China is still the world’s No. 2 economy and is still the monster of emerging markets, but regardless of those bonafides, Xi Jinping’s country is losing the trade war in nearly every way imaginable.
Reported Forbes. The particulars may not be too much of interest, but its noteworthy that, this one could be perceived as a Trump win, and bringing overall performance on a personal, as well as on a partisan level of involvement. If enough Republican wins come through, it will enhance Trump’s personal favor, and give him added political capital to boost his effort to at least compromise on the wall.
WW3 THREAT: China develops ‘impenetrable’ system too strong for hypersonic missiles
WW3 news: Xi Jinping
WW3 news: Xi Jinping (Image: GETTY)
A TOP Chinese defence strategist claims to have created an “Underground Steel Great Wall” defence to nullify the threat of future hypersonic weapons destroying their arsenal.
By BILL MCLOUGHLIN
PUBLISHED: 02:27, Tue, Jan 15, 2019
UPDATED: 02:38, Tue, Jan 15, 2019
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Qian Qihu, 82, won the prestigious 2018 State Preeminent Science and Technology Award due to his contributions to national defence for the system which he described as the country’s “last national defence line”. The system is a series of elaborate defensive facilities located deep under the mountains and reduces the vulnerability of entrances and exists to those facilities. Qian told the Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper The Global Times: “The development of the shield must closely follow the development of spears.
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“Our defence engineering has evolved in a timely manner as attack weapons pose new challenges.”
If the country’s missile interception system, anti-missile system or air defences fail, this steel wall will be able to thwart attacks.
The defence system is a huge addition for Beijing as it can withstand hypersonic missiles - weapons which America and Russia are heavily developing.
Qian also added that hypersonic weapons can penetrate any other current anti-missile installation in the world, putting China once step ahead of its competitors.
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According to a report from CNBC last March, Vladimir Putin debuted new nuclear and hypersonic weapons which he described as “invincible”.
Mr Putin apparently unveiled the Kinzhal hypersonic cruise missile, touted as hitting Mach 10 - 10 times the speed of sound - speeds, while the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, is said to be capable of travelling up to Mach 20.
In August, China ’s Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics announced that it had tested a missile which they described was capable of riding its own shock waves and reached a speed of Mach 6 - six times the speed of sound.
The US is still trying to keep up in the race for the new missile and US Deputy Secretary of Defence Patrick Shanahan said: “We are going to fly sooner and more often than people have ever expected.”
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Washington is also planning to loosen US nuclear weapon constraints and is developing low-yield nuclear warheads.
As America looks to try and keep up with it’s two major rivals, relations between America and the other two powers have eroded.
Washington has accused Moscow of intervening in sovereign affairs while the FBI is also investigating claims that Trump worked on behalf of Putin.
In terms of US-China relations, the two countries remain locked in a trade war while China has continued to flex its muscle in the South China Sea.
Copyright ©2019 Express Newspapers.
Russian media threatens Europe with 200-megaton nuclear ‘doomsday’ device
Alex Lockie Jan 14, 2019, 5:00 PM
RIA Novosti/Reuters
Russian media appeared to threaten Europe and the world by saying that a new nuclear torpedo could create towering tsunami waves and destroy vast swaths of Earth’s population.
A Russian professor told a Russian paper that the new torpedo could create waves 1,300 to 1,600 feet high and wipe out all life nearly 1,000 miles inland with an alleged 200-megaton nuclear warhead.
The US has no defenses against such a weapon.
Russia and its media often overstate the capability and meaning of their nuclear weapons, but Russia really did build this new nuclear weapon, which suggests they take the hype seriously.
Russian media appeared to threaten Europe and the world with an article in MK.ru, saying that a new nuclear torpedo could create towering tsunami waves and destroy vast swaths of Earth’s population.
Russia’s “Poseidon” nuclear torpedo, which leaked in 2015 before being confirmed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2018, represents a different kind of nuclear weapon.
The US and Russia have, since the end of World War II, fought to match and exceed each other in a nuclear arms race that resulted in both countries commanding fleets of nuclear bombers, submarines, and silos of intercontinental missiles all scattered across each country.
