EXCLUSIVE: China's military consistently beats U.S. estimates
'Never seen a country' like that, top U.S. general says
By Ben Wolfgang - The Washington Times
Wednesday, November 3, 2021
The capabilities of the Chinese military continue to beat U.S. estimates, and neither the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War nor any other country in recent history has consistently exceeded Pentagon and intelligence community projections to this extent, a top Air Force general said Wednesday.
In an exclusive interview with The Washington Times, Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements, offered a blunt assessment of how quickly the Chinese armed forces have accelerated key programs such as hypersonic weapons, nuclear arms, and a host of others. Gen. Hinote‘s sobering take came just hours after a new Pentagon report revealed that the U.S. now expects China to have 1,000 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2030 — beating Defense Department projections offered just last year.
“One of the most interesting things about being a China-watcher over maybe the last 10, 15 years has been it’s the only country certainly in my memory, and I’ve had people in the intelligence community tell me that they’ve never seen a country that consistently accelerates faster than we estimate,” he told The Times. “The Soviets didn’t do that. Certainly not North Korea or Iran, anything like that. But China has done a good job of taking their economic power … and applying that to acceleration of military capability. And this is why you’re seeing things like the hypersonic test” conducted by China last summer and recently confirmed by top Pentagon officials.
“I always expect China is going to be pushing the edge of that envelope increasingly forward,” he said.
https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/nov/3/chinas-military-consistently-beats-us-estimates/
