planet will still be squabbling over some pointless shit or other.
The international distress frequency (normally on listening watch in oceanic regions because VHF is out of range and the radios are set to this because there’s nothing else of value to listen to, plus someone might need a hand) and 123.45 is inter pilot comms (proper usage of this one is a little more ambiguous). Now realistically these two are the only VHF frequencies in any sort of use over the oceans (which is probably why they’re being messed with).
Either way it’s a shit act.
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