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China's New Military Equipment Revealed - The PLA Parade and its Modernisation Speed Run

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A recent military parade in China showcased a significant array of new and modernized military equipment, highlighting the rapid pace and broad scope of the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) modernization efforts across nuclear forces, conventional armor, counter-drone systems, and naval aviation.

Around the world, September's been a

massive month for countries and

companies demoing new military

equipment. Tens of thousands of people

made their way to London for the DSCI

exhibition. I was one of them. And

Russia staged an impromptu drone tech

demo over Poland. We'll talk about both

of those soon enough. But before either

of those, eyes of analysts around the

world turned to China, where the

People's Liberation Army marked what it

calls the 80th anniversary of the

victory of the Chinese People's War of

Resistance against Japanese aggression

and the World Anti-Fascist War by

showing off a huge array of military

systems, many of which had never been

seen in public before. And so today, I'm

going to zoom in on just some of what

Beijing decided to show off to the world

and ask what it might tell us about the

progress of China's military

modernization speedrun. To do that,

we'll start with everyone's favorite,

the background and caveats. Why this

parade happened, what it can tell us,

and what it can't tell us. And then

we're going to move on to the metal.

With so much having been shown off, I'm

going to focus on four themes that I

think are worth a closer look. Nuclear

forces, next generation armor, counter

drone systems, and naval aviation. And

for each of those, talk a little bit

about what we saw, what it means, and

why that might matter. Then at the end,

we'll zoom out for a bit of a big

picture look, asking not just what we

saw during this particular parade, but

what we know about PLA modernization

more broadly and what that might mean

for how we think about China as a major

military power both now and going into

the future.

Okay, let's start context. Why did China

just show off a bunch of new military

equipment? And how should we interpret

that? The first thing to say is this was

an event of deep political significance.

the 80th anniversary of the end of World

War II, or as Chinese media puts it in

English, the 80th anniversary of the

victory in the Chinese people's war of

resistance against Japanese aggression

and the world anti-fascist war. That

makes it a parade, a demonstration, not

a military exercise. And so, I think

it's important as we go through the

various equipment that were shown or not

shown to give some thought as to why

that decision might have been made from

a political and narrative shaping

perspective. Essentially, don't assume

that every high significant system was

shown off at this parade or that every

system shown off at this parade was of

high significance. In terms of what was

showed off, there was a lot of variance

in terms of where these systems were on

their development and introduction

journey. Some of this was stuff that

we've known to be in service in

reasonable numbers for years at this

point. While in other cases, these were

systems we were seeing for the first

time. Given that, a lot of the coverage

I've seen in this event flags the need

to acknowledge some of the unknowns

here. As with any military parade or

trade show, just because a piece of

equipment was showed off doesn't

necessarily guarantee that it performs

as its data sheet or media release might

suggest, nor that it's available or in

service in large numbers. Indeed, if

being in a parade was proof that a piece

of equipment was everything a government

said it was, then by now the T14 Armada

would be the standard tank of the

Russian ground forces. There's also

always going to be a limit on how much

technical information you can

confidently gather based just on a

parade driveby. Many of China's new

missile systems, for example, like the

DF-61 or the CJ-1000, were displayed in

canisters on their tails, their

transporter erector launchers. In cases

like that, we can see what Beijing says

about a particular system, but

ultimately we can't see inside the

canister. We haven't observed these

systems being test fired, and so there's

always a chance that there's some smoke

mirrors or exaggeration involved. That

being the caveat though, I want to stick

an asterisk on the asterisk because one

of my concerns with some of the coverage

I've seen around Chinese military

developments is the tendency to

sometimes move from healthy skepticism

of those capabilities to dismissal of

them. If I was to create a generalized

flowchart of what you might call China

dismissal syndrome when it comes to

military equipment, it might go

something like this. Firstly, it starts

with the assertion that China couldn't

possibly build that type of system. Say

an aircraft carrier, for example. They

can only buy it in from abroad. Often

those assessments might attach to things

that historically are particularly

difficult from an industrial

perspective, like high performance jet

engines for fighters. Then of course,

China goes on to build one. Once China

builds something, the assertion might be

that it's just an inferior copy of

something else. We've seen that logic

attached to a lot of Chinese-built

versions of Soviet and later Russian

military equipment. The two rebuttals to

that would probably be that first,

something doesn't have to be original in

order to be very effective. And

secondly, we have plenty of precedent

for Chinese derivatives improving on the

original design. Speaking of Chinese

fighters back in 2020, for example,

Russi observed that quote, "The J16 and

J11D are evidence that Chinese

derivatives have now surpassed

Russian-built flankers with superior

multi-roll capabilities, longer ranged

and more effective missiles, and

operational ISISA radars." End quote.

But hey, the argument might go, it's

still a derivative. it doesn't reflect

an original Chinese design until

original Chinese designs are fielded and

there are plenty of them at this point

at which point you reach the assertion

that the system probably doesn't work or

at the very least it isn't battle tested

and in some cases it may be true but

that doesn't make it a safe or

reasonable assumption to assume that

anything that isn't battleproven can't

or doesn't perform to spec when the

export version of China's PL-15 airware

missile was used in the recent fighting

between Pakistan and India for example

it appears to have proven itself to be a

very dangerous ous missile with a long

reach. Missile ranges are obviously very

murky and always context dependent, but

it was generally reported that PL15E,

the version Pakistan had, had a range of

about 145 km. And reports citing Indian

officials suggest that they thought the

threat range was about 150 km. But

during some of the air combat we saw,

it's reported PL15 may have been used

beyond that range, including in a

claimed incident reported on by Reuters

involving the engagement of an Indian

Air Force Rafale. According to that

Reuters report, quote, "The PL15 that

hit the Rafal was fired from around 200

km away according to Pakistani officials

and even further according to Indian

officials." With Russy's Justin Bronc

noting that quote, "The Indians were not

expecting to be shot at and the PL-15 is

clearly very capable at long range." End

quote. which served as a bit of a

reminder that when you're not sure about

the exact performance of a system, it

might be the case that the adversary is

understating rather than overstating

what it can actually do. And given the

enormous success of Chinese

manufacturers across so many fields, it

seems very strange to me to be surprised

every time China produces capable

equipment and the potential adversaries

or competitors would generally be much

better off. Assuming that when China

sets out in a serious way to solve a

particular technical problem or design a

particular piece of equipment, given

their resources and capabilities,

they're probably eventually going to get

there. And so, while it's certainly

possible that some of the equipment we

go through today might not be as

operational or as effective as is

sometimes claimed, in my opinion, any

comments saying that this is a

fiberglass force are demonstrabably

wrong. And China's military

modernization is a very real effort

backed by the largest manufacturing base

on the planet. It needs to be treated

with respect and evaluated as such.

