in July 2024 China transported soldiers 3,000 M away into bellarus they conducted joint training exercises only a mile and a half away from NATO member Poland's border and 40 Mi away from the border with Ukraine China's joint military exercises with Maria and belus coming just days after NATO's strongest denunciation of Beijing does this mean it's time to sound the alarmist alarm the Chinese are coming the Chinese are coming the reason this has made world news headlines is because of the implication Beijing has has done a mission like this since 2015 so the timing of the
drill indicates that the CCP is sending a warning message to the United States that they're prepared to deploy troops to fight against NATO and Europe keep in mind the United States military routinely conducts much larger training missions near the border of China and Russia Russia has also recently ran a submarine mission to their allies in Cuba right near the United States but I think the reason this otherwise routine Mission can shock people today is because because of the rhetoric that we hear around it the deputy head of the general staff of the Belarusian Armed Forces
said that the Maneuvers were in response to the West aggressive foreign policy towards Belarus and to Ukrainian provocation meanwhile NATO recently met in Washington DC where they released a joint statement calling China a decisive enabler of Russia's war and that China's currently engaged in enabling the largest land war in Europe in recent history Beijing responded saying the accusations were lies and smears and said that the exercises weren't aimed at any single country this sounds like the geopolitical version of high school gossip but it begs the question could China actually fight a land war in Europe
how many troops could the CCP deploy and sustain that far away from their border to answer that we need to take a look at three key areas of the Chinese military strategic airlift sea and ground transportation but first I want to talk to you about the folks that made this video possible hellofresh America's number one meal kit hellofresh offers over 50 different recipes so there's basically no limit to the number of restaurant quality meals that you can have delivered directly to your door within a week of placing your first order and whether it's a gourmet
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meals plus free appetizers for Life One appetizer item per box while subscription is active if you're in the United States outside the US local discounts will apply we'll start with strategic airlift China sent one single y20 cargo plane to bellus for context that's slightly smaller than the American c17 Transport so we can actually assume that it can carry a similar amount of 188 soldiers no tanks or armor was sent on the training exercise according to China's Ministry of National Defense they conducted a quote anti-terror training mission that included things like hostage rescue Urban combat and
water Crossings not sure what type of terror group you're fighting where you need to train on contested River Crossings but okay fair enough the y20 has a payload capacity of 66 tons so it can potentially carry two light tanks or one main battle tank since 2016 you probably haven't heard of this but China has quietly built a fleet of 67 y2s this has gotten exactly zero attention though because they don't do sexy things like Fighters at fire off missiles but in many ways their strategic implication is much bigger because of the implication China is now
one of only four nations in the entire world to manufacture a 200 ton military transport jet if you want to project power and fight Wars abroad acquiring this asset is the first step this actually isn't the first time we've seen them in Europe in April of 2022 military observers were surprised to see six of these Chinese y2s land in Nicola Tesla International Airport inside Serbia according to the Serbian president Beijing delivered unto him fk3 surfac to air missiles these are the export variant of China's hq22t it's kind of like the Russian s300 the point is
China isn't focusing their airlift to deploy troops so far they're mainly using it to transport weapons and equipment China has 20 of the similar Russian produced IL 76 cargo planes that can carry two lightweight armored trucks no tanks and 130 troops what all that means is that with their current capabilities China could fly 12,000 soldiers to Russia or bellarus if they absolutely needed to that's roughly two brigades but this doesn't include armored vehicles a typical armored Brigade has at least 80 main battle tanks 18 self-propelled artillery Vehicles 150 infantry fighting vehicles and 100 armored trucks
and logistic Vehicles so it would take China's entire strategic airlift Fleet 10 round trips to deploy two brigades moving that many troops and equipment with those assets would take over a month but I might be being far too generous with those estimates because I spoke with an active duty US Army Officer who works in Logistics in strategic airlift and he said quote assuming all 67 y2s are available and fully Mission capable the pla could airlift 8,978 soldiers in one go while this is a lot of light infantry it brings up a lot more questions where
are they going to land every airbase and airport has a limited amount of aircraft they can realistically store service and maintain this number is known as the maximum on ground and is typically measured from the aircraft's wing tips and added amount of length on each side in order to allow for the bird to maneuver on the ground and where are all these 9,000 soldiers going to eat sleep and adding all 9,000 soldiers will immediately jump the local population by an emotionally significant amount in order for this to work the pla will have to painstakingly negotiate
an agreement with bellarus another logistic Soldier I spoke to said quote the heavier you load an aircraft with cargo the more wear and tear occurs so you often have to trade off range for cargo capacity some aircraft May have to be tasked to support and recover aircraft with maintenance issues to fly both Specialists and parts to fix non-mission capable aircraft so what he's saying is that not all those 67 y2s can be dedicated to just flying combat power there you also need to dedicate some of them to support roles but we're forgetting about a whole
another major problem before we even get there midair refueling when fully loaded China's y20 has a max range that's reduced down from 7,000 km to 3,700 km the closest point from bellarus to China is the capital in shinjang which is 4,600 KM these numbers come straight from the Chinese media Publications themselves who spoke to Zu Chan who's the head of their aviation industry Corporation the article claims fully loaded y2s would be restricted to domestic operations in China this is why they would need midair refueling for many of these missions but there's another problem currently China
