Heather “Lucky” Penney: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Aerospace Advantage
podcast brought to you by PenFed. I’m your host, Heather “Lucky” Penney.
Here on the Aerospace Advantage, we speak with leaders in the DOD, industry,
and other subject matter experts to explore the intersection of strategy,
operational concepts, technology, and policy when it comes to air and space
power.
So this week, we’re going to take a look at recent air and space power
developments in China. So, December saw the department of defense released
their 2024 edition of military and security developments involving the people’s
Republic of China. What most of us call the annual China Military Power
Report.
It’s the go to DOD unclassified publication that tracks the evolution of China’s
military power year to year. And on top of that, China publicly flew some new
military aircraft the day after Christmas. This made headlines around the world.
And we’re also tracking a number of longer term trends that involve everything
from strategy and operational concepts to new technologies and reorganization.
At Mitchell, we’re incredibly fortunate to have a tremendous China expert
[00:01:00] on our team, Mike Dahm, a. k. a. JDAM. As you know, if you’re a
regular listener, JDAM is a member of our team and he’s a career naval
intelligence officer with time at the U. S. Embassy in Beijing, plus years of
work in this field after his time in the Navy.
So, he’s an excellent member of our team and we’re glad to have him here.
JDAM, so great to have you back.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Thanks, Heather, and, happy Chinese New Year.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: And happy Lunar New Year to you, too. But what
exactly is this Chinese New Year? I mean, it’s aligned with the lunar year, but
tell us more about it.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, so it’s Lunar New Year. It’s, uh, the, actual
date was January 29th, but the spring festival, they call it, actually culminated
on February 12th with something they call the Lantern Festival. So, 2024 was
the year of the dragon, and now 2025 is the year of the snake and things have
been pretty quiet over the past two weeks.
Most of China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, they go into a
holiday routine over the spring festival. The PLA’s been trying to change up
their [00:02:00] training cycle in recent years, but the historical pattern has
always been that new recruits are inducted in December each year.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Okay.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Go through basic training in January and then
everybody goes home for Chinese New Year. That’s what everybody in China
does. So, what’s about to happen is that the PLA is going to start unit level
training, um, in February, and that will typically build up into large scale joint
exercises in the fall, and then the cycle starts all over again.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Okay. Well, so year of the Dragon and year of the
Snake, I’m sure that there are meanings associated with both of those
symbologies.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, there’s some meaning. a 12 year cycle.
There are 12 different years, dog, dog, pig, I can’t name them all, monkey,
rooster, tiger, and last year was the year of the dragon, this is the year of the
snake, but beyond those 12 different animals, there are, they are aligned with
five different elements.
So, this is actually the year of the green snake or the wood snake. And there’s all
kinds of [00:03:00] horoscopes and astrological goings on that, forecasts for the
year. Maybe we can talk about that a little bit later.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: This is the year of the snake, but last year was the
year of the dragon.
What happened in 2024 that was a surprise and something that you didn’t expect
to see last year?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, so I think the biggest surprise for me, who
has followed the goings on with the strategic support force, the PLA strategic
support force pretty carefully was this reorganization that we saw in April 2024.
They actually eliminated the strategic support force. So, we talked about this on
a previous podcast, the People’s Liberation Army as of April or May of 2024
has now been reorganized into what they call four branches and four arms. So,
the four branches, the services, if you will, are the Army, the Navy, the Air
Force, and the Rocket Force.
And then the arms are the PLA, Military Aerospace Force, kind of like Space
Force. The Cyberspace Force, kind of like Cyber Command. The Information
Support Force, which is kind of like [00:04:00] DISA, the Defense Information
Support Agency. And then, uh, finally, the last arm is the Joint Logistics
Support Force.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: And I’m guessing that’s a lot like DLA.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, something like the Defense Logistics
agency. It takes on a lot of the missions that the Army does for theater logistics
and things like that. The other big surprise that nobody really seems to be
talking about was something that happened in late September 2024.
A road mobile DF 31 AG, which is an intercontinental ballistic missile, was
launched from Hainan Island, way out into the Pacific, landing somewhere
down by French Polynesia in the South Pacific. This is the first time the PLA
has launched an intercontinental ballistic missile outside of China in 44 years.
They launched a DF 5 into the Pacific back in the 1980s.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So what, what do you think the significance of that
is?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah. Well, see, this is the thing. I’ve heard a
couple different versions of this. Some people sort of dismiss it and they say,
well, you know, intel sources [00:05:00] indicated that the PLA wanted to do
this test for a long time, like, over 40 years.
And this is just time for that test to have come around. And I hate to say this,
but in late September, as us elections loomed on the horizon, no one, especially
the Biden administration seemed to want to talk about national security issues
and a Chinese nuclear missile test. But, there was reporting that at the time of
this test, up by the Taiwan Strait, the PLA was engaged in a large scale counter
intervention exercise.
You can find that reporting in places like Reuters and other media outlets. \
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, it’s open source.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, so this is an exercise to counter a U. S.
intervention over Taiwan. So, okay, sure. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. This
otherwise benign intercontinental ballistic missile test just happened to take
place during a counter intervention exercise.