There are a couple of reasons then that

a parade like this might be useful to us

as observers. It might give us clues

about the direction Chinese military

equipment development is heading, how

they perceive their strategic challenges

or the future of the battlefield, and

what solutions or equipment they're

pursuing to address them. With the pace

China's military has been modernizing,

today's concept prototype or low rate

initial production example with some

technical rough edges can pretty quickly

become a mass-produced cornerstone of

the PLA's inventory. Essentially, it

makes sense to pay attention to what's

displayed today to gather some clues

about what might be deployed tomorrow.

So for the first equipment category to

get a detailed look, let's talk nukes.

You could argue that all arms of the

Chinese military are going through rapid

equipment transformation, but in terms

of raw qualitative and quantitative

growth, not much can compete with the

Chinese nuclear forces. While China's

been a nuclear weapon state since the

mid 1960s, it spent the overwhelming

majority of that time with one of the

smaller global inventories. A 2015 Rand

report assessed that in 1996, 2003, or

2010, if the United States had launched

a first strike against China's nuclear

forces, China would only have had a low

confidence in its nuclear second strike

capability, meaning they may have got

few, if any, shots off in response. In

2021, the Bulletin the Atomic Scientists

estimated the Chinese nuclear inventory

at about 350 warheads. In terms of raw

numbers, that put it ahead of but in the

same ballpark as countries like the

United Kingdom or France. By 2025, there

were more missiles in the force that

could reach the United States, and the

estimated warhead count now started with

a six. While the ground leg was scaling

up, though, both in terms of numbers and

reach, the air and naval elements of

China's nuclear forces were

significantly more limited. The aircraft

in PLAAF inventory that presumably would

have been responsible for delivering any

airdrop nuclear weapon was the H6

bomber, a non-stalthy subsonic aircraft

based on the Soviet F16, which entered

service in the 1950s. Not exactly the

kind of thing you might trust to carry

nuclear weapons deep into enemy

territory. The naval arm was

considerably better, anchored on a fleet

of six active Type 94 SSBNs, with the

potential weakness from a deterrence

perspective not being so much the

submarines themselves, but the missile

they carried. The main system in Chinese

service, the JL2, reportedly has a range

of about 7,000 km, which is a bloody

long way, but not, as you can see on the

map here, enough to enable a Chinese

submarine to get a warhead to, for

example, the United States West Coast

from Chinese waters. To get in range,

they'd obviously need to patrol out

further, but doing so might impose risks

that could potentially undermine

Beijing's confidence in its second

strike capability. The nuclear delivery

systems that China showed off at the

parade provide a pretty clear steer, I'd

argue, on some of the ways China is

trying to address these potential

strategic shortfalls. We saw a new

submarine launch ballistic missile, JL3,

which is a very similar form factor to

JL2 since it's meant to fit to the same

missile launch tubes, but which is

reportedly meant to have a range closer

to 10,000 km. meaning that according to

one US military assessment, it would

give the PRC the quote ability to target

the continental United States from

latoral waters. End quote. And in that

sense, you could argue this mirrors the

development we've seen from the French

nuclear forces, who've also moved

towards a longer range submarine launch

ballistic missile again with the

potential benefit of enabling their

ballistic missile submarines to provide

survivable second strike from much safer

waters. So that's the submarine

survivability problem potentially

covered. What about the Air Force?

Because until China is actually able to

field its next generation stealth

bomber, the H20, the H6 is what they

got. And as a general rule, if you're

trying to make an aircraft survivable,

but can't make it either stealthy or

quick. The remaining go-to option is

generally standoff, which is potentially

where this thing comes in. The JL1 air

launched ballistic missile. ALBMs are

not strictly a new concept. The US was

developing this thing, the Skybolt,

during the Cold War, and China's already

believed to have given their H6s access

to a smaller conventional anti-ship

ballistic missile. But if equipped with

a nuclear warhead, as many analysts

assess it might be, what JL1 would

potentially do is give the H6 the

ability to deliver nuclear strikes from

beyond the ability of most targets to

respond. And while new systems like this

might provide a significant leg up to

the air and naval arms of China's

nuclear triad, that doesn't mean we

didn't see anything for the

traditionally dominant ground leg. Far

from it. For example, China's heavy

liquidfueled silobbased ICBM, the DF5,

appears to be getting a new version.

While extremely difficult to verify, as

frankly a lot of this is going to be,

one of the key generally assessed

upgrade areas, is going to be range with

Chinese state media claiming this thing

has the capacity to reach out 20,000 km

or more than 12,000 mi, at which point

the system is essentially an everywhere

from anywhere weapon. In numerical terms

though, DF5 is not the backbone of the

current Chinese ICBM fleet. And there

are plenty of reasons you wouldn't want

it to be. It's very big. It's very

heavy. It's very expensive, and it comes

with some of the limitations inherent to

liquid fueled missiles. Historically,

liquid fueled missiles are a bit of a

pain to work with. Rocket fuels are

unpleasant materials to deal with in

general, and historical liquid fuel

designs couldn't be kept fueled for long

periods and could take a significant

period of time to fuel up when it came

time to make them ready for launch. It's

claimed that DF5C may have made

improvements in this area so it can be

kept in a ready state more of the time,

but the general expectation is it'll

remain a relatively specialized part of

the Chinese ICBM fleet and not be

universally deployed across all the new

missile silos that China's been in the

process of building. Instead, it's

generally expected that a lot of the

hundreds of new silos that China has

been constructing are going to be filled

with solid fueled missiles. potentially

this system which we saw in public for

the first time during the parade DF-31BJ

with it being reported that that J in

the designation likely stands for the

word Jing literally meaning well but

which has been used by the PLA to

describe missile silos. So DF-31 version

B silo variant and then finally rounding

out the section we had a new road mobile

ICBM DF-61.

