A military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Anti-Japanese War has greatly boosted the morale of the whole people.

We are delighted to see the great progress made by the PLA in terms of equipment, science and technology.

We can proudly say that the gap between the Chinese military and the US military in the field of equipment continues to narrow, and even overtakes in missiles, laser weapons, rocket launchers, drones and other fields.

But at some key military levels that are "invisible" or not often mentioned, we still have a considerable gap with the US military.

Of course, since the two countries are based on different geographical conditions and strategic national policies, the two countries also have different considerations of military development directions, we must accumulate more experience in the future and catch up.

The first thing to say is in the navy.

It is said that ten years of army and a hundred years of navy, and the cultivation of a strong combat effectiveness navy requires years of technical accumulation, practical experience and systematic talent training.

Although our navy is currently expanding rapidly, historical debts allow us to make up for shortcomings in some aspects.

Global sea hydrological data accumulation

Hydrological data is the "eye" of ocean-going military activities, especially in combat of submarines and other surface ships.

Especially for submarines, with these important data, conventional submarines can use the law of ocean currents to "drift" to expand combat radius and activity time; when nuclear submarines sail underwater at high speed, accurate submarine topographic maps can avoid the risk of hitting reefs and collisions.

The acquisition of this important data requires long-term accumulation by means such as measuring ships. From the current technical means, there is no shortcut to take.

The US military has spread across the ocean for nearly a hundred years, especially during World War II and the Cold War. The main force of the US Navy is well aware of the distribution of seabed terrain and ocean currents in the global seas, while the Chinese Navy started late in this field, with a significant gap.

What's more serious is that the seabed landform needs to be updated in real time due to the impact of geological activities, and China's potential amphibious combat directions such as the South China Sea still lacks the accumulation of key data such as the imaginary enemy coastline direction, tidal laws, and beach carrying capacity.

At present, China can only gradually make up for data shortcomings through high-frequency long-sea activities in the navy, such as how far-sea training of aircraft carrier formations.

Experience in damage to large surface ships in high intensity naval battles

In actual naval battles, the ability to damage the navy directly determines the navy's continuous combat capability. Due to the relatively new service life of our large surface ships, we have almost never experienced large-scale heavy damage and damage in actual combat.

Although modern ship electronic equipment and strike methods are upgraded, the core damage problems faced (fire, water leakage) are consistent with World War II, the principle of damage management (fire extinguishing, leak plugging) has not changed, the experience of World War II still has important reference value, and simulation exercises are difficult to completely replace actual combat accumulation.

The US military accumulated rich experience in ship repair and damage control in the high-intensity naval battle in World War II. In comparison, China has obviously lacked experience in this field.

For example, after the war damage, the US military quickly curbs the expansion of damage, and transforms experience into regulations and training norms to form muscle memory. China lacks such "secrets" because it has no practical experience, and its equipment design and military standards are different from that of the US military, so it cannot be copied directly.

For example, the optimized design of combat losses feedback, the US military transformed survival details into subsequent ship design specifications by analyzing damaged ships. Due to the lack of actual combat, China is difficult to predict potential design defects of the ship.

Main combat equipment electromagnetic characteristics database

There is another thing that is the accumulation of experience and technology, but the impact is not limited to the navy.

By relying on long-term confrontation experience, the US military has established a complete electromagnetic characteristic database of enemy main combat equipment. This database plays a role in "a small force to achieve a huge impact" in modern warfare. China has a clear gap in the breadth and depth of the database.

The value of the database is very important.

With the electromagnetic feature database of main combat equipment, it can better identify targets from a long distance, such as separating the weak radar reflected signals of stealth fighters, improving reaction speed and combat efficiency.

It can also formulate targeted electromagnetic confrontation plans to invalidate enemy electronic equipment and create a one-way transparent battlefield.

The Chinese military has only been in normalized confrontation with foreign troops for more than ten years, and the database has not been accumulated enough. However, relying on the advantages of late-transmission equipment, it often has the advantage of electronic combat. However, we still need to be wary of the US military's rich experience in electronic combat.

Experience in air-ground collaborative combat

In terms of air-ground coordination, it may also be a shortcoming of the People's Liberation Army, and the US military has accumulated stronger experience.