But, in my opinion, this was a seismic event, with the PLA signaling that in the
context of counter intervention, the PLA is [00:06:00] prepared to employ
nuclear weapons. They’re taking a page out of the Russia playbook on what’s,
happened in Ukraine.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Because we’ve been deterred, self deterred, by
Putin’s rhetoric regarding nuclear employment. This is something that would
clearly play into China’s objectives and interests.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, I think it was a huge flashing red light
signal and we all just kind of shrugged our shoulders and moved on.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So when it comes to the DF 31, can you explain a
little bit more about like how significant that particular weapons capability is?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah. So it’s a, it’s an intercontinental ballistic
missile. It has a 13,000 kilometer range, about 7,000 miles. So, from a place like
Hainan Island, it would struggle to reach the United States mainland. It could
obviously reach Hawaii.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Alaska.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Alaska, Guam. But I think from where the DF 31
is actually stationed in mainland China, far, far north, as you approach
Mongolia.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: From [00:07:00] go over the pole.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: From there it goes up and over and it can actually
range most of the United States, including Washington, D. C. So it’s not a
massive city killer. It’s got about a one megaton warhead or five smaller 90
kiloton re entry vehicles. But you know, it’s a nuclear weapon, it’s gonna make a
big bang.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, a megaton is nothing to sneeze at. I mean, if
you take a look at what Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about 18 to 20 kilotons,
that’s still pretty significant. And any kind of nuclear employment is going to
have a outsized impact on the global response.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, 100%. The last thing that I’ll point out in
terms of things that I did not expect to see in 2024 was this continued purge of
senior PLA officers. I’m not going to walk through all of them, but it involved
the political commissar, the head of, the military’s political work department. He
was removed for, uh, “serious violations of party discipline.”
You can see my air quotes there, on the podcast, [00:08:00] but, also Admiral
Dong Joon, who was the minister or actually he still is the minister of defense.
He was supposed to be under investigation, but then miraculously reemerged, in
December. So, we’re not quite sure what’s going on there.
But, these most recent purges follow the firing of dozens of senior PLA officers
in late 2023 and early 2024. And the 2024 China Military Power Report that
you mentioned in the intro has a special section on the impacts of corruption in
the PLA.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So is this corruption, air quotes, and really more
about political alignment and loyalties? What’s going on here do you think?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: It’s probably about corruption. But also about
political loyalty. I don’t think you can, I don’t think you can dismiss that, but
there is endemic corruption, in the PLA and the China military power report
talks a little bit about that.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, with the removal of these officers, does that
actually. Strengthen the PLA?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Oh, you mean like, like killing off the weak
members of the herd?
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, by removing [00:09:00] the corruption,
right?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, I mean, I think it would.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Bring your greater professionalism and
competence?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: If anything, it brings it more in line with Xi
Jinping thought. It makes it more loyal to Xi Jinping and the central party
leadership. And it does cut away a lot of that corruption. It was not that long
ago, really just years ago, that PLA officers were still paying for promotions to
general officer. They would pay senior officers to tap them to become the next
generation of general officers. And that’s just kind of how everybody
understood the system worked. So, they’ve come a long way and they probably
still have a long way to go in terms of, using money to grease the skids of
power.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So that’s really interesting. And I wonder what the
implications would be when it comes to the human capital competition, right?
There’s going to become a point where, with peer technologies, that really
whoever’s going to have the asymmetric advantage, it’s going to come down to
the humans and the people and the personnel that they, that we have in place.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, absolutely. And is arguably [00:10:00] a
drag on the PLA’s ability to modernize, their ability to integrate new
technologies if there is graft and corruption endemic in the system.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Okay. So let’s move and shift away from the
greatest surprises to greatest hits. What would you count as China’s biggest air
power and space power accomplishments in 2024?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Well, I’ll tell you what Chinese state television
says, and these aren’t necessarily air power or space power accomplishments,
but what they say is the biggest military accomplishments for the PLA in 2024
in their year end wrap up was, they’ve got a new aircraft carrier that went out on
sea trials.
That’s the Fujian aircraft carrier. It’s got the catapults, the electromagnetic
catapults so they can launch heavier aircraft. There was also this Type 76
amphibious assault ship, which you’re thinking, well, that’s a naval
development, but it actually also has electromagnetic catapults ostensibly for
drone launches.
So, it’s going to be able to launch larger drones off of [00:11:00] this big deck
amphibious ship. And then finally, they categorize the J 35 debut at the 2024
China air show as another major accomplishment. We’re going to start seeing
that what is really, it appears to be a copy of the F 35, entering the Chinese,
force in 2025. And then in the last few days of the year, you mentioned this in
the intro, the PLA rolled out several apparently new aircraft, and we’ll talk
about that a little bit later in the podcast.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, I’m looking forward to digging into that. So
what about the space power side?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, so space power, China, actually not so
awesome. They had set a goal for 100 space launches in 2024. They only made
about two thirds of that goal, 68 launches, three of which were failures. But
China is starting to roll out two different mega constellation projects. This is
supposed to compete with Starlink. The two Chinese projects are Qianfan,
which means one thousand sales and Guowang, which means national
[00:12:00] network.
So, by the end of 2024, they had 54 satellites in the thousand sales constellation.
And between the two constellations, the Chinese are projecting between 25,000
and 28,000 small satellites. So, space is getting increasingly crowded. That is
going to necessarily inflate the numbers of satellites that China’s going to put in
orbit when we start looking at just like gross numbers.