Now, as you can see on the right there,

the visual differences between the

DF-61T we saw in 2025 and the DF41T we

first saw in 2019 basically comes down

to a change in paint job. That makes any

attempt to guess about potential

improvements in performance based on the

physical features alone pretty much dead

on arrival. Without the power of the W

behind you, you can't just paint

something a different color in order to

make it faster or go further. But for

what it's worth, Chinese sources claim

that this system has the kind of

capabilities you might expect. Basically

providing the same capability for China

that RS24 does for Russia. In terms of

the groundbased missiles, the

overwhelming focus here was on the

ICBMs, the stuff that could potentially

cover the distance from the Chinese

mainland to the continental United

States rather than China's more

intermediate range regional delivery

systems. As for the potential motives

behind that decision or what it might be

intended to signal, I'll happily leave

to the audience because instead I want

to close out this nuclear section by

essentially asking what does this mean

and why does it potentially matter.

In terms of the what, even if we hadn't

seen these systems, I'd argue the

overall pattern is fairly clear. The PRC

is building towards a full mature

nuclear triad. Its confidence in its

ability to launch a survivable second

strike, even in the face of a

counterforce first strike, is likely to

be growing. And its ability to deliver

warheads, especially over very long

distances, to targets, for example, in

Europe or the continental United States

is significantly growing. And the pacing

here is pretty stark when you compare it

to, for example, the United States.

After years of delays and cost overruns,

the first missiles are now expected to

enter service in the 2030s. And the

government accountability officer

suggested the Air Force take a look at

the possibility of keeping the Minute

Man 3, which ended service in the 1970s

in service to at least some degree out

to the year 2050. While there are

obviously some complexities involved, I

think it does give some sense of

perspective to the breadth and speed of

China's ICBM development and deployment

efforts. Overall, you could argue

essentially that if there were tiers of

nuclear weapon states, China would be in

the process of trying to move between

two of them. If it was previously the

case that it was clearly Russia and the

United States on top with China more a

peer of the likes of France and the

United Kingdom, China is now probably

somewhere in between those two

categories still a long way from being a

peer of the two nuclear superpowers. But

with the rate its warhead inventory has

been growing, the gap is certainly

narrowing. And even if all the powers

involved hopefully have the intention of

never actually using their nuclear

inventories, that potentially has

strategic implications. By narrowing the

nuclear balance between the PRC and the

United States, it might leave Beijing

feeling more strategically confident.

I'd argue Russia has been very

effectively able to use the threat or

perceived threat of nuclear escalation

to control Western intervention in

Ukraine, deterring allied states from

intervening directly and also gating the

types and quantities of weapons

provided, especially in the critical

years of 2022 and 2023. And it might be

that some in Beijing believe that a

stronger nuclear arsenal might encourage

their potential adversaries to

self-deter in that same way. It also

potentially helps future proof Chinese

military capabilities against American

investments in ballistic missile

defense. As we covered in our episode on

the Golden Dome in general when it comes

to missile defense, the offense is much

cheaper than the defense. And so while

it might have been plausible that with

significant investment eventually the

United States could develop a missile

defense capability that would have been

sufficient to hold back the nuclear

capability of say China in the early

2000s by adding many more warheads and

types of delivery systems to the force

the way they're doing. It probably

becomes incredibly unlikely that the

American missile defense system would

ever get to the point where it was good

enough to rob the Chinese nuclear force

of its deterrent value. The third point

is what this might potentially mean for

the international system of nuclear arms

control which frankly was already in

pretty rough shape. With a couple of

exceptions like the NNPT itself, most of

the major agreements on things like

warhead counts and delivery systems have

been negotiated as bilateral agreements

either between the United States and

Soviet Union or the United States and

Russian Federation. The system wasn't

designed, frankly, with China as a major

nuclear player in mind, and there are

currently no agreements between Beijing

and Washington restricting things like

delivery system or warhead count. The

reason that's potentially problematic is

because it provides yet another pressure

on the treaties that do exist. If you're

the United States and your party to an

agreement with Russia, which limits your

warhead count, but China is rapidly

expanding its forces, then that might

provide an incentive for you to pull out

of those agreements so you can build up

your forces and maintain a level of

nuclear advantage. With the New START

agreement due to expire in early 2026,

that's not an irrelevant consideration.

If you subscribe to the radical view

that large scale nuclear buildups are

generally not a great thing for

humanity, then that dynamic might be of

some concern. If you're India for

example and China builds up its nuclear

forces to counterbalance the United

States then from New Delhi's perspective

the discrepancy between China and

India's nuclear forces is going to

widen. That might encourage India to

invest in increasing its warhead counts

and diversifying its delivery systems

which might restore the balance via v

China somewhat but at the same time it

would shift the balance between say

India and Pakistan and so the effects of

any buildup might ripple out and have an

impact on global inventories not just

Chinese ones which brings us back to the

final point of why this matters. China

isn't just diversifying and modernizing

its delivery systems. It is, as we noted

earlier, adding a lot more warheads. At

the start of the 2020s, it was estimated

that China had about 350. Current figure

is north of 600, and US estimates

suggest that by 2030, it will be over

a,000. And while that might give us a

pretty clear sense of the rate of

change, it doesn't give us a clear idea

of where the intended end point is. It's

clear based on what we saw at the parade

that China is building towards having a

very modern, diversified, capable

nuclear triad. What isn't clear yet is

just how big they intend that triad to

be. Moving on from the nuclear to the

conventional, then let's talk ground

combat systems. Because over the course

of the parade, we saw a lot of metal on

display. At the head of the parade, for

example, was nothing too radical. A new

upgrade package for China's Type 99 main

battle tank. For reasons that'll become

clear in just a moment, you might think

of this as the heavy MBT of the Chinese

military, but it's certainly not heavy

by Western standards. In its A variant,

it tipped the scales at about 55 tons,

more than 10 less than recent model

LEOs, for example, but notably heavier

than recent model Russian tanks, at

least those that didn't have half a

residential building welded to them.

That China would continue to upgrade the

Type 999 isn't surprising. The first

tanks are believed to have entered

service in 2001, the first A models in

2011, and so by global standards, this

is still a pretty young fleet that the

PLA is likely to keep in service for

years to come. But while this might be

one of the newer main battle tank

designs globally, it's still distinctly

a third generation MBT. The layout and

main gun, for example, aren't that

different from what you might see on a

T72. And so at the parade, the tanks

catching all the attention weren't the

Type 99s. It was the vehicles behind

them. This is what China is calling a

fourth generation MBT, the Type 100. And

based on what we've been told about its

features, I'd argue that's probably a

fair designation. There's no

international umpire defining exactly

what does or doesn't make a fourth

generation main battle tank, but Type

100 appears to feature a bunch of the

ones that regularly come up. It has a

hybrid electric drive system for

increased fuel efficiency, the ability

to operate more quietly with the added

advantage of making it much easier to

have a lot of electrical energy

available for any power hungry systems

that you want to bolt onto the vehicle.

