Communist China has thrown down the gauntlet in the escalating battle for global military dominance.
In the latest salvo, Beijing launched a next-generation aircraft carrier on Friday outside Shanghai as it continues to bolster its military might, The Associated Press reported.
The most impressive aspect of this project is that the Type 003 ship, which was christened the “Fujian,” was designed and built entirely in China.
In the past, China repurposed an old Soviet ship to construct its first naval carrier, the AP reported. Its second carrier was built in China, but used a Soviet design, according to the AP.
The Type 003 ship is a domestic Chinese creation, the AP reported, from the initial stages to the final product.
This is the first aircraft carrier designed and built by the Chinese, using a Chinese design. It is apparently tailor-made for China’s ambitions as a regional and global power.
Some military experts took note of the Type 003 as a landmark breakthrough for Beijing.
“This is an important milestone for China’s military-industrial complex,” Ridzwan Rahmat, a Singapore-based analyst with the defense intelligence company Janes, told the AP.
“This shows that Chinese engineers are now able to indigenously manufacture the full suite of surface combatants associated with modern naval warfare, including corvettes, frigates, destroyers, amphibious assault ships, and now an aircraft carrier,” he said.
The Type 003 ship’s capabilities are on par with the most advanced U.S. carriers, as it is equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry and aircraft-launch technology, according to the AP.
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“The Type 003 employs a catapult launch, which experts had said appears to be an electromagnetic-type system like one originally developed by the U.S. Navy,” the AP reported.
“Such a system puts less stress on the aircraft than older steam-type catapult launch systems, and the use of a catapult means that the ship will be able to launch a broader variety of aircraft.”
This breakthrough isn’t surprising, since the CCP has been overhauling its army and navy for than a decade as part of a plan to operate globally instead of being geographically restricted to areas near mainland China.
The Chinese Communist Party’s ambitious plan to overtake the United States as the preeminent global superpower has accelerated under President Joe Biden and his failed administration.
Numerous high-level federal officials have sounded the alarm, warning that the United States is losing its edge in the race for technological superiority.
Preston Dunlap, the Trump-era chief architect officer of the U.S. Air Force and Space Force, resigned in April, saying the United States has become complacent and weak.
Top Pentagon official Preston Dunlap, founding chief architect officer of the U.S. Air Force and Space Force since 2019, announced his resignation. In doing so, he released a frightening warning about the state of readiness of the US Defense Department.https://t.co/GxBZt9yV0c
— John Peterson (@sailinjackvip) April 25, 2022
In his resignation letter, Dunlap urged the U.S. to fortify its national defense and not “[l]ull ourselves into complacency, when we should be running on all cylinders.”
He also slammed the Defense Department’s arcane bureaucracy, which he said inhibits innovation and stifles progress.
Dunlap also said the DOD’s internal squabbling and petty interdepartmental feuding undermines national security.
He echoed the sentiments of former Pentagon official Nicolas Chaillan, who resigned in protest in September 2021 after expressing frustration with America’s lagging technological competitiveness.
In a sometimes-explosive departure letter, Chaillan — who was appointed the Air Force’s first chief software officer in 2018 during the Trump administration — wrote that it was pointless for him to continue in his position, given what he considered the U.S. military’s misguided priorities.
In an interview with the Financial Times in October, he said U.S. cyberdefenses were at “kindergarten level” and made the country an easy target for large-scale hacking operations that could cripple the nation’s infrastructure and banking systems.
If the top software expert in the Air Force says we’re falling behind in the race to build tech, all Americans should be concerned. https://t.co/9qXpq6uycf
— The Western Journal (@WestJournalism) October 12, 2021
He said he considered it a foregone conclusion that China will supplant the United States as the world’s pre-eminent superpower because it’s already on track to overtake the U.S. when it comes to artificial intelligence and cyberwarfare.
“We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years,” Chaillan said. “Right now, it’s already a done deal. It is already over in my opinion.”
When all is said and done, the Biden administration’s legacy will be runaway inflation, terrifying crime spikes, mass illegal immigration and the collapse of America’s longtime status as the most powerful nation in the world.
And China’s advances continue.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
