Intel Update - July 27 - Dragon on the Horizon

Hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground this is part two of this week's Intel update in which I'm going to talk a little bit more about the Chinese Russian bomber incident that occurred a couple of days ago uh this is going to be a little bit more of an informal sort of below the te line look at some of these uh data points and just you know me tossing out some theories none of this is going to be really confirmed or certain to any degree so just please take everything I say with a huge grain of salt I may be all wash out I may be all wrong on all of this uh. But I did want to kind of share some ideas because if I'm right if these points are you know somewhat watertight uh this this could have some widespread implications so uh just for those of you who don't know uh China and Russia conducted a joint bomber sort of mission off the coast of Alaska in the Bearing Sea a few days ago now why does this matter well for me personally really don't care about the Russian side of things uh and why is that well Russia does this all the time uh Russia does this on every major holiday they fly uh they're long range bombers off the coast of Alaska off the coast of California they they love doing this what fascinates me is the is a very very tiny detail and that is that China did it the Chinese uh doing such uh conducting such a flight is very interesting because of the bombers that they have Russia primarily for their long range strategic bombers uses the t95 platform back in the day some of you might have heard this referred to as the t95 bear H uh it's really the t95m or Ms variant. But you know most of us uh who have kind of worked around this in the career field still call it the t95 be H variant that's kind of the Workhorse nuclear bomber you know Doctor Strange Love kind of aircraft that Russia uses for longrange bombing and for launching cruise missiles as well there are many other variants of t95 and they have some others ones like t42s uh. However for the most part Russia uses a t95 platform uh for a lot of presents patrols and things like that and the bear H's range is thousands of kilometers like it's a it's a really big platform um as a matter of fact the t95 uh I don't I think it was I don't know if it was a be H variant I can't quite remember uh. But a few years ago uh in 2010 there was this big sort of I don't want to call it a scandal but it was like a news story for you know in the community for like months uh which was a global flight and they will do this every now. And then they will refuel this aircraft like five or six times in the air so that that t95 can fly over pretty much every ocean uh in the planet and just do a global flight takes 48 hours to do like 47 48 hours to do you know they they sleep on board the aircraft they you know this is a long range kind of thing um the United States has similar capabilities with the b2s and now the new uh b2s. But let's just talk about Russia for right now the reason why I don't really blink an eye at Russia doing this is because well Russia has again like I mentioned done this routinely since the Cold War you know uh really since the end of World War II they've done this uh so uh it's not really interesting it's kind of like a sort of like hey you know we we know what you're doing sort of thing um they they love doing it on July 4th uh they love doing that flying off the coast of California um they love to do it for major holidays and they love to do it when the United States is experiencing some Strife uh really as a way of kind of like a tongue and cheek Cold War reference. But most of the time it's it's it's operational Readiness too so for instance when Trump got shot uh the very one of the very first things that I did was check the baronet to see if Russia's putting up some T 95s to see if they're putting up some bombers to come take a little peeky peek off the West Coast they love to do this and uh it's just one of those strategic things to be aware of it's It's it so far it's one of those unicorn things it has never been nefarious it has always been a training exercise. But that's how strategic Warfare works the very minute that is not a training exercise you should have paid attention right now where all of this captures my interest is the Chinese uh the Chinese don't have the t95 they have an old Russian bomber uh called The Well the Chinese call it the H6 uh the H6 bomber and it's really the old school tu6 from the Soviet Union days um the Chinese this is their main Workhorse of a bomber here's the whole Crux of me talking about this uh more in depth than I think anyone really cares to to follow and that is it's not really a long range bomber uh the range of the tu6 the the new H6 variant with the new engines the Chinese slapped on it it has the it has nowhere near the range of the t95 so uh you might ask yourself why does this matter well geography geography matters quite a lot. But before we get into the geography side of things let's take a look at the platform that actually flew this is a screen grab from the Chinese State media and Russian State media Publications the propaganda videos they did uh on this drill uh the United States does exactly the same thing. But this is what the Chinese and the Russians put out this is actually more specifically