And in that respect, the vehicle appears

to be covered in sensors. The crew are

shown wearing what have been claimed to

be augmented reality goggles, which is a

feature we've seen on some Western

armored vehicles to give crew the

ability to have essentially a 360° view

even while within the vehicle. And then

an interesting combination of offensive,

defensive, and layout features. In terms

of layout, the tank appears to have an

almost T14 ARA style arrangement. An

unmanned turret and all the crew we did

see nested in the hull of the vehicle.

The top of the turret mounts a remote

weapon station, but also eight tubes for

China's GL6 active protection system,

suggesting this might be a vehicle that

leans comparatively more on active as

opposed to traditional passive defenses,

that is its armor. That might be

particularly relevant because in terms

of size and weight, it appears Chinese

designers here have gone for something

smaller than Type 99. In part because of

the nature of its terrain, there are

certainly sections of the Chinese

frontier where you'd struggle to get a

full size main battle tank. China is one

of the major militaries out there that

currently operates both a main battle

tank and a light tank. This is China's

type 15 estimated to weigh somewhere

between 33 and 36 tons that's believed

to have entered service in 2018. Type

100 is generally assessed to be heavier

than that, somewhere in the 40 ton

range, but still significantly smaller

than the heavier type 99. And to confuse

its position in the main battle tank

light tank divide even more, the main

gun appears to be only a 105 millimeter,

which is significantly smaller than the

125 mm used by the Type 99, the 120 mm

used by most NATO tanks, and instead

more in line with the 105 mm used on the

Type 15. In that respect, you could

argue Type 100 appears to kip bash a

bunch of different ideas together. It's

in the same weight, range, and firepower

category as the American M10 Booker. has

a layout more akin to a T14 Armada and

the kind of sensors, active protection,

and information systems that you'll see

on a bunch of modern western AF

concepts. And critically, unlike those

first two, it doesn't appear to have

been cancelled. Another interesting

observation about Type 100 is it was

followed by a second type of vehicle

that appears to use the same basic hull.

This is what's being called the Type 100

support vehicle, and it appears to

follow essentially an infantry fighting

vehicle style layout. You have an

unmanned turret with an autoc cannon

arament. Again, a bunch of sensors, an

active protection system, and generally

a lot of the features you'd expect on a

modern vehicle design of this type. From

a manufacturing and sustainment

standpoint, there are plenty of reasons

you might want to build multiple types

of vehicles on the same basic platform.

The United States plan to do it with

their future combat systems program.

Russia plan to do it with the T14. The

Israelis currently do this with their

heavy Namir APC based on the Murda 4

tank chassis and the PLA appears to be

trying to do it with these two new

middleweight armored vehicles. On seeing

these vehicles, there's a few immediate

questions that stand out. There are

obvious ones around questions of exact

technical maturity or how many have been

built so far, but I think the more

interesting ones for me are going to be

doctrinal. Who gets these? you already

have units that get the regular MBTs or

the lighter type 15. So, I think it'll

be interesting to see who the ultimate

customer for this mobile protected fire

system if you're from the US Army or

medium tank if you're anyone else

ultimately turns out to be. Much less

ambiguous, I'd argue, is who the

ultimate customers for the next category

of vehicles are going to be because we

also saw the PLA show off three next

generation airborne AFS. So, I think

it's fair to suggest those will go to

the section of the Chinese military

that's happy to throw people and

equipment out the back of perfectly

functional aircraft. Now, before we look

at the vehicles themselves, there's an

important piece of context to note here.

The PLA's airborne forces already have

an airdropable if you can see it on the

right there. It's a very light BMD style

vehicle designation ZBD03.

By the armor and weight standards of

military vehicles, the Type03 isn't that

many steps removed from a particularly

angry go-kart. The weight's about 8

tons. The primary arm is a 30 mm cannon.

And like the Russian BMD, the protection

scheme against anything larger than

small arms is primarily based on a thick

shell of hopes and dreams. But more than

a decade after the Chinese Airborne got

their first Type 03s, the PLA started to

receive this thing, the Y20. This is the

PLA strategic airlifter, a rough

equivalent to the Boeing C17. And while

its introduction has had major

implications for the lift capacity of

the Chinese force overall, for the

Airborne specifically, it opens up the

option of lifting and potentially

dropping larger and heavier vehicles.

That perhaps goes some way to explaining

why the new airborne vehicles we saw at

the parade look a bit heavier and

chunkier than the old Type 03. In this

case, we saw three distinct vehicle

types, again, seemingly based on a

common chassis. There was what looked

like an IFV style variant with an autoc

cannon arament, active protection

system, missile system, and a bunch of

sensors. A dedicated APC variant that

appears to sacrifice firepower

potentially for more internal volume for

additional troops. And finally, what

appears to be a gun mortar variant.

Think an airdropable artillery vehicle

in the style the Russian 2S9. As at time

of recording, I haven't seen Chinese

media release designations for these

vehicles, but I do think it's

interesting to look at these vehicles

and the Chinese decision to show them

off in the context of some of what we've

seen out of the war in Ukraine. There,

Russia's airdropable AFS have had a very

difficult time as lightly protected

vehicles packed the gills with ammo.

They tend to blow up a lot from an

engineering perspective. In order to

make a vehicle that you can airdrop, you

have to make some pretty stark

sacrifices. In the context of the war in

Ukraine, then where Russia's

paratroopers have spent the overwhelming

majority of their time acting as elite

infantry, not jumping out the back of

helicopters or cargo planes behind the

lines. There's an argument to suggest

they would have been better off if

they've been issued with heavier stuff

like BMPs from the very start. Looking

at these Chinese vehicles, if they are

airdropable, it's doubtful the armor is

particularly thick. But you can still

see signs the designers might have

invested effort in trying to reduce that

vulnerability at least a little with the

big difference being the mounting of

that active protection system. That

might not stop the vehicle being

penetrated if it is hit by an anti-arm

munition or something like an FPV drone,

but it might be enough to stop the first

or second attempt actually making it to

the vehicle in the first place.

Regardless of how the Chinese GL6 APS

ultimately ends up performing, I suspect

that when it comes to future armored

vehicle design, we'll see more and more

reliance placed by designers on these

kind of active systems. Whether you're

talking about drones and laing

munitions, indirect fires, or top attack

munitions like ATGMs, it's increasingly

clear, I'd argue, that if you want to

design an armored vehicle that's

survivable on a modern battlefield, it's

not enough to just protect the front.