For comparison, Starlink, currently has at last check, like 6,900 satellites in low
earth orbit, with an ultimate goal of 12,000 satellites on orbit. So, the Chinese
are, the up and coming player in that, low earth orbit proliferated satellite
network.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, 25,000 to 28,000 sats. That’s that is really an
ambitious number. And I mean it blows my mind thinking about the kind of
resiliency and the targeting problems that you would have in terms of denying
them the advantages of that kind of proliferated constellation could provide.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Well, [00:13:00] and it also just makes space that
much more crowded. You start talking about these Kessler effects or Kessler
syndrome where one satellite bumps into another satellite, which bumps into
five more satellites, which then break up and, you know.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Becomes an avalanche.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: It becomes an avalanche, cascading effects
through low earth orbit. I know there are a lot of limits on that space is a really
big place. I think our, uh, our space, senior fellows here at the Mitchell Institute
would tell me that, sometimes these things are overblown, but tens of thousands
of satellites in orbit, eventually it’s going to catch up with us.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, let’s then go back to the China military power
report. It came out at the end of 2024. What were your thoughts on it?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah. So it came out on December 18th, uh, just
before Christmas. You’d be forgiven if you missed it. You know, it’s an annual
report to Congress. We look for it every year. It’s usually out in November. I
think this year it was delayed a little bit because of the election. We talked about
this on the podcast when the 2023 military power report [00:14:00] came out.
So, the problem, I don’t know if it’s a problem, but, one of the issues with the
China military power report is that it isn’t entirely a new report each year.
It’s just an update to the 2023 report, which was an update to the 2022 report.
And so if you do a side by side comparison, you can see a lot of the exact same
language in the 2024 report that you saw in the previous report. So it, becomes
this game of like, where’s Waldo and like, who can spot the changes? What are
the changes? How are these two pictures different? To the extent that it just kind
of cuts and pastes large sections of the report, it’s also cutting and pasting some
mistakes, which I’m not gonna, start picking on here. But, it’s a benchmark. One
of the other challenges that, the 2024 report comes out in December.
Well, this thing is a DOD report, but it has to be vetted across all the DOD
agencies, and that takes a lot of time. Most of the information in the report is
about what [00:15:00] happened in 2023.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: So, if it comes out in December and now we’re
into 2025.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: It’s about two years out of date.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: The thing is, well It’s it’s certainly a year out of
date there are a few nuggets in there about things that happened in early 2024.
But you won’t find a whole lot much past May of 2024.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, because the staffing time to get through all
the approval and coordination process takes so long.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: But on the upside, you know, DOD does publish
this thing every year, so it is a decent way to identify trends over time.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, for our audience, we’ll include a link to China
Military Power Report in our show notes, as well as a few of the previous China
podcasts that we’ve done with JDAM. But, you know, everything, like you said,
with China’s moving so fast, is it time for us to then just start over? Do you
think, you know, take a really fresh look at the Chinese military power report,
especially given how quickly they’re moving?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Well, I think we, it is good to have that context,
to have that context, [00:16:00] to be able to look back over time and say, this is
where they were and this is where we are. There are some challenges when you
are worshiping at the church of what’s happening now and all you see is, oh,
they’re flying these new aircraft, are they six generation aircraft? And look at all
the J 20s and things. Well, having the perspective of, well the F 35 or the, sorry.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: J 35.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: I’m gonna make that mistake so many times. The
J 35…
Heather “Lucky” Penney: I don’t think that that is a, an accident.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: No, that is not an accident. But you know, so the
J 35 is rolling out. Big deal, right? China’s moving fast. The first flight, the
maiden flight of the prototype for that aircraft, the FC 31, happened in 2012,
right? So, it’s taken them 13 years to bring that aircraft to some rate of
production, and I think we need that kind of history. We can’t just be like, well,
they now have something like the US F 35 in their inventory. So, like, we’re
evenly matched. Oh, they are so far [00:17:00] behind, right? They are just
starting to catch up with where we were 15 years ago.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Um, and, we’ll talk about the implications of that,
I do think it isn’t, you know, it is good to have that kind of historical
perspective. But yeah, we, to your point, I don’t know that we need to reboot our
analysis, but we probably do need to lean into it a little bit more.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So in that case, what were your big takeaways from
the most recent China report? I mean, what should we be looking at that made
this, it made it into this report before that cutoff date? And say mid 2024 as you
mentioned
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: So, in terms of forces and capabilities, the report
captures that thing that I talked about at the top in terms of the restructuring of
the strategic support force.
One of the big takeaways that everybody’s been talking about that I think the
Department of Defense really wanted to highlight was this expansion of China’s
nuclear forces. Uh, right now, they’re estimated to, the PLA is estimated to have
surpassed 600 operational nuclear weapons. Uh, for context, the U. S. and
Soviet [00:18:00] Union. had about 70,000 nuclear weapons, between them at
the end of the Cold War. Now the U. S. has a stockpile of just over 5,200
warheads. Russia has about 5,500 warheads. So, China’s got about 11 percent of
what the United States and Russia have in their inventories, but DOD estimates
that this growth in PRC nuclear capabilities is going to continue and they’ll have
about a thousand operational warheads in the next five years by 2030.
We’ve already mentioned this, but DOD also wanted to highlight the impact of
corruption on the PLA and in 2023, which again is sort of the benchmark dates
for this report, China had been freezing out the U. S. military in what we call
military to military or mil to mil communications.
