A morally questionable approach to end Russia´s aggression

As of January 2025, Russia's war on Ukraine is entering its third year. While Western democracies lack a cohesive strategy beyond imposing lackluster sanctions to end the conflict, there are several ways to bring Russia to its knees and compel it to withdraw from Ukraine.

In its attempt to capture Ukraine, Russia has suffered massive losses in manpower and materiel, to the point where it now relies on North Korean soldiers and artillery shells to sustain its war effort. This reliance indicates that Russia has largely run out of momentum, as evidenced by its minimal territorial gains achieved at the cost of extreme casualties.

As a result, Russia is largely incapable of defending itself against potential aggression from a third-party country and is dependent on China's goodwill to avoid invasion and the annexation of territories that China views as historically or strategically significant.

This situation presents an opportunity for a morally questionable yet potentially effective strategy to bring peace:

A Western alliance could engage with China's leadership and make it explicitly clear that, in the event of a Chinese invasion of Russian territory, Western nations would refrain from intervening militarily and would either minimize sanctions or forego them altogether.

Additionally, Western countries could agree to recognize China's territorial gains as legitimate, provided that China recognizes Taiwan as an independent nation.

China might seize such an opportunity and invade the Russian territories in question. Faced with its inability to defend itself, Russia would be forced to choose between losing significant territory to China or withdrawing from Ukraine to focus its resources on countering its Asian neighbor.

As an added benefit, this scenario would allow Western intelligence agencies to observe China's military capabilities in action, providing valuable insights into its strategic and operational strength.

What the F/A-XX renderings might tell us about it

In December of 2022, the first sixth generation stealth bomber B-21 Raider was unveiled to the public. But a sixth generation fighter jet is yet to be produced. The F/A-XX program is intended to deliver just that.

Current renderings of the future fighter jet, show a tailless plane without vertical stabilizers. Although it is an early rendering and often does not display, what the eventual fighter looks like when finished, it might tell us something about the plans for it.

Artist rendering of F/A-XX fighters

While it is clear, that most of the advancements happen under the air-frame like sensors, open data architecture, networking capabilities, engine technology and so on, the design might give a few hints on the engineers intentions.

With software controlled flight stabilizing getting so cheap and accessible, that it is even running on things like an Arduino board (https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/projects/tags/drones) there is no more need for building an aircraft around maximum stability these days, which makes radical designs feasible like seen in the F-117 Nighthawk or the B-2 bombers as both airplanes were extremely aerodynamically unstable and could not be flown without computerized flight control.

F-117, stealthy but unstable

Getting rid of the vertical stabilizers and going with a tailless design leads to less drag. This means higher fuel efficiency and potentially longer range. Something the F-35 is criticized for. Especially with the current military understanding, that China is the main rival of the USA it might be designed with a potential conflict with China in mind. One of the likeliest scenarios would evolve around an attack on Taiwan from China's mainland, making it important for the US to have an aircraft carrier capable design with long range, as they do not want to risk a multi billion dollar ship by parking it in range of China's (hypersonic) missiles.

Therefore long range is crucial in such a potential conflict.

Other than that, such a design also has fewer surfaces to reflect incoming radar waves. Which means higher emphasis on stealth. Showing again, that stealth is still regarded as very important to the US military.

Often the canards are discussed to be a diminishing factor in stealth but it might not be necessarily the case as the J-20 and the X-36 are both associated with good stealth capabilities.

Stealthy despite canards and agile due to thrust vectoring

The chances of ending up with a result like shown in the designs is also very likely when considering, that the US has lots of data on similar air-frames.

Notable examples are:

-X-36 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_X-36)

-Boeing/McDonell Douglas Bird of prey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Bird_of_Prey)

-B2/B21 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit)

...and many other unmanned vehicles.

Pictures often also display the jet to be equipped with two engines rather than one, which could indicate a bigger plane in general. This could also hint at bigger fuel reserves and/or higher weapon load capabilities, something the F-35 also was criticized for.

Additionally the design is very reminiscent of the YF-23 in terms of how the engines are located. In some pictures the exhaust nozzle shows similarities to the ones found on the B-2. Potentially indicating measures to further reduce the heat signature of the plane.