You need to worry about protecting all

hemispheres. And if you try and do that

just with slabs of passive armor, the

weight tax might just not be workable.

APS obviously have their disadvantages.

They can be expensive, and I've never

seen a slab of armor plate run out of

ammunition. But what we saw at the

parade certainly seems to suggest the

PLA sees some serious potential here.

There were other vehicles that were

showed off we could go through,

including a full suite of amphibious

armored vehicles, but by now that's

probably enough to make out a couple of

common themes. A lot of the armored

vehicles we saw tend to belong to common

families with multiple variants, place

an emphasis on tactical and strategic

mobility, incorporate active defense

systems, and often significant sensor

suites, unmanned turrets, remote weapon

stations, and a variety of similar

features we've seen pop up in a lot of

Western next generation AF concepts, but

not necessarily make their way onto a

huge range of vehicles that have

actually reached mass production. Not

every vehicle shown had those features,

obviously. The wheeled amphibious

vehicles we saw, for example, seem to

incorporate man turrets and no obvious

active protection system. But I'd

suggest what we did see in terms of

those features was notable enough. And

in that respect, I'd argue we're seeing

signs of Chinese armored vehicle

designers not just trying to keep up

with global development trends, but also

playing a role in pushing them forward

as well. From a planning perspective,

seeing vehicles like this also might

have implications. If you're a potential

Chinese competitor, you may have to

adjust your assumptions about where the

PLA can project certain types of armored

vehicles like main battle tanks and how

much combat power the units equipped

with them can potentially bring to the

table. A type 100 slogging it out with

the likes of M1 A2 SEV3 would be a very

different proposition, for example, if

it turned up in an area of operations

where most of its opponents were lighter

vehicles. Similarly, a new family of

airborne vehicles, if mass-produced and

deployed, would have a potential impact

on the combat power of China's

paratroopers, especially if those

vehicles have an effective active

protection system and are primarily

dealing with opposing forces reliant on

manportable anti-tank weapons. Think

ATGMs or shoulder fired rockets that APS

might be optimized to try and defeat.

and serious investments in that area

might demonstrate that Chinese military

leadership still very much value the

role they believe that airborne forces

might play in any potential future conflict.

conflict.

Of course, as the war in Ukraine is

arguably demonstrated, if you want your

shiny new armored vehicles or unarmored

vehicles or anything really to survive

on the modern battlefield, you really

need to have an answer for the drone and

load ammunition threat. One that

probably goes beyond just mounting an

APS with a couple of shots on most of

your armored vehicles. And while Chinese

forces obviously haven't been directly

fighting that war, you'd expect the PLA

to be very familiar with drones, the

threat they pose, and what they can do.

As of last year, the People's Republic

of China was the largest global producer

of civilian drones. The DJI Mavic has

been an absolute workhorse of the

tactical ISR function for both sides

during the war in Ukraine. And even as

Russia and Ukraine moved to ramp up

their production of their own domestic

drones, often that was with a

significant input of Chinese components.

The point is that through Chinese

industry, the PLA has access to a lot of

drone related talent. And we've seen

evidence that the PLA is leveraging that

talent in two directions. By becoming a

major adopter of military drones on one

hand, and understanding the importance

of good counter drones, so CUAS systems

on the other. And an observation I'd

raise out of this parade and other

things we've seen from the PLA is that

when it comes to picking a technological

winner, as far as CO solutions go, so

far, it basically looks like Beijing has

selected the all of the above option. We

saw a variety of new radars and sensors

that might help detect incoming threats.

electronic warfare systems that might be

effective against a lot of drones,

although obviously not those with things

like fiber optic cable connections and

then a full suite of hard kill systems

that might be able to deal with those

more stubborn targets. We saw what

appears to be a large high-powered

microwave system, which if you remember

the episode on directed energy weapons,

might be used to essentially fry the

electronics of an incoming threat. China

showed off various HPM systems over

time, although given the size of the one

on the right there, it would probably be

more suitable for defending fixed

installations or operating in rear areas

than as a maneuvering frontline asset.

It's notably significantly larger than

some of the systems we've seen showed

off by the United Kingdom, the US

Marines, or the US Air Force. But when

it comes to the directed energy weapons,

as with so many things, size can matter.

And so, all else being equal, you might

expect bigger system to translate into

bigger ZAP. One thing that really makes

HPM stand out as a potential anti- drone

option is they're essentially areaof

effect weapons. In Ukraine, you might

see a lot of FPVs or loading munitions

attacking in ones or twos, but I think

the expectation has to be in future that

you'll see more and more drone swarms,

formations of drones talking to each

other, acting together, and potentially

overwhelming whatever sort of defenses a

target might have. With the HPM, you

don't need to target an individual

drone. You don't necessarily even need

to be able to see an individual drone.

You just get to pick an area of sky and

declare it a drone-free zone. That

sounds great, but it can't really be an

acrosstheboard short-range air defense

solution. For one, while it can be

expensive, there are options to harden

targets against HPM attack. And at the

other end of the spectrum, frying the

brains of a target system doesn't work

if the target is sufficiently dumb. For

example, good luck jamming the guidance

system on an unguided shell or rocket.

But ammunition that might not care about

HPM attack might still care about bits

of it starting to melt, which is where

the PLA's high energy lasers probably

come in. Just as with HPMs, China is

believed to have a variety of HL systems

either in service or development.

They've exported laser systems,

including to Saudi Arabia. And there is

video out there claiming to be of at

least one Chinese laser system being

used against Ukrainian drones in Russia.

Compared to HPMs, lasers can only engage

one target at a time. Plus, they can be

a bit picky when it comes to weather

conditions, but because they're

imparting thermal energy, they can

potentially be effective against a wider

array of targets. There's a reason the

US Army wants to use a mobile laser

system to shoot down incoming artillery

rounds, not a HPM. At the parade, China

actually showed off multiple laser

systems. You can see a lighter example

on the right there. But the one I really

want to focus on here is this thing,

designated the LY1. According to Chinese

media, this somewhat beefy laser system

is primarily intended for naval use.

Ships generally make pretty attractive

directed energy weapon platforms because

factors like weight, energy generation,

and cooling are likely going to be less

of a problem for them than they would

for something like an aircraft or an

armored vehicle. And in that respect,

LY1 would fit in pretty well with some

of the other naval laser programs we're

seen experimented with around the world.

