#japanese warplanes

[aanews69]

Dodáváme příběhy. Dáme vám také návody, tipy a triky, jak si vytvořit svůj vlastní.Tento kanál je věnován náhodným věcem, které se objevují na našich stolech.

[bobthebuilder-official]

[spider-xan]

Obviously, the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrific war crimes, but I will not forgive the liberals and even some leftists who engaged in historical revisionism and apologia for fascism, imperialism, and genocide by framing Japan as 'the Gaza of WWII' and how they were just poor little innocent colonized underdogs that everyone was mean to for no reason and in the same geopolitical position during WWII as Palestinians and especially Gazans are in today, like, put down the Japanese nationalist propaganda like G*dzilla Minus One and that stupid M*yazaki film about the poor little warplane inventor plagued by nightmares of the evil Chinese.

[usafphantom2]

Dec 7 1941 – Imperial Japanese Navy makes surprise attack on US Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor. Six aircraft carrierslaunched total of nearly 400 warplanes which claimed five US battleships and ten other vessels, and damaged three other battleships. The US declares war on Japan.

@CcibChris via X

[mariacallous]

Geopolitical storm clouds are gathering at the far reaches of Pax Americana, and yet there is remarkably little sign that the U.S. government or the American people have awoken to the mounting dangers. The threat posed by China and Russia and their rogue nation allies rated only passing mention in last year’s presidential campaign, for instance, which in typical fashion revolved around domestic issues such as the economy and inflation. Asked to choose among five issues in an NBC exit poll, only 4 percent of the voters surveyed during last year’s presidential election named foreign policy as a priority.

President Donald Trump has talked a lot about restoring strong U.S. leadership in an increasingly unstable world, but in its first two months, his administration has mostly sown chaos at home and doubt abroad about the reliability of the United States as an ally.

The administration’s ready-fire-aim approach to national security and world affairs stands in stark contrast to the sense of very real urgency felt at the United States’ geographic military commands, which are positioned forward around the globe.

In essence, these military headquarters are sentries on the far battlements of the U.S.-led, post-World War II international order. From their vantage point, Washington’s military and security forces already find themselves stretched thin by intense combat operations, hybrid and proxy warfare, and tense military standoffs with an increasingly cohesive “axis of autocracies” that is spread out over six time zones that span the globe.

Listen closely to the warnings from these outposts, and you can detect the sound of alarms clanging while the United States continues listing even as geopolitical storm clouds darken.

From the hillside headquarters of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Honolulu, commanders can gaze down on the tranquil waters of Pearl Harbor, where the surface of the water has an oily sheen resulting from persistent leakage from the once mighty battleship USS Arizona, sunk by Japanese bombs more than 80 years ago. The locals refer to the sheen as “black tears,” in memory of the 1,102 U.S. service members still entombed in the wreckage below.

Pearl Harbor is a place for quiet contemplation, and from the nearby vantage point of Indo-Pacific Command, it is impossible not to reflect on the dangers that accumulate when rising powers—such as 1930s-era Japan and Germany—confront status quo powers—such as that era’s Great Britain and the United States.

Today, the Indo-Pacific Command is consumed by the meteoric rise of another superpower in Asia—one whose bullying and provocations toward the United States and its regional allies have increased in rough proportion to a military expansion that recently retired leader of the command Admiral John Aquilino characterized as “the largest military buildup that we’re seeing in history, both conventional and nuclear.”

China’s massive defense manufacturing base now churns out weapons systems at a pace estimated at five to six times as fast as its anemic U.S. counterpart. Beijing already boasts not only the world’s largest navy, but also a shipbuilding capacity roughly 230 times that of the United States, according to Office of Naval Intelligence estimates.

Not coincidentally, in the past year alone, China’s armed forces have held live-fire exercises bracketing Taiwan, a democratic country that the Chinese Communist Party considers a breakaway province. Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army also regularly attacks the ships of the Philippines—a U.S. treaty ally—near contested islands. According to the Pentagon, since the fall of 2021 there have been more than 180 incidents of Chinese warplanes performing “coercive and risky” maneuvers targeting U.S. military aircraft in international airspace.

In congressional testimony in May 2024, Aquilino, then the head of Indo-Pacific Command, said that “all indications point to” the Chinese military meeting leader Xi Jinping’s deadline of being ready for a potential invasion of Taiwan by 2027.