from the Russian video which has a slightly better quality now one of the things you might be asking yourself if you're thinking along the T lines of like a a you know Warfare sort of thing is okay what's the range of this bomber well I think the question to ask first is what variant of bomber is this uh this is the H6 bomber yeah okay fine. But what variant uh and here's where things get a little sketchy and where things get my Theory comes out of the you know Woodworks the Pentagon or rather NORAD uh put in their disclosure of this event that it was an H it was two H6 bombers the Chinese and the Russians said it were two H6 bombers. But what variant no one has stated however if you look at this aircraft you can tell at least from what I can tell my own little research is that this is the K variant this is not the long range variant this is the standard variant that China has been has been pushing for a while now uh the reason being is that there's no refueling probe out the front of this aircraft now uh just as a very brief side note uh it's important to recognize the history of this airframe again this is essentially a modifi heavily modified tu6 bomber Badger bomber uh from the old days of the Soviet Union so for those Tom Clancy fans out there when they say Badger bomber that's what it looks like that's what this is uh the difference being and this kind of goes way back way down deep into some cold war ideology or cold war like theory is for a while there it was not really certain as to if Russians the Russians had the ability to airto air refuel this aircraft uh because it didn't have a refilling Probe on the nose well the ruskies being kind of clever or so they thought uh they put on their t16s back in the during the Cold War years what these aircraft are based on that original airframe had the capability of air-to-air refueling using a wing tip to Wi tip system which was dangerous as all get out so basically aircraft would fly up one would fly in front of the other release kind of a drogue shoot from this one it would capture the Probe on the wing tip of the second aircraft. And then they would kind of do this sort of like jump rope sort of thing and hope they all don't die and rip each other's Wings off the Russians did this extensively back in the day and they got really good at they could do it at night and all that kind of stuff they were combat ready. And then they at least the theory goes they all stopped it because they realized they're all going to die so the question remains when the Russians sold those aircraft that had that system to the Chinese what did the Chinese do with it well in the O in the open source World nobody really knows uh Theory being they probably have the ability to to air-to-air refuel uh this aircraft this h6k variant. But if they do nobody knows how they do it at least in the open source world I'm sure the Pentagon already knows but just me theorizing I'm looking at this aircraft and there is no way that wing tip has the old Russian system I'm looking at the nose and saying there's no refueling probe there now that that brings up another question what if it's a retractable probe yeah they could do that they could have a retractable probe uh that's that's possible um. But I don't I don't know if that I don't I don't know I just I don't know there's no real tell um the other images don't seem to be high quality enough to tell one way or the other. But I have all this digression just to kind of answer the question what is the dang range of this aircraft not theoretically like what is it really because this matters a lot for what I'm getting ready to get into with the geography the reason that that these questions remain is because a a variant of the h6k I think they call it the h6n uh the type n variant that does have that airto a refueling capability I think they've been trying to kind of uh cross coordinate that with their nuclear capable variant which obviously has a longer range so if this is the standard h6k and that's a big if if this is an h6k and it is not capable of Arial refueling that raises some questions and here's why um let's go to what the range of this aircraft is now again there's discrepancies here generally speaking if you want to know anything about about any sort of military hardware in the world just as a little fun fact for you go to what the analysts love and hate the Wag the world equipment guide uh this is something the Army puts together on all the platforms of military hardware around the world now I say that there's a LoveHate relationship with this platform because or with the WG because it both is helpful and it also sucks like a lot and for for some platforms it has basically no information so uh one of the discrepancies here that I'll highlight is the discrepancy of what the range of this aircraft actually is um the unclassified WG that you can get to I think is wrong and here's here's why I think that taking a screenshot from Encyclopedia Britannica uh which again is not entirely a reliable source on a lot of things a lot of times. But they say that the aircraft has a range of 7200 km now this is important because of what the WG says there is a difference and this is this should probably be just basic knowledge there is a difference between range and combat radius there's a difference between radius