Think Dragon Fire for the United Kingdom

or Helios and other programs for the

United States Navy. But the way this

laser was displayed has led some

analysts to suggest it might be intended

for ground use as well. If Beijing just

wanted to show off the emitter, then

like some of the naval weapons we saw

elsewhere in the parade, it would have

been simple enough just to stick it on

the back of a truck and call it a day.

While this vehicle you can see it

displayed on appears incredibly large

enough to mount the kind of generators

and systems necessary to actually

operate a laser. That wouldn't be

without precedent. Multiple nations,

including Israel and the United States,

have tested mobile laser systems. But

this would certainly be on the larger

side compared to the likes of America's

striker mounted de Shorad. Obviously

with a large unarmored vehicle like

that, you're probably not looking at a

system you'd expect to see doing donuts

near the front line of Donetsk. But

defending high value infrastructure or

targets well behind the front lines

maybe. But if you're in a scenario where

the Star Wars solution to your CO

challenge won't work, there's always the

old school method of hitting something

with high-speed bits of metal until it

stops moving in ways you don't want it

to. To that end, we saw a bunch of

kinetic cos options running all the way

up the spectrum from APS and RWS on the

regular armored vehicles to dedicated

shorad platforms that included rather

typical self-propelled anti-aircraft gun

concepts where you have a gun system

paired with the radar and other sensors

necessary to point it where it needs to

point. But the modern trend for some

time has been to often pair a gun

system, which might have the advantage

of things like flexibility and cheaper

ammunition, with one or more different

types of missile system. Both larger

ones that you might use against targets

like fixedwing aircraft or helicopters,

and then also smaller, cheaper ones that

you might use specifically against small

drones. To illustrate, I've got some

examples up on the right there,

including a Russian Pansier and a

version of the German Sky Ranger 30. And

the US has systems like Vampire which

has been exported to Ukraine which gives

you a ground launched options for the

APKWS guided rockets. For their part,

China showed off this thing. This is a

wheeled vehicle which has been commonly

referred to as the FK 3000 which just

like some of the other systems out there

combines a gun with anti- drone

missiles. The difference being it's a

lot of anti- drone missiles. In total,

the vehicle mounts 24 box launchers. And

while it's difficult to see from that

photo, up close it looks like each of

those boxes is divided into four launch

cells. Potentially giving every vehicle

a magazine of 96 missiles on tap. If you

think you might be defending against one

or two drones, 96 interceptors per

vehicle is probably overkill. But if you

anticipate a future battlefield that's

absolutely infested with small drones

and laundering munitions, then maybe

that kind of loadout starts to make

sense. So what does all that mean? And

why does this potentially matter? I

think the big point here is that China

is very clearly taking the drone and

lamun munition threat very seriously.

They're not just coming up with one

countermeasure. They're coming up with a

bunch of them, integrating them to

different parts of the force, which all

else being equal makes it less likely

that the system has a single failure

point or the enemy is able to adapt to a

single system and make the overall force

vulnerable. The potential implication

there is it might be more difficult for

potential opponents of the PLA to rely

on drones and loader munitions as a kind

of hard counter. You might see scenarios

where drones are still very effective on

the battlefield, especially as they

continue to evolve. But if the

countermeasures catch up and the other

capabilities are there, they might not

be as dominant as we see in Ukraine.

From an investment perspective, there

also appears to be a degree of risk

mitigation and future proofing going on

here. Beijing isn't putting all their

eggs in one particular CAS basket.

They're investing across multiple lines

of effort and multiple technologies.

Although obviously only time will tell

how these various defense measures are

deployed, how they work in practice, at

what scale they're produced, and how

well they can deal with not just the way

the drone threat looks now, but the way

it looks in 5, 10, or 20 years. As with

so many military's counter drone

efforts, the investment and effort is

very clearly there. The jury is just

still out on how the technological and

doctrinal arms race will play out.

From little things that fly, I next want

to pivot to big things that fly.

Specifically with a couple of notes

about Chinese carrier aviation. While

internet debates over whether or not the

carrier is obsolete in an era of

longrange drones, hypersonics, and

anti-hship ballistic missiles will

obviously rage on, the signals we're

getting out of China definitely seem to

suggest the People's Liberation Army

Navy doesn't think so. And the theme I

wanted to raise here is China moving

from a country that has carriers, which

is a pretty wide club that includes

countries like Russia and India to a

country that has all the components

necessary to put together an

Americanstyle carrier airwing. Because

as a tool of effective power projection,

the carrier itself is just one piece of

the puzzle. Make no mistake, it's a

piece that China now has and is likely

to have more of in the future with the

type 03 carrier in the water and the

type 04 reported in the pipeline, which

might by some reports end up being

China's first nuclearpowered super

carrier. But the ability of the carrier

itself to affect targets is shaped by

the kind of aircraft it operates. Like

Russia's KNET, China's previous ski jump

scale carriers like the Shandong were

very limited in terms of the kind of

aircraft they could operate. In both

cases, you'd have one or more fourth

generation fighters. J15 for China or

Sukcoy 33 for Russia, for example. But a

lot of the other jobs had to be done by

helicopters. The Russians, for example,

relied on a Karm 31 helicopter for

airborne early warning. China's newer,

larger catapult equipped flat decks give

them more options. All else being equal,

you can launch fixedwing aircraft with a

larger payload if you fling them with a

catapult rather than relying on the cop

slope. And the type of aircraft you can

operate full stop also widens

considerably. And this parade

demonstrated many of the elements that

might make the future Chinese carrier

airwing look a lot more like their

American equivalents. The US Navy has a

fifth generation fighter, the navalized

version of the F-35. China gave us a

flyover by their J35, the country's

second fifth generation fighter and

likely the first one to be carrier

capable. Like many of the other elements

we've gone through today, this wasn't

really a surprise to us. We've

previously seen images, for example,

like this one of J35s with production

numbers suggesting that they're low rate

initial production airframes and a very

prominent shark motif on the tail fin,

which is something we've also seen

appear on China's J15 carrier fighters.