Given that three of China’s standing war plans are built around that Taiwan scenario, the Pentagon has held classified war games testing the U.S. military’s readiness for such a contingency dating back a decade. Many Americans are not even aware that those secret war games consistently indicate that U.S. forces would not only lose that war, but also that they would lose it fast.

Contemplating the growing disparity in defense industrial capacity and Beijing’s aggressive claim of hegemony over the entire South China Sea, then- U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall III summarized conventional wisdom in September 2023 while speaking at a conference: “China is preparing for war, and specifically for a war with the United States.”

Remarkably, the theater-wide view from the village of Mons, Belgium, home to NATO’s sprawling Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), is equally alarming.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 set off the largest conflict in Europe since World War II, is now in its fourth bloody year. During that time, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that Putin has transitioned the Russian economy to a near-total wartime footing, spending an estimated 7.1 percent of the country’s GDP on defense in 2024.

Despite mounting a large military resupply mission to help keep Ukraine in the fight, the United States and its NATO allies have been continually deterred from more decisive support by a level of nuclear weapons saber-rattling and brinkmanship by Moscow that the world has not seen since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. That brinksmanship escalated dramatically in November 2024, after Russia attacked Ukraine for the first time with a new type of intermediate-range ballistic missile that is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead as well as conventional ones.

The virulently anti-Western axis of autocracies that has come to Russia’s aid in its aggression against Ukraine and its challenge to the supposed U.S.-led, rules-based international order is increasingly alarming to U.S. security officials. China has lived up to its “no limits” partnership with Russia, which was announced just before the invasion, rescuing it from the isolation of Western sanctions with bilateral trade that soared to a record $240 billion in 2023. Beijing acts as a willing buyer for Russian oil while supplying Moscow with subcomponents such as drone and missile engines as well as the semiconductors that are critical to its burgeoning defense industry.

Despite its own conflict with Israel, the theocratic regime in Iran has also stepped in with shipments of ballistic missiles and thousands of lethal Shahed drones for Moscow’s war against its democratic neighbor.

The rogue regime in the so-called hermit kingdom of North Korea, a de facto nuclear weapons state and the most insular dictatorship in the world, has likewise provided Russia with short-range ballistic missiles and what South Korean authorities have estimated as 8 million artillery shells. And in a dramatic escalation of the conflict, U.S. intelligence officials revealed in late 2024 that Pyongyang had also sent an estimated 12,000 special forces troops to fight alongside their Russian counterparts against Ukraine. U.S. officials believe that in return, Moscow is sharing advanced air defense systems with Pyongyang.

In response to Western support for Ukraine, Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency has also greatly intensified its hybrid war against Europe, resulting in what Western intelligence officials characterize as a “an unprecedented rise” in acts of sabotage, arson, cyberattacks and attempted assassinations on NATO soil. In an article in Financial Times, the heads of the CIA and Britain’s MI6 described Russian intelligence activity as a “reckless campaign of sabotage across Europe.”

Western efforts to keep Ukraine supplied, even with fundamental war materials such as standard munitions and low-tech drones, have also revealed glaring deficiencies in industrial capacity in the once-vaunted U.S. “arsenal of democracy.” According to NATO intelligence estimates, Russia is on track to annually produce nearly three times as many artillery shells as the United States and its European allies combined (with 3 million shells versus 1.2 million, respectively). Russia has also dramatically increased its production of relatively cheap drones. Its close ally Beijing already dominates the worldwide market for commercial drones, with just one Chinese company accounting for approximately 70 percent of global production.

The view of the Middle East from the U.S. Central Command Forward Headquarters at al-Udeid Airbase in Qatar is no more reassuring. The war against Israel that the Gaza-based Hamas militant group launched to devastating effect on Oct. 7, 2023, quickly revealed itself as a coordinated attack on the United States’ closest ally in the region by Iran-led proxies that constitute Tehran’s so-called axis of resistance, which comprises Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, and Houthi rebels in Yemen. The resulting war thus rapidly spread throughout the volatile region, including in the form of rare direct attacks between Israeli and Iran proper.

