Grendel as a Universal Infantry Cartridge

[LRRPF52]

China as a superpower is a myth propagated by disinformation sources that don't have any reputable assets in China to actually report on the ground truth there.

The US has maintained a force presence on the world's sea lanes since before the Second World War, and assumed an even larger one after the shrinking of the British Empire. China shares borders and critical coastline with:

Code:

Russia India Mongolia Nepal North Korea Kazakhstan South Korea Kyrgyzstan Japan Tajikistan Philippines Afghanistan Vietnam Pakistan Taiwan Bhutan Myanmar Tibet Laos

http://www.investorsinsight.com/blogs/jo...china.aspx

Maybe one out of 10,000 people you will ever meet is even remotely familiar with Chinese geography, their constraints, history, population, demographics, or politics. No matter what they do, they will never even come close to the physical capacity to deploy a navy or air force with the capabilities that the US has, because they simply don't have the sea ports to make it happen. China has the second largest concentration of deep sea ports along its coast in the world, which is about 1/3 of that the US's is. Northern Europe as a region would be next on that scale.

While China is clearly on an expansionist binge, scrambling for every resource, trade deal, and foreign mineral exploitation operation, they face monumental population, demographic, social, and political challenges that manifest themselves daily. As of 2011, they had experienced over 200 internal revolts against local corrupt governments, for example. With a population of 1.347 billion occupying land area that is less than half of the US, you can start to see how that's a reality.

They are also the historical authors of asymmetric warfare if you read Sun Tzu. Asymmetric warfare means that small arms will play an important, but peripheral role to intelligence and force flexibility.

Interesting to the discussion, China attempted to adopt a universal infantry cartridge system with the 5.8x42mm, which is lacking in long range performance, and is a bit long for an individual service rifle:

5.8x42mm on the right


I suspect they did this for ease of logistics purposes, and their propaganda services stated that it was to prevent "invaders" from being able to use common ammunition, which their Warsaw Pact chambered weapons would technically allow.