So J35 making its way into the fleet

wouldn't be unexpected, but it would

bring China into the very elite club of

countries that have a fifth generation

fighter on their carriers. The US Navy

also operates a dedicated electronic

warfare platform off its carriers, the

EA18 Growler, basically the EW version

of the Super Hornet. But we've

previously seen Beijing show off an

electronic warfare version of the J15,

which China's Ministry of National

Defense described back in November 2024

as being quote tasked with performing

electronic warfare operations similar in

broad form and function to the United

States Navy's EA18 Growler end quote.

thus expanding that naval aviation

toolkit even wider. And then finally at

the parade, we saw the public reveal of

another carrierbased system. Unlike the

Russians who have to rely on helicopters

for the job, countries like France and

the United States have dedicated

carrierbased early warning aircraft. In

their case, that's the E2-D Hawkeye,

which is obviously going to be able to

fly further and mount significantly more

powerful sensors than any helicopter. At

the parade, the Chinese appeared to show

off their entry into this carrierbased

airborne early warning and control

category. On the top right there, I have

an image of the American Hawkeye. And on

the bottom, the brand new and totally

original Chinese KJ600. Now, this may

not be a case where the Chinese aviation

sector wins any awards for originality.

But I'd also say from a strictly

military perspective, that's essentially

irrelevant. Hawkeye is a proven design

that works well, that's been flying from

catapult equipped carriers for decades.

The first A2s entered service back in

the 1960s, and in its latest versions,

it's still very much going strong. And

so, if you're a Navy that's moving into

the world of catapult equipped carriers

for the first time, perhaps it makes a

degree of engineering sense not to try

and reinvent the wheel, or in this case,

reinvent the flying radar system that

can deal with the rigors of carrier

operation. The core point is that

Chinese carrier air groups in the future

are likely to have a fixedwing sensor

platform that they can launch and

recover with all the benefits in terms

of awareness and command and control

that that kind of system brings. I think

it's also fair to assume that future

Chinese carrier air groupoups are going

to benefit from a lot of the unmanned

system development going on as well.

China showed off a variety of quite

large UK cavs, some which incorporated

stealth features and appeared designed

for supersonic flight that mirrors some

of the developments we've seen globally

towards so-called loyal wingman style

drones or CCAs in American parliament

where you might have large drones intend

to operate alongside the man fighters.

And indeed, while it's not linked to

carrier aviation, they also showed off

one other thing that I want to mention

because it represents a kind of global

first. This is the new two seat variant

of China's J20 Mighty Dragon. There's a

common feature across all the other

relevant fifth generation fighters out

there. F-35, F-22, J20, J35, Sukcoy 57

for Russia if you're feeling generous.

They're all single seaters. I generally

agree with a lot of the analysis out

there saying this probably isn't for

training purposes. China, the United

States, and all the F-35 operators out

there seem to have had no trouble

training plenty of pilots on those

platforms without a two-seater version

available. But I can imagine plenty of

reasons you might want to add a Wizo, a

weapon systems officer, to the second

seat of a fighter like this one. If your

intention is to have man J20s operating

alongside a bunch of unmanned platforms,

then you might get some benefit adding

some two-seaters into a formation so you

can have the second crew member help

manage all of those unmanned platforms.

Cognitive overload is a thing. And while

sensor fusion and mechanical assistance

might go some way towards alleviating

the problem, the PLAF might be taking

the view that sometimes the best

solution to a problem is simply another

pair of hands. The core point here is

that whether you're talking about

groundbased aviation or the carrier

fleet, we're starting to see Beijing

bring together all the pieces of a next

generation peer level capability. A new

generation of aircraft, drones to

support them, missiles for them to fire,

and critical enablers like Awax,

tankers, and electronic warfare aircraft

to support their operations. The so what

factor for the carrier fleet

specifically is that China is quite

predictably building up towards having a

mature diversified naval airfleet. One

that has a lot of the same types of

tools as the US Navy and thus one which

over time might have a greater and

greater ability to project power

overseas. Bluewater carrier operations

aren't a simple thing and not the kind

of national capability you can build up

overnight. But China hasn't been

building this capability overnight.

They've incrementally pieced it together

over the course of decades. It started

with the purchase of a rustedout old

Soviet carrier that gave them an

opportunity to practice the basics. From

there, they first built a copy of the

Soviet style ship, then the Type 03 that

went well beyond anything the Soviet

Union or the Russian Federation has ever

produced, and we should expect the next

ships in the fleet to continue to push

that evolution ever further. China's

carrier force is still obviously a long

way from being a direct peer of the US

Navy. But I think the parade provides

another bit of evidence of just how

quickly they're narrowing that gap. And

I half jokingly expect that if you're

one of the people in the US Navy whose

job it is to lobby Congress for funding

for the Navy's next generation fighter

program, demonstrations like this one

probably make your job ever so slightly

easier. In terms of why this might

matter, while a lot of the public

analysis tends to focus on the role of

the Chinese Navy in any large-scale

conflict against a peer opponent, that's

not at the core of the reason I chose to

give a segment over to carrier aviation

this episode, rather than things like

China's new air defense systems or the

various anti-hship missiles it showed

off, both of which might be highly

relevant in that kind of scenario. What

carrier aviation might offer, however,

that many of those other assets can't,

is the ability to project power. We've

seen for decades that whenever there's

an event that pops up anywhere in the

world that the United States wants to

tip one way or the other, one of the

tools it often turns to is the ability

to cruise 100,000 tons of American

sovereign territory off the coast of the

flash point in question and then use the

presence of all that striking power to

shape how events unfold. The People's

Liberation Army Navy is still a

significant way off from being able to

project carrier groups around the world

in the way the United States Navy can.

But between new carriers, new aircraft,

and greater experience operating them,

it's clear they're getting closer to

having that kind of great power tool

available to them. And time will tell

how that capability and with it

Beijing's ability to influence events in

its region and beyond ultimately evolves

in the years to come. But as we get

towards the end of this episode, I want

to move the focus away from individual

pieces of equipment and instead zoom out

a bit and dawn, if you like, the defense

economics hat. From that perspective,

I'd argue debating the exact readiness

or capabilities of any individual piece

of PLA equipment is obviously important,

but I don't think it should ever come at

a cost of acknowledging the broader

trend here. That in the 21st century,

the PLA has been succeeding in

modernizing its equipment at an

extraordinary rate. This is a force that

in a relatively short period has gone

from being reliant on derivatives of the

Soviet MIG 21 to becoming the second

country on the planet to design and

mass-produce a fifth generation fighter.

And while the transformation of the

overall force clearly isn't complete

yet, that wasn't Beijing's stated goal.