From the outset of the conflict, the U.S. military surged forces to come to Israel’s defense, with the Biden administration dispatching two aircraft carrier battle groups beginning in fall 2023. As a result, U.S. warships and aircraft were involved in the most intensive combat operations at sea since World War II, helping to protect Israel from missile attacks by Iran and its proxies, responding to attacks on U.S. bases and ships in the region, and engaging with Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen in an attempt to thwart their attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

While Iran and its axis of resistance have been seriously weakened by the conflict, the intense strains of recent combat deployments on a historically small and overstretched U.S. military have been exposed for all to see. Defense Department officials have admitted struggling to find sufficient air defense systems to protect their allies in both the Middle East and Europe, and they are running short of key munitions such as surface-to-air missiles.

In late 2024, the Pentagon also announced the withdrawal of the last U.S. aircraft carrier deployed in the region. Asked about the redeployments and the gaps in presence they represent, Gen. Charles Brown Jr., the recently sacked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted that the Defense Department had no choice but to “step back and take a look” at spiking demand and the impact of extended deployments on U.S. forces, “not just in the Middle East, but really around the world.”

Back home, the Trump administration continues to signal a realignment away from the United States’ traditional role as the so-called leader of the free world, even recently voting with Russia and North Korea at the United Nations against resolutions condemning Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. For its part, Congress continues in its nearly unbroken, decadelong streak of failing to pass a defense budget on time, severely curtailing efforts to stabilize acquisition programs and reorient the Pentagon’s strategic direction to confront rapidly growing threats.

In a report published in December and titled “Restoring Freedom’s Forge,” Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, took note of the urgency of this moment. “Over the last four decades, the defense acquisition system has ground to a virtual halt, buried under a mountain of statutes and regulations from Congress and the Pentagon,” he wrote.

And a congressionally mandated Commission on the National Defense Strategy (NDS) report released in July 2024 backed that conclusion with its own stark warning: “The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war,” the report began, noting that the United States has not fought such a global conflict since World War II, nearly 80 years ago, and last prepared for such a contingency during the Cold War, 35 years ago. “It is not prepared today,” the authors added.

Retired Rep. Jane Harman, the former chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee, also served as the chair of the recent NDS Commission review.

In the event of a conflict with China or Russia, Harman noted in a recent interview with the Defense Writers Group, “there will be a major cyberattack on our critical infrastructure. When the lights go out in our cities, and our ports close, and our transportation systems melt down, people will start to pay attention. So maybe we can help them pay attention” ahead of what would surely be a catastrophe.

[regina-bithyniae]

"We must try to live"

Enjoyed watching The Wind Rises last night.

Very beautiful movie, sentimental and sad. Probably now my second favorite Ghibli movie after Mononoke.

One favorite minor scene was them getting their cool new plane part about 2/3 of the way into the movie, which comes in a box packed between crumpled-up newspaper on the Shanghai Incident, which they just toss aside. Cleverly done.

Jiro working late at night holding hands with his very-sick wife is also quite poignant, possibly my favorite scene.

The movie touches on an interesting theme, the sweet warplanes being absolutely awesome but also, war being bad. A sort of tension that hopefully exists in the minds of most dudes who are seriously into military history, wargaming, etc, like I am.

Girlfriend didn't like it because she thought, "it supports the war." The movie amusingly has been caught in a crossfire between:

Japanese nationalists angry that the movie is critical of the Japanese Empire

Koreans angry that the movie supports the Japanese Empire

Japanese anti-smoking advocates angry the movie makes smoking look super cool

The first and last understood the movie the best.

[lonestarflight]

Concept art of Douglas B-42 Mixmaster attacking a Japanese airfield. This was the attack version which replaced the bombardier position with machine guns.

"The remarkable XB-42 was in many ways the most advanced piston-engined warplane ever flown. As René J. Francillon put it, 'the XB-42 was as fast as the Mosquito B.XVI but carried twice the maximum bomb load…furthermore the Mixmaster had a defensive armament of four 0.50-in machine-guns in two remotely-controlled turrets whereas the Mosquito B.XVI was unarmed.' A variety of offensive gun options were considered including sixteen .50 cals or two 37-mm cannons. The XB-42A had a top speed of 488 mph and a maximum range of 4,750 miles."

source

[captain-price-unofficially]

Chinese soldiers listening for Japanese warplanes with an acoustic locator. Chongqing, China, 1941

[shonensupreme]

Something about 1940's Japanese warplanes.

