Comments by "William Cox" (@WildBillCox13) on "How Submarines Work - Short Documentary" video.

  1. DARPA has taken submissions for a supersonic submarine project. Like the Rossiyan Shkval Torpedo, it will be a jet or rocket, traveling at incredible speed through a bubble of . . . steam. Having watched the Shkval explanations, I can only predict it will be too bumpy a ride for humans to endure. This does not rule out drone or autonomous submarine bots. My thought is that, if you can do that-move a 10,000 ton submarine at supersonic speed by means of rocket propulsion through seawater, you could move it faster and cheaper through the air. Flying sub ahoy! <Runway attendant> No! It's coming in . . . for a landing!?!?!"
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  2. China spends only 5/16 of our budget on arms. The question is: how much cheaper is a Chinese Destroyer, or J-20, compared to its USA equivalent? The technological edge goes to the USAF and USN, but can the Chinese build enough cheaper units to outlast, or overwhelm, us? We can intercept one missile with great surety. Even a dozen at a time, if everything is working correctly and the sensory environment isn't too cluttered with debris, explosions, and chaff. But 100? A thousand? How much of the price of, say, an F-35A goes to worker wages and healthcare and unemployment? How much of a J-20's cost is so subsumed? How much is kickbacks to influential advocates, or outright bribery, like Bofors, Lockheed, Vickers, and others have been caught at? China exists in a Culture of bribery, a fact which does not really make her any worse than anyone else, despite all the high falutin rhetoric. The thing is, that doubles the cost of any system that smacks of profit. And that culture-and its beneficiaries, is/are the real enemy of the people. "We can't build enough to defend ourselves, because the Congress and House are too greedy for those succulent under-the-table goodies we use to get their votes." Or the Party. Or the Minister of Transportation's third undersecretary and, if HE'S getting some, so should his boss-right? That's how graft, and campaign contributions, work. It all travels uphill, soi, you can bet that, if a lower level man in the procurement process is making a li'l somethin' somthin'; on the side, so his his every superior.
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