Those tended to focus on a much longer

timeline, modernizing the force by 2035

and becoming a worldclass military power

capable of fighting and winning wars by

2049. And if we're trying to project how

likely it is that the PLA is going to

maintain momentum towards those goals, I

think it's important to acknowledge some

of the defense industrial advantages

they're working with and what sets a

country like China apart from, for

example, Russia. If you're looking at

the process of equipment modernization

in a very general sense, there's a

couple of places that countries can

encounter bottlenecks. If you want to do

it with your own material, you need to

have the technical talent necessary to

develop equipment that works, the funds

necessary to drive that process and then

procure it. And then you need to have

the industrial capacity necessary to

build and deliver it. Fall over at any

of those gates or any of the milestones

in between and you can run into trouble.

Russia, for example, especially pre2022,

had a lot of military technical talent.

It inherited a lot of knowhow and

infrastructure from the Soviet Union,

and it's very clear if you look across a

range of Russian defense projects that

they don't have any difficulty coming up

with interesting ideas and concepts.

What's desperately missing is the

funding necessary to actually refine

those designs and the industrial

capacity necessary to actually build

them, especially without reliance on

imported components. Meanwhile, if you

look at various NATO states, there are

plenty of designs out there that in

terms of their raw performance are

absolute world beaters. The technical

talent is very much there and compared

to Russia, often there's going to be a

lot more funding available. And so, in

some cases, the bottleneck and a major

cost driver becomes industrial capacity.

The US Navy, for example, has a

fantastic submarine design in the form

of the Virginia class. They want more of

them. They're spending a lot of money on

them, but the shipyards and contractors

just can't turn the boats out as quickly

as the Navy or Congress might want them

to. That's not to say that every NATO

design is a good one, that funding is

infinite, or that industrial capacity is

always a problem. But whether you're

talking about submarines or 155 mm

shells, over the last couple of years,

industrial capacity has often been a

barrier to NATO militaries modernizing

or moving as fast as they'd like. Hence,

some of the serious investments we've

seen in trying to rebuild the base. In

the People's Republic of China, though,

I'd argue the bottlenecks are often

going to be different. This is the

world's largest manufacturing state, its

largest ship builder, the producer of

the majority of the world's steel, a

country that dominates the refining

process for many critical materials, and

which routinely leverages massive

economies of scale when it comes to

turning out product. To give you a sense

of scale here, by World Bank estimates,

there are more Chinese industrial

workers than there are Russians. all

Russians. Compared to countries like the

United States, Germany, or even India,

domestic consumption makes up a smaller

overall proportion of China's GDP, with

more of it instead being made up of

investments and exports. That kind of

economic structure does come with

potential risks. Compared to other

countries, China is going to be more

reliant on foreign consumers to soak up

its production of goods, especially in

cases where Chinese industries arguably

move into a state of over capacity.

China is producing so many EVs, for

example, relative to domestic demand

that it's causing price wars so vicious

that they've drawn the attention of the

central government and pushed Chinese

manufacturers to try and export as many

of their vehicles as possible. To

oversimplify, in some industries,

China's problem might not be that it

doesn't have enough capacity to produce

stuff, it might be that it has too much

capacity. But while having a bunch of

slack industrial capacity in the economy

might not be great if the goal is to be

as efficient as possible with your

investments, it might be potentially

very useful if at any point you decide

you want to dial up military production.

The same way we've seen some companies

in Germany, for example, take advantage

of excess capacity from the automotive

sector in order to support the rebuild

of Europe's military capacity. The

highle observation then here for China

might be that when it comes to military

modernization, the difficult part comes

earlier in the process. If you see

Russia show off a new concept vehicle,

it's a massively open question whether

the funding will be there and the

industrial capacity will be there to

convert concept into combat power. But

when you're talking about China, the

defense budget has increased 13 times

over over the last three decades. And

once they've successfully designed a

piece of equipment and figured out how

to manufacture it, the industrial

capacity might be there to basically

just hit print on the system the way

that few, if any, other countries can.

I've got some charts on the right here

from a CSIS report that can demonstrate

how that might flow through in practice.

As you can see, in terms of hull count,

the People's Liberation Army Navy is

expanding extremely quickly to the point

where it now has more ships, albeit not

tonnage, than the US Navy, and by some

US projections might have as many as 50%

more ships by 2030. In terms of its

fighter force, China has been able to

accomplish both modernization and

expansion at the same time. Per the

IISS, in 2010, a plurality of the

PLAAF's fighter force was second

generation aircraft. Less than 15 years

later, fifth generation fighters had

been introduced, and the backbone of the

fleet was now fourth generation or

better. So, I'd argue that when China

shows off new systems, it's worth paying

attention. Because while not every idea

will work out, perform as advertised, or

be deployed at scale, when the PLA locks

in on a system they want to prioritize,

Chinese industry can move quickly and at

scale. Meaning that if you're a country

that's a potential Chinese competitor,

the critical question might not just be

what is the PLA capable of today. It's

what will it be capable of next year, in

5 years, or a decade from now. And as

choreographed as they might be, parades

like this one might give us just a

little bit of insight into that precise question.

question.

There are obviously still plenty of

question marks around how the PLA would

actually perform if it found itself in a

high-intensity combat situation. And as

we repeatedly discussed on the channel,

there are a lot of elements that go into

the fighting power of a military beyond

just the quantity and quality of its

equipment. But through a defense

economic specific lens, the PLA

modernization effort has a lot going for

it. With a lot of the funding, human,

and physical capital necessary to get it

re-equipped. And so unless something

dramatic changes, I'd suggest that

Chinese military modernization isn't a

what if, it's a how far and how fast.

And okay, brief channel update to close

out because at this point my voice is

starting to go. I'm it's a slightly

shorter episode this week, but I didn't

want to make it longer than it needed to

be. And with it having been a very

packed week, it also helped make things

just that little bit easier for me as

well. My plan at this point is having

talked this week about some of the stuff

that China showed off to next week pivot

to some of what got showed off at DSI in

the United Kingdom and with it some of

the concepts and technologies we're

seeing showed off by other parts of the

defense sector, particularly companies

based in Europe, North America or parts

of the Asia-Pacific. A major point I

wanted to push forward this episode is

that we are now a long way removed from

the era where China was primarily a

country that duplicated military

technology from the Soviet Union or

Russian Federation. It's now entirely

capable of developing and fielding its

own, in many cases quite capable

systems. But while developments are

moving forward in China, the rest of the

world is very much not standing still.

And so next week, I hope to give you a

bit of insight into what some other

nations are cooking up. Until then,

thank you very much as always for your

ongoing support and engagement. And with

any luck, I hope to see you all again

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YouTube Transcript:China's New Military Equipment Revealed - The PLA Parade and its Modernisation Speed Run