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

Major Kirk and the Women's Army Corps

By Jonathan Monfiletto

When Uncle Sam called, a young woman from Penn Yan – much like many of the young men all around her – answered. And she not only rose to the call but went above and beyond it during her nearly three and a half years of service in World War II.

Less than six months after the United States of America entered the global conflict following the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces, the U.S. government – through a bill approved by Congress and signed by President Franklin Roosevelt – established the Women’s Auxiliary Air Corps on May 15, 1942 “for the purpose,” officially, “of making available to the national defense the knowledge, skill, and special training of women of the nation.” In actuality, it took a Congresswomen – U.S. Rep. Edith Nourse Rogers, of Massachusetts, who introduced the bill a year before it became law – to ensure women would receive all the rights and benefits afforded to male service members when they supported the Army, after she had witnessed the status of women in World War I.

Less than three months after the WAAC was formed, in September 1942, Carlotta “Kirk” Crosier became Yates County’s first woman to enlist in this new military organization. Having been employed as a physical education teacher in Owego public schools at the time, she joined through the Binghamton recruiting office. In fact, though she taught at Owego Free Academy for two years by that point, a newspaper article from the time indicates she did not return for the 1942-1943 school year because she anticipated a call to service.

From Binghamton, Crosier reported to Des Moines, Iowa for basic training at the rank of private. With her experience in physical education, she helped the platoon leader teach the other recruits how to march. Perhaps as a result, she was one of two privates selected for the first officers training course for women.

Upon completion of this officer candidate school, 2nd Lt. Crosier served as executive officer for an all-female company stationed in Daytona Beach, Florida but preparing for duty in England. When the unit was transferred to Fort Devon, Massachusetts and then Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, Crosier was promoted to company commander. When Crosier and her fellow women reached England in July 1943 – the first WAAC battalion to do so, with three to five companies – they were assigned to the 3rd Division of the 8th Air Force. Here, Crosier worked as a company commander under Gen. Curtis LeMay.

Initially, WAACs worked only as clerks, cooks, drivers, and medical personnel. Indeed, a newspaper report quoting an article by Doris Fleeson in the Woman’s Home Companion speaks of female troops under Crosier’s command performing clerical communications and mess duties.

In September 1943, though, Congress and the President – again, through the work of Rep. Rogers – authorized the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), shortening the acronym by a letter and allowing women to serve overseas with the regular Army. Now, women began to take on roles as cryptologists, radio operators, photographers, mechanics, and more.

At this point, it seems, 1st Lt. Crosier was transferred to the 8th Air Force Headquarters Operations Section commanded by Gen. Jimmy Doolittle. Later promoted to captain, she served as the first female operations watch officer in the history of the U.S. military. In this role, working in the operations room in a bombproof, underground structure, Crosier helped coordinate the missions that sent U.S. warplanes on the attack.

Listening to pre-mission discussions among Doolittle and his staff, Crosier helped supply such information as the weather and direct such decisions as the target, the time, the bombload, and the number of planes. When the group made its final decisions for the mission, it was Crosier’s job to write the field order containing all of the pertinent information, send it out by teletype to the bomber divisions, and alert allied agencies of the upcoming attack.

A newspaper article, with the date of March 9, 1944 handwritten on it, calls to attention Crosier’s role in the bombing raids over Berlin, Germany. According to the article, the London Daily Sketch of February 23, 1944 carried a 12-square-inch photograph of Crosier and had this to say about her: “The girl who knows ‘The Gen.’ She is Lt. Carlotta Crosier, U.S. Women’s Army corps, operations watch officer at Eighth Air Force H.Q. On her accuracy depends much of the co-ordination that sends U.S. planes out on attacks. When her chief, Major-General Jimmy Doolittle, asks: ‘How many bombers will we be able to put up tomorrow?’ she supplies the answer.”

Another newspaper article, handwritten with the year of 1945, noted in its headline then-Capt. Crosier “Continues as Watch Officer” and indicated she was among the WACs “contributing considerably toward the successful completion of air attacks against Nazi Europe.” These women kept a constant check on each air mission as it was flown and kept records and plans for future information. Crosier specifically informed generals and other officers who planned air operations on the progress and reports of the current missions and prepared them for any emergencies in which information must be relayed to the proper channels.