And that phrase broke in late 2023. The two sides in 2024 have been talking
with limited but apparently open lines of [00:19:00] communication. A lot of
China hawks are skeptical of engagement with the PLA. I’m thinking that with
increased tensions over Taiwan, increased PLA military capabilities, and those
nuclear weapons, talking probably couldn’t hurt.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, probably, talking probably couldn’t hurt, but
what do you think the danger is of mirroring? I think that mirroring and
assuming that Chinese motivations, objectives, and communications are going
to be very similar to our perspectives, our motivations, our communications,
how much do you think that kind of mill to mill conversation could reinforce
misperceptions due to that kind of mirroring interpretation?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: I think it, maybe it’s just the opposite. I think not
talking makes you mirror more than talking. So as a, former naval attache who
spent a lot of time in Beijing during a time of really lots of engagement. We had
a lot of four star visits. We had a lot of what we call MMCA, the military
maritime consultative agreement talks and we were able to put people in
[00:20:00] a room and actually bridge some of those divides and make people
understand or help people to understand what was motivating the other side and
sort of where the other side was coming from.
I think when you, break hard and you separate, that’s when you start putting
your values on them or put too much on them in terms of malign intent,
everything they do is seen as bad and hostile towards you. When in fact they
may have their own domestic reasons for doing things.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So the, the nuclear breakout, is really big news. I
think that folks don’t really appreciate the numbers that you’re talking about, uh,
regarding where they have up to 600 nuclear weapons right now and the growth
that we’re expecting to see. How do you think this is going to change China’s
posture, as we go into the next five years?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah. So that posture has been changing for a
number of years and fundamentally we spent a lot more time talking about this,
but I think fundamentally [00:21:00] it’s, it really has to do with battle space
information and ISR, which on these podcasts, I have kept going on and on
about. Really it’s because of Chinese satellite capabilities, Chinese early
warning capabilities, China has been able to shift from a second strike
capability where they have mobile run launchers running around the countryside
that are supposed to survive an initial nuclear attack and then retaliate against
that attack. To a launch on warning system where their satellites and early
warning system can see an attack coming from India, from the Russians, from
the United States and as those missiles are flying outta the atmosphere and
getting ready to come back to earth, to hit China, China could actually launch
on warning.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Mm-hmm .
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: So, that’s driving China to what we hear about in
terms of, building all of these silos out in the [00:22:00] Mongolian Desert and
so they’re, increasing their inventory and they’re building these fixed silos so
that those silos can sit on alert. 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Just like we do.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Just like we do. And I think China has embraced
its place as a near peer competitor and as a great power is how they think of
themselves. And so if they’re going to get sucked into these strategic arms
limitation talks with Russia and the United States over nuclear weapons,
frankly, they want to have a lot more nuclear weapons to posture and have
something to negotiate with.
So, the last thing I’ll say is that, in terms of trends, there was a big focus in the
2023 China military power report about the high number of unsafe air
intercepts. The 2024 report says that since 2023, the PLA has reduced the
number of coercive and risky air intercepts of U. S. platforms compared to the
previous two years. [00:23:00] Though, it continues to conduct unsafe
maneuvers in the vicinity of allied forces operating in the region. And I think a
lot of those unsafe maneuvers that they mention are against allies like the
Philippines in the South China Sea.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So do you think those unsafe maneuvers are sort of
just deliberately provocative, uh, showboating or is it kind of an incompetence?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: No, I think it’s deliberate and I think what the
Chinese have demonstrated time and again is the desire to push the envelope.
They want to see how much tension they can put on the wheel before the line
snaps. And when the line snaps, they’re like, “okay, like that’s as far as we can
go.” But now they know exactly how far they can go. And so, in terms of
patterns of behavior, if you give them an inch, like, or, if you allow them to get
to that point, they will continue to go back to that point. They will not back off
for it. And to them, that’s sort of like it’s, what do people talk about the frog
boiling in water? Like they just keep turning up the heat a [00:24:00] little bit, a
little bit, a little bit. And if you don’t react to it and you don’t push back, that
becomes the new norm.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Absolutely. So, what about the new normal that
we’re seeing of Chinese and Russian, um, collaboration and cooperation in
terms of air operations?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: So, there has been an increase in Chinese and
Russian air operations, an increase in training. 2024, there’s, is a very minor
thing in a lot of ways, but, uh, still a significant event, I think, when we saw
Chinese bombers fly all the way up to Siberia, actually, North of Alaska, if you
can believe that. And they flew a joint patrol with Chinese H 6 bombers and
Russian Tu 95 bombers from the north down toward the Aleutian Islands and
into the Alaskan ADIZ, which caused, our jets to scramble and go in to intercept
them.
But, that kind of cooperation where we might see even the forward basing of
Chinese aircraft at a Russian base.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: [00:25:00] That’s what caught my attention.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, that could provide a real asymmetric
challenge to some of our basing in places like Alaska.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Now, we’re not really seeing, though, integrated air
operations between the two. They’re just kind of flying together, right, at this
point in time?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, that’s pretty much it. Training together
allows them to build an understanding and understand each other’s procedures
and things like that. But I wouldn’t say that we’ve seen, you know, like Russian
targeting being passed to Chinese bombers or Chinese targeting being passed to
Russian bombers, anything like that.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: But these are baby steps, and it’s a clear indication,
I think, of their intent to be able to work together and fight together. So, what
about what’s been going on with China surrounding Taiwan with their air
operations, and also with their maritime operations? I mean, we’ve seen an
increase of that, which kind of brings me back to your previous point regarding
how they push the boundary to establish a new normal. What do you think is
[00:26:00] going on there?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Well, there are a couple of things going on. By
the numbers there have been more flights in and around Taiwan in 2024. But I
put these things into two different categories. There are the very public, well
publicized, everybody’s waving their hands, jumping up and down exercises
called the joint sword exercises.