But Russia’s Poseidon takes a different course.
“Russia will soon deploy an underwater nuclear-powered drone which will make the whole multi-billion dollar system of US missile defense useless,” MK.ru said, according to a BBC translation, making reference to the missile shield the US is building over Europe.
“An explosion of the drone’s nuclear warhead will create a wave of between 400-500 (1,300-16,00 feet) meters high, capable of washing away all living things 1,500 (932) kilometers inland,” the newspaper added.
Previously, scientists told Business Insider that Russia’s Poseidon nuke could create tsunami-sized waves, but pegged the estimate at only 100-meter-high (330 feet) waves.
While all nuclear weapons pose a tremendous threat to human life on Earth because of their outright destructive power and ability to spread harmful radiation, the Poseidon has unique world-ending qualities.
What makes Poseidon more horrific than regular nukes
An LGM-30 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile being serviced in a silo.Department of Defense via Federation of American Scientists
The US designed its nuclear weapons to detonate in the air above a target, providing downward pressure. The US’ nuclear weapons today have mainly been designed to fire on and destroy Russian nuclear weapons that sit in their silos, rather than to target cities and end human life.
But detonating the bomb in an ocean not only could cause tsunami waves that would indiscriminately wreak havoc on an entire continent, but it would also increase the radioactive fallout.
Russia’s Poseidon missile is rumored to have a coating of cobalt metal, which Stephen Schwartz, an expert on nuclear history, said would “vaporize, condense, and then fall back to earth tens, hundreds, or thousands of miles from the site of the explosion.”
Potentially, the weapon would render thousands of square miles of Earth’s surface unlivable for decades.
“It’s an insane weapon in the sense that it’s probably as indiscriminate and lethal as you can make a nuclear weapon,” Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, told Business Insider.
Can Russia take over the world with this weapon? No.
A briefing slide of the alleged Status-6 nuclear torpedo captured from Russian television.BBC
MK.ru quoted a professor as saying the Poseidon will make Russia a “world dictator” and that it could be used to threaten Europe.
“If Europe will behave badly, just send a mini-nuclear powered submarine there with a 200-megaton bomb on board, put it in the southern part of the North Sea, and ‘let rip’ when we need to. What will be left of Europe?” the professor asked.
While the Russian professor may have overstated the importance of the Poseidon, as Russia already has the nuclear firepower to destroy much of the world and still struggles to achieve its foreign-policy goals, the paper correctly said that the US has no countermeasures in place against the new weapon.
US missile defenses against ballistic missiles have only enough interceptors on hand to defend against a small salvo of weapons from a small nuclear power like North Korea or Iran. Also, they must be fired in ballistic trajectories.
Read more: US ballistic missile defense just doesn’t work - but we keep spending billions and billions on it
But the US has nuclear weapons of its own that would survive Russia’s attack. Even if Russia somehow managed to make the whole continent of Europe or North America go dark, submarines on deterrence patrols would return fire and pound Russia from secret locations at the bottom of the ocean.
Russia’s media, especially MK.ru, often use hyperbole that overstates the country’s nuclear capabilities and willingness to fight.
But with the Poseidon missile, which appears custom-built to end life on Earth, Russia has shown it actually does favor spectacularly dangerous nuclear weapons as a means of trying to bully other countries.
- Copyright © 2018 Insider Inc.
WASHINGTON — There are few things that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years.
Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia
Image
Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States.
Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.
Now, the president’s repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials amid growing concern about Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep his meetings with Mr. Putin secret from even his own aides, and an F.B.I. investigation into the administration’s Russia ties.
A move to withdraw from the alliance, in place since 1949, “would be one of the most damaging things that any president could do to U.S. interests,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, an under secretary of defense under President Barack Obama.
“It would destroy 70-plus years of painstaking work across multiple administrations, Republican and Democratic, to create perhaps the most powerful and advantageous alliance in history,” Ms. Flournoy said in an interview. “And it would be the wildest success that Vladimir Putin could dream of.”