Yet another newspaper article dates presumably from about the spring or summer of 1945, as it states Crosier had returned home to Penn Yan after two and a half years of service. Then, she didn’t expect to be out of uniform until almost another year. Indeed, she was discharged as Maj. Crosier in January 1946. Upon her return, she noted how her with bombing missions over enemy territory turned into such missions as dropping supplies over the Netherlands. Then, with little work for the WACs to do but wait to go home, Crosier volunteered to assist with the filming of a documentary about what she and her fellow women did in the European theater. In fact, she was in Paris the day the French held a parade to celebrate V-E, or Victory in Europe, Day.

In a V-mail letter home that was printed in a 1943 report in The Chronicle-Express, Crosier commented on receiving the hometown newspaper overseas and finding fellow soldiers with ties to Penn Yan and the Finger Lakes region. She also seemed to sum up the mission of her fellow women during the war.

“I believe I’m very fortunate in being over here and all of the Wacs are hard at work now and doing a fine job,” she wrote. “I’m very proud of the girls in my command. We are attached to the air force and are very proud of that. … I was very fortunate in being given an opportunity of going up in a Flying Fortress and it sure was a wonderful ship. As you know we are all part of the army of the United States and are regularly G.I.’s now.”

[bobmccullochny]

History

December 10, 1896 - Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel died at San Remo, Italy. His will stipulated that income from his $9 million estate be used for awards recognizing persons who have made valuable contributions to humanity. Nobel recipients are chosen by a committee of the Norwegian parliament. Prizes for Peace, Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Economics are presented annually in a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, on the anniversary of his death. Each prize is valued at about $1 million.

December 10, 1898 - The Treaty of Paris was signed between American and Spanish representatives following Spain's defeat in the Spanish-American War. Under the treaty, the U.S. gained the Philippine Islands, the islands of Guam and Puerto Rico, and an agreement by Spain to withdraw from Cuba. The treaty passed by a single vote in the U.S. Senate on February 6, 1899, and was signed by President William McKinley four days later.

December 10, 1941 - During World War II, British Battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales were sunk by Japanese warplanes in the South China Sea, killing nearly 800 crewmen.

December 10, 1948 - The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

December 10, 1950 - Dr. Ralph Bunche became the first African American man awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for his efforts in mediation between Israel and nearby Arab states the previous year.

December 10, 1989 - The first non-Communist government since 1948 assumed power in Czechoslovakia.

Birthday - Educator Thomas Gallaudet (1787-1851) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He co-founded the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817.

Birthday - Poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her poetry became known only after her death when her sister discovered nearly 2,000 poems locked in her bureau, written on the backs of envelopes and scraps of paper. They were published gradually over the next 50 years, beginning in 1890.

Birthday - American librarian Melvil Dewey (1851-1931) was born in Adams Center, New York. He invented the Dewey decimal book classification system, advocated spelling reform, and urged use of the metric system.

[whatwwwwwww]

please, please, dont reblog the post acting like the Chinese woman is dumb for lightly criticizing Hayao Miyazaki's historical revisionism movie of an actual WW2 figure to be more sympathetic, ala the Japanese version of "Oppenheimer was so sad about it tho" biopic. The movie being hated by prouder bolder fascists, says nothing about how the movie itself has Japanese propaganda misinformation. Hayao Miyazaki is son of WW2 warplane manufacturer company director, and has been on record for praising the ingenuity of Japanese (imperialist) innovation in WW2.

ah shit my bad! post deleted, and I'll look more closely at these things next time

[usafphantom2]

Designed by the legendary Clarence 'Kelly' Johnson, the Lockheed Hudson (a converted 1930s airliner) became a rather surprisingly successful warplane.

It sank several German U-boats, shot down an Fw 200 Condor and even had a dogfight with Japanese Zeros!

@Clarke_Aviation via X

[mariacallous]

In the waters of the South China Sea, Chinese coast guard vessels have clashed with Philippine ships. In the air above the Taiwan Strait, Chinese warplanes have challenged Taiwanese jet fighters. And in the valleys of the Himalayas, Chinese troops have fought Indian soldiers.