YF-23 and its unique engine positioning

 

This indicates, that stealth might be way more important to the US than high maneuverability. Especially since the renderings so far do not show things such as three-dimensional thrust vectoring but instead a design associated with a lesser degree of maneuverability. As such it follows the idea of dog fights being dead and a strong focus on beyond visual range combat, already big part of the F-35 and F-22 philosophy.

As for now, this is an highly speculative article and I hope to share some interesting thoughts on the development of the new fighter jets. But as fascinating as those planes might be, I also hope they will not be used in combat. It stands to hope, that China might develop into a more democratic country without the desire to declare war on a peaceful country such as Taiwan.

 

How sanctions on China might be the change the world needs

When Russia attacked Ukraine in the beginning of 2022, we saw something many thought unimaginable: almost worldwide sanctions on the aggressor Russia.

While it can be debated, whether the sanctions go far enough to bring Russia to retreat from Ukraine it still shows that there is a will to stop senseless atrocities and provide help where needed (even if it is for national interests at the end of the day).

But with sanctions of course, comes a price. Quite literally, as large quantities of oil and gas from Russia were a cornerstone of the european economy.

Europe is ready to swallow some bitter pills as a result, as prices rise, whole sectors are under the threat of going bankrupt and its people fearing a cold winter, should the conflict not resolve.

The motivation to take this into account comes from:

-The fear of getting attacked by Russia also, if it should be able to take Ukraine

-The unwillingness to just let our neighbours die by the hands of Dr. Evil aka Putin

-The unwillingness to lose an economic partner as Ukraine is one of the biggest providers of grains for example

While this is already horrible enough it could get worse: China is openly threatening Taiwan to get "liberated" as well. 

What are scenarios here:

#1 Nobody does anything about the situation and Taiwan gets threatened for all eternity but it stays pretty much the same all the time -> highly unlikely as China is growing its military at break-neck-speeds with Taiwan in its focus.

#2 Taiwan falls to China, the world just does nothing and has to face shame for letting a democratic country fall into the hands of a dictatorship with all implications incorporated -> highly unlikely, as this would only fuel further empirialistic ambitions

#3 The world intervenes and China also becomes the target of the biggest sanctions ever imposed in history, as China is one of the biggest economic players in the world with exports to almost every country on earth. This would result in an epic market crash, worldwide shortages in nearly every good imaginable -> very likely as the alternatives are not

A reality in which China gets cut off from the market, every first world country would face massive problems in supply chains, prices would skyrocket and in an instant the cheap lifestyle we all know and love would disappear in an instant. About anything of our belongings gets at least partially produced in China. Cutting those things out of our daily lives seems hard and it is.

But where there is a will there is a way.

Maybe this is the wake up call the world needs.

Too many things become produced under unethical and overall terrible conditions. This might be triggering point in which countries decide to produce with quality and repairability in mind. Sure a German washing machine might cost a lot but it will potentially last longer and be repairable. Furthermore companies might shift to produce their goods in more democratic countries, in which man-hours are still cheap, such as Greece or Romania.

While the first years of such drastic sanctions might be big burden to societies all over the globe it might lead to the long awaited and needed changes in consumer behavior:

It becomes more frugal and highly concerned on quality.

Producing our goods largely in European or American countries will most likely rise prices but at the same time will lead to shorter delivery routes as goods get produced more domestically.

Another positive aspect might be innovation. As many resources can only be found in areas such as Russia and China, first world markets are forced to find replacements for those materials wherever possible. Also long dead technology might find its long awaited revival.

Often the cheap stuff is only cheap at first glance because the bill it causes has to be paid by someone else. The usage of many toxic materials in everyday products is usually a problem for future generations and then it is often not as cheap to take care of them.

Microplastics are a good example of this behaviour as we only recently discovered its terrible effects on biology, when it turned out, that it might cause infertility in men for example (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7967748/).

Maybe and just maybe, China and other countries with their constant threats and ethical problems will change the overall attitude of our societies and their wrongdoings will no longer be tolerated.

Personally I do not think that is currently the case, as for example Germany is already preparing partnerships with other dictators to deliver cheap gas for example instead of taking care of their promises of a green sustainable future.

But who knows, I would like to be proven wrong on this.

Nevertheless, every crisis is a chance to correct past mistakes even though it is also possible to take measures beforehand...