>>4072503 pb
You might have a point anon.
"The gun pointed at the head of the universe."
In a comment, I (didn't) make such a remark, related to issues of silicon die fabs. Consider… Where do the chips come from in the world? Of modern day die lith processes capable of producing the FPGAs and other such things used in military radars… How much of it exists within the U.S. … Or… Some place other than Taiwan/China?
Research quantities only.
Put the pieces together. U.S.S. Porter. What happened? I was in Jebel Ali as part of MSRON (later CORIVRON) 11. Let me ask… In today's modern navigational world… How does a tanker end up on a perfectly perpendicular intercept course with an Aegis/Aegis-II equipped destroyer?
How many similar incidents became peculiarly common following the Porter?
Freescale Semiconductor had an engineering team disappear along with MH370. Why were they all headed to China/Taiwan? Who would have the skill set necessary to investigate the die lith process and determine if/how chips were being modified from their design specification?
Recall the hardware hack performed by Chinese operatives. Recall the many losses of information from the F-35 programs to hackers/spies suspected to be from China prior to the production of the J-20. Recall incidents regarding aircraft suddenly performing improperly on takeoff/landing.
How many aircraft are potentially compromised directly or indirectly?
If a war were to break out between NATO and Russia, during such a mass movement of assets and deployment thereof… What would China have? Even if it wouldn't take all that long for the regulars to figure out what was going on when China played that card - what can be done about it?
Even if we were to want to deploy to Taiwan to secure die fabs our own way - that is a force deployment of itself. Are there die fabs outside of China? Some - but even the equipment to make silicon dies is built outside of our ability to secure with no domestic competitors. It would be years before we could piece together a secure supply line of "computer chips" to replace what is compromised.
Even then, we are looking at airframes like the F-35 Penguin and the F-18EpicFail. The super bug is at least better than the F-105 in terms of wingloading and thrust, but the Penguin needs to be turned into a mini-sub type of deal from Blue Sub no. 6.
Makes you look back on those tests of the nuclear arsenal a little differently. Those are old, pre-GPS electronics relying on INS. That was a message to the Chinese that no matter what weapon they had, the game was tic tac toe and their only winning move is not to play.