Across several frontiers, China has been using its armed forces to dispute territory not internationally recognized as part of China but nevertheless claimed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In August 2023, Beijing laid out its current territorial claims for the world to see. The new edition of the standard map of China includes lands that are today a part of India and Russia, along with island territories such as Taiwan and comprehensive stretches of the East and South China Seas that are also claimed by Brunei, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

China often invokes historical narratives to justify these claims. Beijing, for example, has said that the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands, which it claims under the name of the Diaoyu Islands, “have been an inherent territory of China since ancient times.” Chinese officials have used the same words to back China’s right to parts of the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. The Chinese government also claims that its sovereignty over the South China Sea is based on its own historic maritime maps.

However, in certain periods since ancient times China has also held sway over other states in the region—Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Vietnam. Yet Beijing is currently not laying claim to any of these.

Instead, Beijing has embraced a selective irredentism, wielding specific chapters of China’s historical record when they suit existing aims and leaving former Chinese territories be when they don’t. Over time, as Beijing’s interests and power relations have shifted, some of these claims have faded from importance, while new ones have taken their place. Yet for Taiwan, Chinese claims remain unchanged, as the fate of the island state is tied to the very legitimacy of the CCP as well as the vitality of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s political vision.

Many of the CCP’s territorial claims have roots in the 19th and 20th centuries during the late rule of the Qing Dynasty. Following diplomatic pressure and repeated military defeats, the Qing Dynasty was forced to cede territory to several Western colonial powers, as well as the Russian and Japanese empires. These concessions are part of what are known in China as the “unequal treaties,” while the 100 years in which the treaties were signed and enforced are known as the “century of humiliation.” These territorial losses eventually passed from the dynasty to the Republic of China and then, following the Chinese Civil War, to the CCP. As a result, upon the CCP’s establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the new Chinese state inherited outstanding territorial disputes with most of its neighbors.

But despite the humiliation the Qing Dynasty’s losses had caused, the CCP proved willing to compromise and reduce its territorial aims during times of high internal unrest. Following the Tibetan uprising in 1959, for instance, the CCP negotiated territorial settlements with countries bordering the Tibet region, including Myanmar, Nepal, and India. Similarly, when unrest rocked the Uyghur region in the 1960s and ‘90s, Beijing pursued territorial compromises with several bordering countries such as Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. In the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward in the early 1960s and the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, the CCP also pursued territorial settlements with Mongolia, Laos, and Vietnam in the hopes of securing China’s borders during times of domestic instability. Instead of pursuing diversionary wars, the CCP relied on diplomacy to settle border and territory disputes.

But China has changed quite a lot since then. In recent years, the CCP has avoided the inflammatory domestic political chaos of previous decades, and its once-tentative hold over border regions, such as Tibet and the Uyghur region, has been replaced by an iron grip. With this upper hand, the CCP has little incentive to pursue peaceful resolutions to remaining territorial disputes.

“China’s national power has increased significantly, reducing the benefits of compromise and enabling China to drive a much harder bargain,” said M. Taylor Fravel, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In this context, the CCP has expanded its irredentist ambitions. After the discovery of potential oil reserves around the Senkaku Islands, and the United States’ return of the islands to Japan in the 1970s, Beijing drew on its historical record to lay claim to the islands, even though it had previously referred to them as part of the Japanese Ryukyu Islands. Similarly, though Beijing and Moscow settled a dispute over Heixiazi Island, located along China’s northeastern border, in 2004, the 2023 map of China depicted the entire island (ceded, along with vast Pacific territories, by the Qing Dynasty to the Russian Empire in 1860) as part of its domain, much to the ire of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Collin Koh Swee Lean, a senior fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, argues that the Chinese mapping of Heixiazi Island shows that Beijing holds on to certain core interests and simply waits for the opportune time to assert them.

“Given the current context of the war in Ukraine and Russia’s increased dependence on China, it might have appeared to Beijing that it has the chips in its pockets because, after all, Moscow needs Beijing more than the other way around,” Koh said on the German Marshall Fund’s China Global podcast.

This raises the question of whether territorial disputes that were settled during times of CCP weakness can be revisited and become subject to irredentist ambitions should power balances shift in China’s favor.

