alt Hacker News> It may be surprising, then, that in jet engines, China remains at least a full decade behind the West
Do they need to be at the same level as the West?
For civilian aircraft a decade or two behind seems like it would be good enough.
For military aircraft that could be a significant disadvantage, but from what the net is telling me they have excellent air defenses so it seems unlikely someone with superior planes is going to be able to go in and bomb them into submission. And they have a lot of nuclear missiles to further discourage anyone from trying.
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If you want to sell commercial jets to anyone who isn’t Chinese, 20Y old engines aren’t good enough because modern engines are slightly more fuel efficient.
The difference isn’t huge (I think it’s 10-20% or something), but when fuel is your main cost that’s enough to make older engines undesirable
This is the part I don't understand about chip export restrictions; the argument used is that high-end chips would be used for high-tech weaponry, but most weapons don't need high-end chips, 2-5 generations old chips are good enough for most smart weapons. I mean the Tomahawk is from '83, the HIMARS from the late 90's, etc. I don't believe that high end, small process chips are used in any weapons right now.
The only use case is modern day AI workloads, but that's used more in planning than in the field. I can imagine a use case for e.g. image recognition, but again, that tech or the level required is not new at all and doesn't need state of the art chip tech.
It's kinda opposite in a way. More countries make military engines than commercial engines because military engines don't have to worry as much about efficiency, pollution, sound, and most importantly cost.
But unless you massively subsidize a company "cough Rolls Royce cough" then you can't compete at all with a generation or two behind commercial jet engine tech.
>they have excellent air defenses
in which conflicts have those air defenses proven themselves?
For cruise missiles couple hour blade operating life is also a non problem.
> they have excellent air defenses so it seems unlikely someone with superior planes is going to be able to go in and bomb them into submission.
You seem to believe that China's military ambitions are purely defensive, but that is not the case. They have grandiose expansionist ambitions which include basically the entire South China Sea - which in spite of its name is shared by many countries. Not to mention their explicit goal of eventually conquering Taiwan. Their military doctrine is fundamentally offensive and does require air power.