There were three different series of joint sword exercises. They’re usually a
couple of days. I think one of them was just one day and I kind of liken them to
PLA temper tantrums. China, Taiwan does something that China doesn’t like. I
think, Taiwan President Lia, like, stopped over in Hawaii on a visit that he was
making and that, displeases Beijing.
So, the PLA will, will launch all these aircraft. And again, a lot of it’s for show.
Hey, great. Got up a bunch of sorties. You coordinated a whole bunch of
aircraft in crowded airspace, but all you really did was kind of fly [00:27:00]
around and do patterns that show up on a map and it looks really scary. And
that’s really interesting.
I think the more worrisome thing are the things that we’re not hearing so much
about. So, I mentioned before that in September, there was this counter
intervention exercise. There is amphibious training that’s going on along the
Chinese coast. There are firepower strike demonstrations that are happening
way inland, like, geographically offset. So, like, while, PLA forces are
operating in and around the Taiwan Strait, the PLRocket Force is out in the
middle of the Mongolian desert, firing missiles, not to the east, but to the west
toward, Xinjiang and Western China but those are.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Are they mimicking and mirroring?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, it’s, it’s time, time synchronous , right? It’s
time sync, sync. Can I say that? Time Sync? I can’t say it. They’re happening at
the same time. So, they’re happening at the same time, but in a geographically,
they’re synchronized. They’re happening at [00:28:00] the same time, but they’re
happening in a different, geographic place.
So we’re not seeing and we just don’t have the access to that kind of reporting.
You catch little glimpse of it. But that is where I think the real operational
capability and capacity would be is is taking place.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, I’ll push back a little bit because I think the
joint sword exercises that you talked about because they are rapid response and
they are a massive push. There’s a lot of logistical effort and coordination. And
from the aircraft generation standpoint, that is actually giving the reps and sets
to the uh, PLA air forces that they need to be able to execute that kind of
operation. And it’s giving the pilots and their other operators, uh, the familiarity
again with flying around in the comfort with flying around in that airspace.
So I do think there’s operational value when it comes to, uh, what their
objectives would be in Taiwan Strait scenario .
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, I’m not going to dispute that, but I think
when you’re doing a two day [00:29:00] exercise or a one day exercise, like you
can surge generate these numbers pretty easily just with forces that you have in
place.
You don’t have to forward deploy, you don’t have to push logistics forward, you
don’t, everybody does their maintenance the week before because you know this
is going to happen and then you just, you surge. I think the, challenge for
analysts that I’ve seen even within the intelligence community or sort of these
straight line extrapolations.
Well, if they generated 120 sorties on this one day, then they can generate 120
sorties every day for 30 days. That’s never going to happen, right? But when
you do these straight line extrapolations, uh, based on these really short term
surge exercises, it doesn’t necessarily reflect how China would be able to do a
longer campaign.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, and I, and I absolutely agree with that.
Really, it’s about the sort of the shock and awe of that initial first push, and then
we’d have to assess what their capabilities would be to feed the fight from their
logistical bases, from their [00:30:00] other air bases to bring that forward to
continue to apply pressure, but for a fait accompli operation, that initial surge
would be, I think, very important, uh, regarding their initial operations.
So, what else does the report say about PLA Air Force capabilities specifically?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, so we had mentioned this on a previous
podcast, but in 2023, the PLA Air Force actually absorbed all or most of the
PLA Navy tactical aviation units, and that includes, radar stations and surface to
air missile sites.
So, all of those PLA Navy shore based aviation assets went over to the PLA Air
Force and it really supports this sort of centralized approach and focus on
unified air domain operations. The Navy is left with maritime patrol aircraft that
are land based and then they’re focusing on their carrier based fighter force.
Modernization in the PLA Air Force continued. We [00:31:00] saw more and
more fighter aircraft pouring into their inventory. There were some confusing
word choices in the 2024 report that they just keep cutting and pasting back into
the report. But I can tell you that the PLA Air Force is now a majority fourth
generation fighter force. They also have incorporated dozens of fifth generation
J 20s into the force in 2024 and then we’ve already said it a couple of times. We
also saw in 2024 the introduction of this F 35 lookalike, the J 35 multi role
fighter.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, let’s talk a little bit about their production
capacity, because I think that’s been something that is, is surprising at the rate at
which they acquiring and producing fighter aircraft.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah. So again, from unclassified sources it’s
hard to nail down, you know, exact numbers. I’ve heard in 2024 or maybe it was
like mid 2023 to mid 2024, 70 J20 fifth generation [00:32:00] fighters, were,
produced. The projections are for between 100 to 120 J 20s to be produced
probably into the 2030s. So, we could see as many as 1000 5th generation J 20s
in the inventory by the 2030s. Recently, I think we saw the introduction of a
two seat J 20, the J 20 S and they’re using that two seat variant to more with
unmanned combat aerial vehicles, or UCAVS, drones if you will, with the guy
in the back seat.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Kind of our concept of CCA collaborative combat
aircraft. Similar.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah. But the guy in the back seat’s the one
driving the, driving the CCA to take the workload off the pilot. So, there have
been a lot of questions about, how good is this fifth generation technology, in
China. It’s, I’m spitballing here, but it’s probably not as good as the technology
that we have in our F 22s and our F 35s, but they’re building a lot of them.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: [00:33:00] Yeah, there’s a point where good
enough plus.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Lots of quality in quantity. So, that’s something
we’ll have to look out for. You know, there hasn’t been a sighting of the new
Chinese bomber aircraft, the H 20. But it’s possible we’ll see something about
that. That’s supposed to be probably more on par with the US B 2, not
necessarily as advanced as the B 21.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: What about the range on the H 20?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: It’s going to be, it’s going to be long range. It’ll
have a tanking capability and we have seen more investments in heavy lift
aircraft, and they’ve converted a number of their Y20, which goes by the
affectionate nickname “chubby girl.” I don’t think the PLA is under any threat
from DEI for the moment.