According to Steve Tsang, the director of the China Institute at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, there is currently a limit to how far the CCP will push territorial claims against Russia, since President Xi will need Russian support to sustain his grand ambitions for Chinese leadership on the global stage.

Although it would be a long shot, even Russia may not be safe from these ambitions indefinitely. Given that large swaths of Russia’s Pacific territories were part of China until 1860, “China could claim back the Russian Far East when it deems the time is right,” Tsang said. Such control would grant Beijing unrestricted access to the region’s abundance of coal, timber, tin, and gold while moving it geographically closer to its ambition of becoming an Arctic power.

While there is plenty of historical evidence pointing to former Chinese control over the southeastern portion of the Russian Far East, the historical record is less unequivocal about Chinese control over Taiwan. Anything resembling mainland Chinese control over Taiwan was not established until after 1684 by the Qing Dynasty, and even then central authority remained weak. In 1895, the Qing Dynasty ceded Taiwan to the Empire of Japan following the First Sino-Japanese War, and by the time Chinese authority was restored in 1945, Taiwan had undergone several decades of Japanization.

These details have not prevented the CCP from claiming that Taiwan has been an inalienable part of China since ancient times. Yet more than any other irredentist claim, Xi has made unification with Taiwan a major component of his vision to rejuvenate the Chinese nation.

Unification, however, has little to do with ancient history and more to do with the challenge that Taiwan presently poses to Xi’s aims, according to Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor who teaches about Chinese foreign policy at the National University of Singapore.

“The CCP pursues a Chinese nationalism that emphasizes unity and homogeneity centered around the CCP leadership while they also often claim that their single-party rule is acceptable to Chinese people,” Chong said.

In contrast, Taiwan holds free elections in which multiple political parties compete for the favor of a people that have increasingly developed an identity distinct from mainland China.

“The Taiwanese experience is a clear affront to the CCP narrative,” Chong said.

Control over Taiwan is also attractive to Beijing because it is key to unlocking the Chinese leadership’s broader ambition of maritime hegemony in waters where almost half of the world’s container fleet passed through in 2022.

As with the case of Taiwan, the CCP’s historical arguments regarding its claims on island groups and islets in the East and South China Seas are likewise much weaker than many of its land-based claims.

Instead, Chinese territorial intransigence in the maritime arena is more about a strategic shift in the value of the seas around China, Fravel said.

Today, it has been estimated that more than 21 percent of global trade passes through the South China Sea. And beneath these waters are not only subsea cables that carry sensitive internet data but also vast estimated reserves of oil and natural gas.

Although it may say otherwise, Beijing’s unwillingness to let up on its tenuous territorial maritime claims suggests that China is pursuing long-held ambitions and global aspirations rather than attempting to reverse past losses. So long as the CCP wields its historical record selectively and changeably to serve its aims—and is willing to back its claims up with military action—China’s neighbors will remain at risk.

[roadwarriorgreece]

Who Remembers The JUN Akira Supra mk4?

I could name a few, but one that stands out is a 21-second clip of a bright yellow MkIV Toyota Supra mk4  built by JUN, power-sliding at Tsukuba Circuit. I’m not sure where I first saw it online, but in 2001 – four years before YouTube was a thing – you can bet I risked the prospect of 25 to life by downloading the bootlegged clip. Thankfully, you don’t have to.

So imagine my joy, when a few years later, I caught a glimpse of what appeared to be that very same car parked in a gravel lot across the road from JUN’s Iruma shop. What I didn’t know at the time was that this was the same Supra that had graced the covers of Max Power and Super Street magazines in late 2001, with a somewhat different outward appearance. A Supra that had reached the mind-numbing top speed of 401.20km/h (249.292mph) on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, USA.

How did I end up here? Back in 1999, I met JUN Auto Mechanic head Susumu ‘God Hand’ Koyama in New Zealand when he travelled here to compete in the Option Speed Trial with the JUN Super Impreza GC8 – a 580ps (572hp) beast that hit 309.1 km/h on a long and straight but bumpy and wet backroad. I knew I had to visit JUN, and in 2004, I came to Japan and was able to make it happen.

More than 20 years later, I’m still humbled to have received personal tours of JUN’s Nerima shop in Tokyo and JUN Auto Works/Auto Mechanic in Saitama from the company’s founder, Junichi Tanaka.

