US Developed Better Explosives, But China Uses Them. By Jeremy Bogaisky.
In 1987, U.S. Navy researchers invented a new explosive with fearsome capabilities. Named China Lake Compound No. 20 after the Southern California base where it was developed, it boasted up to 40% greater penetrating power and propellant range than the U.S. military’s mainstay explosives, which were first produced during World War II.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the Pentagon’s urgency evaporated. So did the expensive task of perfecting CL-20 and designing weapons to use it. …
The US paid for the R&D used to make CL-20, but China found out about it (from grad students at US universities? employees at US companies? probably quite legally):
China, however, saw the potential. The country has invested heavily in developing long-range missiles … Some of those weapons are believed to be propelled by a version of CL-20, which China first fielded in 2011 and now produces at scale.
“This is a case where we could potentially be beaten over the head with our own technology,” Bob Kavetsky, head of the Energetic Technology Center, a nonprofit research group that does work for the government, told Forbes.
Kavetsky and other experts in energetics, the niche field of developing things that go boom, have been warning for years that the U.S., long the world leader, has fallen dangerously behind China. …
“We can’t build enough ships and airplanes to carry the number of missiles necessary to reverse the firepower imbalance we have inside the first island chain,” said retired Major General Bill Hix …
“The only solution is new energetic materials,” he said. That would allow the U.S. to produce smaller missiles with the same power, so more could be carried by warplanes and ships, as well as to enable weapons that can shoot farther and pack more of a punch. …
Chinese scientists account for about three-quarters of the published research on energetics and in related fields over the last five years, nearly seven times as much as U.S. researchers, according to analyses from the Hudson Institute and Georgetown University. They’re working on materials that have improved performance over CL-20 …
Even the current, outdated US explosives come partly from China:
The U.S. depends on China as the single source for about half-dozen chemical ingredients in explosives and propellants, and other countries of concern for another dozen. …
Nearly all U.S. explosives are produced at a single Army-owned plant in Holston, Tennessee, that dates back to World War II and is run by U.K.-based defense contractor BAE Systems (2022 revenue: $25.5 billion). …
All one needs is a pickup truck and a mortar team and game over. Single point of failure. As if you designed something to make you combat ineffective at D+1. …
If you don’t wake up every morning cursing those responsible for defense and China policy in the 1990s … the gobsmackingly short sighted arrogance of it all — then what use are you, actually?
With a few exceptions, from partially completed CV rusting in Ukraine, to teaching the Communist Chinese how to MIRV ICBM warheads, to opening up our best research institutions to spies an assets, the USA was beset internally by unserious people with the attention span of a hamster and the historical perspective of a newborn in serious jobs requiring long-term thinking and decision making.
Yet another example of the ineptness of the US ruling class.