Emperature and land coordination is a complex system project that requires the front line "mobile tower" such as an open-ground guidance team to quickly respond to ground needs.

It is necessary to plan fighter routes, strike order, etc., and it also involves in-depth coordination of cross-service command mechanisms, standards and processes. In World War II, the US military has maturely used air-ground coordinated operations to face German defenses.

Of course, China is also emphasizing systemization, but the Chinese army began to explore air-ground coordination in the early 21st century, and the progress has not been fully disclosed.

From the exercise situation, the Army is more inclined to rely on its service's long-range fire brigade and the direct artillery brigade of the army to solve the needs of long-range fire support.

Relatively speaking, the construction of air-ground support system is not as important as the US military. Although the high degree of synthesis has increased the speed of internal firepower mobilization of the army, it may not have formed mature cross-service air-ground coordination capabilities.

The gap between China and the United States' strategic nuclear forces

This is a more complicated but not too tricky aspect.

China has a trinity nuclear strike force, but there is a certain gap with the US military in terms of the total number of nuclear warheads, diversity of carriers, sea-based nuclear deterrence, and air-based nuclear strikes.

The 2024 joint report of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the MIT Institute of Technology predicts that by 2028, there will be about 1,550 practical nuclear warheads that the United States can deploy by 2028.

Data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute shows that China's nuclear warheads were about 410 in 2023. Although the number has been growing, even according to the US forecast, China's nuclear warheads will reach about 840 by 2028, which is still a worse number than the United States.

In terms of carrier tools, the United States has a variety of strategic bombers such as B-2, B-1B, B-52H, Ohio-class strategic nuclear submarines, "Ministry III" intercontinental ballistic missiles, etc., forming an extremely complete "trial-in-one" nuclear carrier system for air-based, sea-based and land-based.

Although China also has the K-6N, 094 nuclear submarines, Dongfeng series intercontinental missiles, etc., it still has room for improvement compared with the United States in terms of bomber stealth performance, number of nuclear submarines and silent levels.

There are also relatively different in sea-based and air-based nuclear deterrence.

The United States has 14 Ohio-class strategic nuclear submarines in service, each carrying 24 "Trident II D5" submarine-launched intercontinental missiles. This missile has a range of about 12,000 kilometers and has excellent reliability and hit accuracy.

China's current sea-based nuclear deterrence mainly relies on the combination of the 094 and improved nuclear submarines. The 094 series has a gap with the Ohio-class in terms of silent and missile loading.

Although the range of "Jiu Lang - 3" reaches 12,000 to 14,000 kilometers, which is no less than that of "Trident II D5", the overall sea-based nuclear deterrence scale is smaller than that of the United States.

The US air-based nuclear strike has ace equipment such as B-2 stealth bomber, which has global hidden raid capabilities. The B-21 stealth bomber is also being installed, and there are also a variety of nuclear bombs and nuclear cruise missiles such as B61 and AGM-181 that can be adapted.

The platform performance of the China Hong-6N bomber is far from that of advanced stealth bombers such as the B-2. Although the "Thunder-1" air-based missile technology is advanced, the single-aircraft carrier capacity of the Hong-6N aircraft is limited, and the overall scale and efficiency of the air-based nuclear strike are not as good as that of the United States.

Some people think that nuclear war cannot be fought, as long as there is enough nuclear weapons.

But in fact, nuclear war, even large-scale nuclear war, will not directly lead to the physical "destruction" of the planets themselves.

A single nuclear warhead, even the "tsar bomb" class with an equivalent of 50 million tons of TNT, has a direct damage range of only 20-30 kilometers, and is only a "local impact" to the earth as a whole.

Even the scale of tens of thousands of nuclear bombs is not enough to fully cover all the territory of a major country like China and the United States. If the situation is really broken, the possibility of using nuclear bombs for a decisive battle cannot be ruled out.

We must take into account the possibility of a nuclear war outbreak and ensure sufficient nuclear deterrence and nuclear counterattack capabilities.

Of course, we are just objectively talking about the gap.

Military strategies must serve economic interests, which must meet political needs, and political needs obey the goal of national rejuvenation.

The military and military association drags the country into the abyss. China has always adhered to the concept of "forget the war and be in danger, and be in danger of war". Military construction must be guided by actual interests and strategic needs, and we cannot blindly follow the US military.