I didn’t get to spend much time with the Supra – it was the end of the day, and I had a train to catch back to Tokyo. But I was lucky enough to get the car moved into a little open space in the parking lot for a few photos.

JUN was founded in 1980, but its parent company’s history dates back to 1946. After World War II, Tanaka-san’s father founded Tanaka Industrial Co., repurposing machinery used for Japanese warplanes for automotive applications. For his entry into Japan’s performance car tuning industry, Tanaka-san hired Koyama-san, a talented young mechanic, to head up operations, and JUN as we know it was born.

The latest turbocharger technology was the heart of JUN’s operations, and the company quickly built a name for itself by building some of Japan’s fastest and most powerful cars. Tuning car top-speed trials held at the now defunct Yatabe Test Track by Option magazine in the ’80s became an early focus for Koyama-san. Then, in 1990, he took JUN to the global stage with multiple appearances at Bonneville in different cars. In 2001, JUN returned to the salt flats with its ‘Akira Supra’ – a demo car build started three years earlier from a stock 1993 Toyota Supra RZ.

Unlike most cars in Bonneville’s 200mph Club, JUN’s Supra wasn’t a purpose-built, tube-framed race car. It was a modified street car with some extra go-fast bits added (and removed) to allow it to reach 400km/h – a number Koyama-san had seen on the salt with previous builds. Around the same time JUN was in the USA with the Akira Supra, the bootlegged clip of the car power-sliding at Tsukuba made its way online, now known to have been ripped from Video Option Vol. 76, which came out in 2000. Thinking back, this might have been the very first ‘viral’ video to emerge from Japan’s tuning scene, which was still largely a mystery at the time. Thankfully, Option officially uploaded the full three-minute segment to YouTube a few years ago, so you can watch that by pressing the play button above. As it turns out, the Akira Supra had been brought to Tsukuba to see how fast it could lap the circuit, and on a warm-down lap, Option test driver Eiji ‘Tarzan’ Yamada decided to have some fun… Not long after I first saw the power-slide clip, a friend loaned me a Video Option VHS tape from, I’m guessing, around 2000 too. In the grainy footage, the Akira Supra was filmed ripping through the gears along the Tokyo Aqualine at over 300km/h – the Wangan benchmark of the golden era. It just got better.

Even before I knew of its Bonneville exploits, the Akira Supra embodied everything amazing about the Japanese tuning scene at the time. It was a street car that could hit 300 km/h with ease and drift. It had a 2JZ-GTE engine built up to 3.2L with JUN prototype parts – forged crankshaft, forged rods and pistons, performance cams – and a T88 turbo. Gear shifts were made through a sequential gearbox, practically unheard of in street cars, and it was unmistakably a JUN creation with functional exterior mods and that signature yellow paint.

For the Bonneville attempt, the 2JZ engine was completely overhauled. In addition to strengthening and modifying the engine base for more power, Koyama-san added twin Trust/GReddy SPL T78-29D-14cm turbos, a prototype JUN intake manifold, and a fuel system up to the task. That system included a 120L tank, five Bosch Motorsport fuel pumps, and a dozen JUN 890cc injectors. Tuned through an HKS F-CON V Pro engine management system, the setup made nearly 1,400ps (1,380hp).

The driveline retained the same 6-speed Holinger sequential gearbox it had previously been fitted with, but a 2.238:1 final drive ratio was used in the rear end to ensure the Supra could mechanically hit 400 km/h. Combined with its aerodynamic modifications and a full flat steel underbody tray, the Supra averaged 240.192mph (386.55 km/h) over two runs in the E/BGCC class. Hitting 401.20km/h on one of the runs is what it’s remembered for though.

When it returned from Bonneville, the Akira Supra was converted back to its street car setup, with a single Trust/GReddy T88-34D-22cm turbo, a milder cylinder head specification, a pared-back fuel system, and a more road-friendly diff ratio. In this form, the power output was up to 950ps (937hp), running around 1.7bar (25psi) of boost. That’s the spec you see here.

The street version of the Akira Supra – JUN’s original look for the car – perfectly reflected the late-’90s/early-’00s Japanese tuner style. The front bumper, vented and bulged hood, aero mirrors, and GT wing were all JUN parts, while the rear diffuser was a RE Amemiya piece. Read the full article