The Y20 has been seen, you know, just probe and drogue, not the direct feed
system that the U. S. Air Force has, but the boom system. But yeah, with those
Y 20s, I think that gives the H 20, [00:34:00] intercontinental range, to be sure.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: So, what I think is really important about, this
development of tankers and obviously fighters, that have the ability to tank as
well and refuel as well, that force extension, plus the bombers. This is really
indicating China’s intention to project power in the same way that the Air Force
projects power for the United States.
So, this is very different from a defensive capability where they’re just planning
on staying at home to a plan to go outside their near waters, if you will, to
project power against their adversaries.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah. And I think that’s going to manifest in a
couple of ways. I think in the near term, you’re absolutely right. They want to
project power to essentially take the fight to their enemies. Perhaps target US
bases in Alaska, target US bases in Hawaii, or on the US west coast. And so
that’s part of, I think, more of a defense in depth strategy to take the fight to the
enemy while the focus of effort is still on [00:35:00] retaking Taiwan or doing
something in the South China Sea or against one of our allies like Japan.
I think in the long term, when you start looking out to the 2040s, the 2050s,
that’s when you start to see China wants to go and play the away game. The way
that the United States plays the away game with real power projection
capabilities, deployable air brigades or what we would call squadrons or wings.
Large deck amphibious ships, large deck aircraft carriers, that can really be
sustained and operate far from shore in South Asia, in Africa, in the Middle
East, and other places around the world, but that’s probably still a couple of
decades away while the Chinese are focused on taking Taiwan.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, baby steps, right? They’re doing those
building blocks and they’re executing from the technology to the manpower to
the tactics and certainly the capabilities. So, what about the other elements of
military power? What else should we be tracking that China’s doing?
So, I found it interesting. The [00:36:00] report said that China’s defense
spending was probably a lot more than what the government was saying
officially. And we’ve been thinking this for a long time. But even then, we think
their budget comes out to be somewhere between 330 and 450 billion U. S.
dollars. And that’s like half of what the U. S. government spends on defense. So,
how can they be a near peer at half the cost?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, that’s a great question and a lot of ink has
been spilled about Chinese defense budgets. You said, you mentioned the, the
official government figure for military spending is something ridiculous, like
$220 billion and.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: We know they a second set of books. That’s why
our actual assessment’s higher.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: But it’s also a completely different system. I
mean, I could go into great detail about how the Chinese count, direct military
spending. Maybe it is $220 billion, but R& D is like pre funded at all of their
research institutes. It’s not, part of the acquisition process. It’s a separate funding
line. A lot of the personnel, housing, retirement, those [00:37:00] types of
defense expenditures are actually born by the provincial level governments, like
for us, what would be the state governments. So, those numbers may not make
it into the national level defense budget. It’s a completely different system.
So, it’s hard to make a side by side comparison. That said, you know, a lot of
analysts have, have said that, you know, like you suggested, they’ve got a
second set of books. They’re hiding defense spending elsewhere in their budget.
You know, the other things that seem to happen is that that people just want the
Chinese to be spending as much as the United States on defense.
So, they use complex equations that involve things like purchasing power
parity, and I’m not going to try to explain what that is, but it’s basically like you
can buy eggs cheaper in China than you can in the United States. So, purchasing
power parity, if you look at like, the military needs eggs, they’re getting more
for their.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: More bang for the buck.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Chinese Yuan than we are getting [00:38:00] for
our dollars. But, fundamentally, the problem with all of that analysis is that
we’re comparing apples and oranges. Does the PLA have a lot of the same
technology as the military? Sure. Yes, it does. but the U. S. actually still has
more of that technology in the field and has that technology, has had that
technology in the field for longer. You know, the PLA has two conventionally
powered aircraft carriers with one on the way. The U. S. has 11 nuclear
powered aircraft carriers.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Now, when you say conventionally powered
carriers, what do you mean by that?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: And they’re running on gas.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: There you go.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: They’re running on, you know, they’re not, they’re
not being driven by nuclear power.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Now, which, which means they have incredible
limitations when it comes to range, their time on station, uh, you know, the
support requirements that they have that a nuclear carrier like what the US
operates just doesn’t face.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Well, and that goes to your, your thing about like,
you know, when are they projection? When are they going to sustain it
overseas? The interesting thing about, having served on several nuclear
powered aircraft carriers, the limiting factor is actually jet [00:39:00] fuel. It’s
the jet fuel that you need to keep replenishing, you can drive that nuclear
powered carrier for a decade, just run it all over the world and it’ll never run out
of fuel. But the, it’s the JP5, the jet fuel that needs to be, uh, that needs to be
replenished.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Which is one of the reasons why a land based air
power actually has the ability to project power and keep that pressure on
because we can generate sorties over and over and over again because you can
have a lot more storage.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: So, just like with the aircraft carriers, as of early
2025, we were just talking about this with the J 20s, China may have between
200 and 250 5th generation fighters. It’s a lot of 5th generation fighters, but
between the U. S. Air Force, the U. S. Navy, and the U. S. Marine Corps, we
have over 800 5th generation fighters between the F 22, and the F 35.
