It's a start. CCTV7 (PRC military channel) released footage of automated PLA cruise missile component gigafactory last october capable of making 1000 components a day, insinuating scale of their smart munition acquisition. Which is to say a few days of production can satuate existing US+co missile defenses in 1IC, assuming typical 1500km cruise missile range, US can literally move every land missile interception system produced and stuff every VLS cell of existing USN hulls with anti missile defense in theatre, and PLA cruise missile gigafactory going brrrt will saturate with a few weeks of production. Which is to say, they're indicating they can build so much cruise missiles, likely cheaper than ARES, that US + co simply don't have capability to preposition enough hardware to survive in attrition game. That said, doubt ARES can out compete PRC... on industrial output. Obviously an effort has to be made to increase munitions production, but I doubt ARES can do it for 10x smaller / 10x cheaper.
IMO focusing on antiship is misguided, there's plenty of advanced munitions to sink limited PLAN ships, the problem is PLA has enough land based fires to probably destroy most of US+co hardware in theatre with spares. IMO there's this misconception that destroying PLA navy will somehow stop PRC war efforts, when bulk of PLA fires is largely land based (magnitude more than naval fires), including eventually proliferating prompt conventional global strike to hit CONUS, at which point no US hardware is really save. Ultimately, PRC will gladly trade PLAN for USN... since US global security architecture breaks down without navy, and that 600x ship building advantage is going to help PRC reconstitute faster.
The actual US+co ordnance deficit is munitions for hitting PRC mainland, to take out PLA landbased fires, realistically can't cut much on size because 1IC deployment either means ships outside of PRC A2D2 range, or on land (likely limited to JP/PH) which means 1000km range just to reach PRC coast and 500-1000km more to hit interior sites. Unless you include SKR, but they're not that suicidal. Which means need something size of existing cruise missiles, if not larger. And depending on how it's deployed (i.e. on ship/airplane), the hardware has to be relatively over engineered to survive the logistics chain of being forward deployed (i.e. mechanical vibration / salt air). PRC's advantage is they can produce magnitude more munitions + with less demanding deployment + a lot more room to deploy launchers (most of mainland) vs US with limited deployment regions.
This is without mentioning modern anti air has nearly 100% interception rate on subsonic munitions. Question is going to be, can AREs make more cheaper cruise missiles than PRC can make interceptors. At which point it might be more cost effective to focus economizing higher end munitions. Remember it COSTS a lot in man power + logistics to just sustain deployment. Maybe this will be comboed with many autonomous launch platforms... but that's when you run into deployment geopolitics, i.e. JP citizens aren't going to like (or likely allow) 1000s of launchers dispersed on their roads for survivability, and you can only fit so much on Okinawa/Luzon. There's a lot of constraints to US trying to win the numbers game in both production and deployment vs PRC, but at the same time, peer power attrition warfare is a numbres game.
All that said, zero interest rate era is over. Tech needs to beg for defense money now. Expect more of this going forward, and who knows, maybe it'll disrupt defense aquisitions for the better.
This is the only comment that matters in this thread.
The US currently can only put 50 something hulls in the water, so even if they ALL somehow converge on TW, that's not enough to keep that factory busy for more than a week.
Also to contrast, equivalent Tomahawk production is down to 55 last YEAR, despite current urgency. Plus the Ike CSG just used up about 150 in that yemen excursion.
The real tragedy is all the STEM in the US can't seem to muster up the competency or fortitude to compare these basic numbers in any public facing material.
IMO focusing on antiship is misguided, there's plenty of advanced munitions to sink limited PLAN ships, the problem is PLA has enough land based fires to probably destroy most of US+co hardware in theatre with spares. IMO there's this misconception that destroying PLA navy will somehow stop PRC war efforts, when bulk of PLA fires is largely land based (magnitude more than naval fires), including eventually proliferating prompt conventional global strike to hit CONUS, at which point no US hardware is really save. Ultimately, PRC will gladly trade PLAN for USN... since US global security architecture breaks down without navy, and that 600x ship building advantage is going to help PRC reconstitute faster.
The actual US+co ordnance deficit is munitions for hitting PRC mainland, to take out PLA landbased fires, realistically can't cut much on size because 1IC deployment either means ships outside of PRC A2D2 range, or on land (likely limited to JP/PH) which means 1000km range just to reach PRC coast and 500-1000km more to hit interior sites. Unless you include SKR, but they're not that suicidal. Which means need something size of existing cruise missiles, if not larger. And depending on how it's deployed (i.e. on ship/airplane), the hardware has to be relatively over engineered to survive the logistics chain of being forward deployed (i.e. mechanical vibration / salt air). PRC's advantage is they can produce magnitude more munitions + with less demanding deployment + a lot more room to deploy launchers (most of mainland) vs US with limited deployment regions.
This is without mentioning modern anti air has nearly 100% interception rate on subsonic munitions. Question is going to be, can AREs make more cheaper cruise missiles than PRC can make interceptors. At which point it might be more cost effective to focus economizing higher end munitions. Remember it COSTS a lot in man power + logistics to just sustain deployment. Maybe this will be comboed with many autonomous launch platforms... but that's when you run into deployment geopolitics, i.e. JP citizens aren't going to like (or likely allow) 1000s of launchers dispersed on their roads for survivability, and you can only fit so much on Okinawa/Luzon. There's a lot of constraints to US trying to win the numbers game in both production and deployment vs PRC, but at the same time, peer power attrition warfare is a numbres game.
All that said, zero interest rate era is over. Tech needs to beg for defense money now. Expect more of this going forward, and who knows, maybe it'll disrupt defense aquisitions for the better.