doesn't have any maor major midair refueling capabilities like the 400 refueler tankers that America currently has they just started manufacturing versions of the y20 the U variant for refueling China also doesn't have any of the giant American C5 or Russian A14 cargo aircraft which can carry twice the capacity at 140 tons so they can carry two tanks instead of one what all of this means is that China's current airlift capacity would struggle to support a limited war in the assessment is backed up by the US China economic and Security review commission which was created by
the United States Congress to research the Chinese military among other things they state that in their report on China's power projection quote in the medium term next 10 to 15 years or so so by like 2035 the people's Liberation Army aims to be capable of fighting a limited war overseas to protect its interest in countries participating in the belt and Road initiative by mid Century though the pla aims to be capable of rapidly deploying forces anywhere in the world Roger Cliff wrote a great publication titled China's future military capabilities for the US Army war College
in it he stated China's Air Force does not currently appear to be aiming to become a global power projection Force the acquisition of aerial refueling aircraft appears to be a lesser priority the pla Air Force does not yet possess heavy bombers and the acquisition of Airlift aircraft appears to be intended primarily to support the wartime requirements of air transportation as opposed to expeditionary air operations what all that means is that when we look at their airlift capabilities they're entirely designed and focused on supporting a war against Taiwan or their near abroad but just because strategic
airlift isn't quite ready for Beijing what other options might they have at their disposal let's take a look at ground transportation the pla could use the Trans Siberian rep way they would have to first load tanks and troops onto ships then offload them at vat volock before moving them by rail about 9,300 km across Russia and there's another Overland option as well this is the changqing Jing Jang European Railway I think I said that correctly God bless me it takes about 16 days to travel the roughly 11,000 km from China to bellus through this route
if China needed to deploy troops into Europe this is another potential Overland land route however it's already used by 30 trains each day for trade and economic activity from China into Europe so it would have to be some kind of cataclysmic world-ending emergency event to see the potential militarization of these routes the railway infrastructure is designed for cargo not troop movements there's also a lot of weight limitations on these tracks and it would require some significant modifications to Freight cars to pull off sending tanks and equipment military variety through there China would also need to
coordinate and get permission from Kazakhstan where their rail passes through so there's also geopolitical concerns here but it wouldn't be insurmountable because Kazakhstan and Russia and China are all founding members of the Shanghai cooperation organization which is actually the group that bellus just joined so it's a big reason why these training exercises are happening in the first place the active duty US Army Logistics officer that I spoke to had this to say about the railway route this would allow the pla to deploy more soldiers more supplies and even heavier equipment this could work for a
short training deployment but would be wholly inadequate during a longer deployment and even worse during combat operations the extreme distance between mainland China and bellarus would force the pla to rely on a predictive style of resupply push method and not a responsive style pull method this would either overburden units with more rations ammunition and repair parts than they can consume or more likely not enough we already know in 2021 China sent troops tanks and equipment through rail into Russia they were there to participate in the international army games kind of like the Olympics but for
war but they didn't go very far they just traveled right across the border in the Mongolia autonomous region there'd be all kinds of red tape and problems with trying to militarize a trade route a railway like that so what if China tried to go over sea instead when it comes to China's sea lift capabilities they have three type 75 transport ships that can move 800 soldiers and two operational aircraft carriers but there isn't really a out that they could take to Europe because going east to the bearing straight through there wouldn't really work since the
Arctic Ocean isn't navigable most of the year it's not impossible but it's unlikely turkey would allow China to transport troops through the bosor river that they control the CCP currently doesn't have a bluew Navy or the foreign relationships necessary to transport soldiers that far away but supporting soldiers abroad is about much more than just getting them there you have to be able to send spare parts for when the vehicles break down you got to be able to send fuel tools food and ammunition thousands of miles away too loading and unloading sending all of this is
called rail head operations the rail head operations are dangerous timec consuming and an all around nightmare conducting them requires an enormous amount of training skill and specific Transportation equipment it's it's nothing like riding a bike once you do it you need to continue to do it and train on it to be able to do it correctly even with practicing these things all the time between 2006 and 2018 31% of active duty US military deaths were results of accidents on things like these kind of Transportation operations it would take two months at least to move a
similar size two brigades this method especially without any of the infrastructure or training ahead of time but China will continue to grow their power projection abilities in 2016 XU chin of the aviation industry Corporation of China stated that they needed more than a thousand of the y2s and it's likely China will have a 100 of them by 2032 in order to match the United States airlift capabilities though they would need well over 230 of them and another 100 refuelers the assessment of China reaching these capabilities by 2035 or 2040 seems to be on track with
the rate at which the CCP is producing Transport Aircraft but I'm curious to know what you think of my assessment was there a transportation route or outside the box method that you can think of that I missed do I have my head really far up my ass and be sure to check out one of these videos before you go