So, the PLA wants to be just like the U. S. military. As we’ve talked about just
now, the PLA wants to do expeditionary operations, but even by the PLA’s own
[00:40:00] estimates, they’re a quarter of a century away from that, right? That’s
when they talk about 2049 becoming a world class military. They want to be
able to do what the U. S. does. They want to be able to pick up a bunch of
dudes, go halfway around the world, and deliver decisive effects. And they
cannot do that right now. The fact of the matter is that all of this U. S. defense
spending allows us to project power far away from our shores. And the PLA
wants to be able to do that.
They’re building out those capabilities, but they’re still well short of that. So, the
PLA has been focused on the close in fight, and that’s an important distinction
there. The fight over Taiwan. When we look at it, Taiwan is really the only
defense planning, scenario that the PLA has. Like it is all about that. All of this
other, you know, ships going to Africa and you know.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Basing in Africa and basing operations.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, that’s all a side show.. Like the main event
is the operations against Taiwan. So [00:41:00] when, you take the limited
capabilities of the PLA, and they are limited, but you focus them only in East
Asia, only around the East China Sea and the South China Sea, that’s when the
PLA becomes a near peer competitor to the United States.
So, you know, at the end of the day, it’s like Mark Twain said, there are three
kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies, and statistics. You can make the numbers say
anything you want, but the only thing that matters in a fight is what forces you
can get to that fight and whether or not you can use it to full effect.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Those are really great points. So, you mentioned
the 250 5th generation aircraft that China has, but the day after Christmas, we
saw a number of new military aircraft flying in China, and a lot of
commentators and China watchers are saying that two of those are air quotes,
“sixth generation combat aircraft.” What are your thoughts on that?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Well, I think they are air quotes, “sixth generation
fighters.”
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Because we don’t know what the guts are.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Well, yeah, we could probably do an entire
podcast just [00:42:00] on this. I mean, there is a lot of.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Okay. You volunteered yourself.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah. There’s a lot of smoke and a lot of churn
around the little flash that happened the day after Christmas. But let’s be clear
about something. Everything I am about to say about these two supposed six
generation aircraft is based on less than one minute of grainy cell phone video
and a handful of still photographs. That’s it. There has been no Chinese
government news release. No leaked official statement.
90 percent of what we “know,” there’s my air quotes again, 90 percent of what
we know is informed by speculation at best. So, you know, here’s what
happened. On December 26th, the day after Christmas, we saw this video of two
new aircraft. One is what may be a fighter bomber flying around Chengdu in
central China.
The internet has named that aircraft the J 36. We don’t know that that’s actually
what it’s called. There’s a side number, 36011, I [00:43:00] think it was, but that
36 at the beginning is why they call it the J 36. It has an interesting three engine
design. This is wild speculation on my part, but it, the J 36 is large enough with
what appears to be a large amount of internal carriage capacity that it may be a
fifth gen or sixth gen replacement for the PLA Air Force JH 7 fighter bomber,
right?
So, this is kind of a workhorse of the PLA, carries a whole bunch of bombs,
long ranges. But it could be more like a mini B 2 and a fifth generation aircraft.
We don’t know really, we don’t even know what a sixth generation aircraft is.
I’ll get to that in a second. But the other thing that folks are talking about was
this smaller fighter sized aircraft, a lot less pictures of this.
It was flying around Shenyang, that’s up in Northern China, and enthusiasts are
calling that the J 50. Again, no idea where this name came from, but that’s how
we’re referring to them, the J36 and the J50. [00:44:00] Now, these images have
been analyzed to death, but the only thing, and I mean the only thing that
indicates these aircraft might, and I stress might, be beyond fifth generation
aircraft is that neither aircraft have vertical stabilizers.
That’s kind of it. They’re basically complex flying wing designs. So, nevermind
that the aviation industry or our own Department of Defense has not officially
come up with a list of attributes that make an aircraft sixth generation. And I’m
not saying they’re not next generation aircraft prototypes, they just might be.
But I’d caution our listeners about how much we simply do not know about
these aircraft. Two aircraft take off, they make lazy circles in the sky, and they
land. And we’re jumping to a whole lot of conclusions about features like
supercruise, all aspects stealth, you know, so much of what makes a fifth
generation and next generation aircraft so advanced is, as you said, what’s on
the inside, right?
The [00:45:00] sensors, the engines, their ability to cool sophisticated data
processors so they can do these amazing things with artificial intelligence and
networking with other aircraft. And we simply do not know. So, we don’t know
anything about how or how well these new aircraft can do that.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, we know nothing about their survivability,
their actual signatures, as you mentioned, all the avionics sensors, data links,
processing power.
We know nothing about that, so.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: And you know, using my example from before
the FC 31, which was the predecessor to the J 35 had its first maiden flight in
2012, right? 13, 13 years ago. So, this might be aircraft technology that we do
not see in production until well into the 2030s.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, but you have to pace that with where we are
with NGAD, right? I mean, it’s interesting. We saw the reports about those
advanced aircraft, the J36 and the J50. Air quotes, around the same time that the
Air Force chose to pause the next generation air dominance aircraft, right? So
that program the NGAD program was put on pause.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: And do you think that [00:46:00] that happened
by accident?
