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Rapid Fire April 9, 2013: The Limits of China’s Categorical Denial, Underdog Messaging

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* The US Navy will deploy a solid-state laser aboard USS Ponce during the coming fiscal year. USS Ponce, an amphibious transport dock ship formerly known as LDP 15, was refitted last year as an Afloat Forward Staging Base, Interim (AFSB-I), and will be deployed to the Persian Gulf. Iran will counter it with bad […]

* The US Navy will deploy a solid-state laser aboard USS Ponce during the coming fiscal year. USS Ponce, an amphibious transport dock ship formerly known as LDP 15, was refitted last year as an Afloat Forward Staging Base, Interim (AFSB-I), and will be deployed to the Persian Gulf. Iran will counter it with bad weather.

* Thales UK would like to get into that laser business too.

* Hot off Boeing’s Alliterative Product Name Generator: Phantom Phoenix, a family of small satellite prototypes, going from 4-kg nanosats to mid-class sats in the 500-1,000kg range. They’re aiming for the savings offered by dual/multiple launches. Press release.

* France’s Cour des Comptes issued a report [PDF, in French] which concludes that the French government sometimes struggles to get the defense companies it nominally controls to actually execute its decisions. This court has roughly the same job as the US GAO or NAOs in various Anglo countries: issue scathing reports that detail governmental shortcomings that the executive branch will then at best pay lip service to. This gives them a good vantage point to know powerlessness when they see it.

* Andrew Erickson talked at the CSIS think tank about China’s defense budget, based on his recent article in China Quarterly. He’s characterizing the growth of Chinese defense spending as “within their means” and sustainable, and is underlining the economic constraints that should sooner or later put a lid on future budget growth. Erickson reckons that China’s official numbers are still not reflecting their overall military spending, but they are converging towards a more realistic estimate. James Mulvenon then made a good case for more transparency from China, as opacity forces its neighbors to assume and plan for the worst. Finally Jack Georgieff offered a timely Australian perspective as Australia and China just announced a deepening of their diplomatic relations. Video embedded at the bottom of this entry.

* Chung Mong-joon, a long-term member of South Korea’s parliament, will argue today at a conference organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that his country should develop homegrown nuclear capabilities to send a strong message not just to North Korea, but also to China. The fact this argument has recently moved from fringe to mainstream so quickly in South Korea may have motivated China to berate North Korea for their reckless behavior, if only begrudgingly and indirectly.

* A panel at that same conference discussed the apparent lack of interest from China and Russia in President Obama’s disarmament agenda (see 2nd video embedded below). PLA General Yao Yunzhu said with disarming charm she did not know why she was there because China has such an nonthreatening posture and puny nuclear arsenal. George Perkovich who was moderating the panel did point out that China is believed by some to have many more nuclear weapons than they acknowledge. Alexei Arbatov, a former member of the state Duma, quipped that:

“Bad news is that the relation between Russia and the United States is at its lowest point since the end of the Cold War. Good news is that those difficulties are not blurred by friendship between our presidents.”

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