Heather “Lucky” Penney: I do not.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: So, you have to connect all the dots, right? The
china military power report comes out and it says oh the chinese military is
corrupt, you know, there’s nothing to see here and the Air Force is making
reports on NGAD. Would it not be to china’s advantage to maybe fly a couple of
aircraft and make crazy circles in the sky and let some people take pictures of it
and get a whole bunch of talk going on the internet about how China is surging
and how China is advanced and how China is catching up with the United
States.
It fits into their narrative. It’s what they want us to hear. And you have to
understand that when you see things like that. You, they’re doing their own
conceal reveal type of, uh, information operations campaign against us, and they
have a certain narrative that they want to advance. The U. S. is all screwed up
with NGAD. Look at us.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Yeah, we’re moving forward. We’re pressing the
envelope and we are getting that, advantage in terms of time and their ability to
field [00:47:00] something. You know, again, it might have taken them 12 years
to field that, J 35, but it takes the United States about 20 years, right? It’s been
about two decades for us to be able to go from prototype to actually fielding an
advanced generation aircraft. So, we might be actually pacing each other right
now.
But, I’m really interested to peel back the onion of what you said regarding their
information operations. In JDAM’s perfect world, how would you shape the
way the Air F orce, the United States, is projecting information and the
perceptions that we’re revealing, concealing against the PLA?
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, it’s a touchy situation. So, I’ll just go ahead
and say it, but you know, I appreciate that the only way to get, well, not the only
way, but one of the only ways to get Congress’s attention is to sit in front of
them and tell them the sky is falling and all hell’s going to rain down on us if
you don’t fund our programs and don’t fund our budget and we’re behind and
we’re losing and the Chinese are winning. [00:48:00] That may be the domestic
message that we need and want to send to.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: To get the resources.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: To get the resources that we need for the
programs. And that’s unfortunate. But if JDAM were king for a day, I would
have those conversations in a closed room. We don’t need to go, airing our dirty
laundry for everybody to see. Because that message is not just our allies and
partners, but it also messages Beijing. Maybe we aren’t ready. Maybe we aren’t
capable. But there’s a lot of evidence that, you know, and there are a lot of facts
that we are technologically advanced. We do have a lot of capabilities and there
are a lot of ways that we could leverage those capabilities in innovative ways in
the Western Pacific, in East Asia, in the event of a great power war with a
country like China.
But we keep coming back to the same talking points on this podcast, despite
what seems to be the prevailing narrative that the U. S. military is all jacked up
and China’s military [00:49:00] is doing everything right, you know, we do have
those advantages. We have advantages in technology, we certainly have
advantages in training and force structure. And as we’ve talked about, the PLA
is playing catch up and continues to suffer from a lack of real world experience
and all of that corruption, that was in the DOD, uh, China Military Power
Report, and that is all dragging on its development.
So, the trends are clear. You’re right. China’s continuing to out cycle the United
States. We’ve talked about that on the podcast before in terms of we need to put
keep our foot on the gas. We need to keep accelerating towards innovation and
change and build our own capabilities and countermeasures. They are building
fifth generation fighters at a higher rate.
I mean, it’s just a numbers game. If we don’t increase our production rates for
the F 35, if we don’t lay into producing a next generation aircraft or a next
generation program.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: We will willingly be ceding that advantage to
China if we don’t, [00:50:00] you know, lean into the need to increase the rate
for F 35, increase the rate for B 21, buy as many fighters as we can, and lean
into NGAD, come down, do a source selection, and go fast there.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, I mean, it, the ball is in our court, right?
China’s set a course, and they are leaning into their own capability development.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: I’ll push back a little bit on the force structure and
the training and the readiness. I think right now we do have that advantage, but I
worry about us becoming complacent with the size the Air Force inventory with
the age of the Air Force inventory as little as we’re able to fly right now. I think
right now it’s ours to lose, but we need to be conscientious, as you said, to lean
into modernization, recapitalization, and readiness.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Yeah, no, and you’re absolutely right. And your
last report on pilot readiness and pilot training, I think, is instructive. We have
had advantages for a long time. I think we have become complacent. [00:51:00]
But if we don’t lean back into solving some of our shortfalls, we’re going to end
up paying the price. And, quoting the last secretary of the Air Force might be
out of vogue in this new administration, but it doesn’t mean he was wrong.
Secretary Kendall was fond of saying we are out of time.
He said that over and over and over last year. But, frankly, the new
administration needs to embrace that thinking. When it comes to China, we are
simply out of time. We have put off too many things for too long. We need to
stop admiring the problem. Pick a strategy and move out. Whether it’s NGAD,
manned fighters, unmanned drones, it should be a combination of all of those
things, but we have to commit to those programs and start to iterate on those
concepts going forward.
It’s the only way we’re going to stay ahead of China.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: Well, JDAM, that is a mic drop moment, so we
will go ahead and end it here. Thanks again so much. We love having you on
the podcast and you’re a great member of the team. You’re a diversity hire, but
[00:52:00] don’t worry, we’re not letting you go.
J. Michael “JDAM” Dahm: Thanks, Heather. I’ve really enjoyed it. Look
forward to being back again.
Heather “Lucky” Penney: With that, I’d like to extend a big thank you to our
guests for joining in today’s discussion. I’d also like to extend a big thank you to
you, our listeners, for your continued support and for tuning into today’s show.
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