and regular and combat radius as well. But the range of an aircraft is how far how many miles or kilometers that aircraft can can fly from takeoff to Landing okay that is the range of an aircraft okay the the radius of an aircraft is how far away that aircraft can travel before having to turn back around and land at the same spot again the combat radius is the same same sort of thing. But with a fuel Reserve so how far the you know going around to the to the point of you know return and then having a small reserve to hang out there at that uh that point of no return uh if they have to right the hunt for the hunt for October all over again right it has nothing to do with international law just kind of explaining the scene in the hunt for October it has everything to do with the procedures on board the aircraft carrier because it's very dangerous to fly out to your point of no return hang out there for a few minutes because you're burning into your reserve you got to come home because by the time you get back to the carrier you just took off from you're on fumes and you don't want that so when it comes to this bomber we've got range and we've got combat radius it is important to remember the difference because encyclopedia britanica it makes no mention of the combat radius so we're just going to assume that that 7200 km uh range they said is its range how far it can fly in total before having to land again so we just divide that by two. And then subtract a little bit for a combat radius but I'm just going to call uh the combat radius of the tu6 the original aircraft this this H6 was based off of I'm just going to call the combat radius of that 3100 km that's technically the radius. But still we're going to be the most forgiving here this will all come come together here in a moment now the WG our fantastic tax dollars have gone into this and they have actually separate categories for the range and the combat range and they're the same technically that's not possible so this is wrong I already know right off the front this is wrong it says here in the Wag that the range of the H6 a Chinese bomber is 6,000 km so comparable comparable to what the tu6 was it makes sense right it's the same exact air aircraft only the difference being is the engines now the engines of course are what makes the range different so it's interesting that the Chinese according to the WG which is I think is wrong according to the WG the Chinese put less efficient engines on it than the Russians had that's not true the Chinese upgraded it right so it's obviously their range is way more than 6,000 km. But let's just keep that for now the WG also says the combat range of this aircraft is 6,000 km so the same exact thing so somebody forgot to divide by two on this so really all of this is to say that the Chinese H6 bomber the K variant that flew off the coast of the United States off the coast of Alaska has a combat radius of 3,000 km I know that this is an assumption okay I know that this is an assumption. But we have to go go with this for now the reason that I go with this assumption and here's a little bit of more amplifying information if you will here is a news article from the South China Morning Post so your your localized propaganda for the Chinese Theater this was written in February of 2023 and was an article highlighting highlighting uh the h6k bomber specifically and the extreme long range uh Patrol they had just conducted so they actually interviewed the Squadron leader right Chen xal right or. However you say his name so they actually interviewed a a primary source and that primary source again propaganda probably but that primary source stated that they flew more than 5,000 kilomet so in one patrol around the South China Sea so that's the total range they flew so if we come back to our map here this means that they took off from somewhere probably one of the Southern air bases here and they did some loops around the South China Sea before landing back at uh the same place they didn't just fly a StraightLine distance away turn around and come back they didn't do that right no really no aircraft does that. But still so this article is is sort of confirming what we know that the you know the the standard range again this guy sort of LED on as to what the Chinese consider to be their combat radius which is 2500 km uh. But it it drives with what we already know Encyclopedia Britannica says the range of the tu6 the old busted Soviet uh airframe was 7200 km okay the CH the the WG says it's 6,000 and China says it in an operational capacity it's 5,000 so we're talking in the ballpark here of what the range of this aircraft is okay do you see maybe where we're going with this assuming that uh this aircraft that this information is somewhat correct I would assume that the discrepancy between the 5,000 and 6,000 figure uh from the Chinese and from the WG is one the WG is probably out of date by a little bit and also uh the pilot is probably considering an extra thousand kilometers as a a good combat sort of uh fuel reserve and also the pilot probably lying because if you're a pilot and you want to bomb a Target 10,000 Mi away and you're being interviewed you want to say oh my plane can fly 9,000 Mi so that person standing at that 10,000 mile Mark says hey you're 1,000 M short so the pilot could be lying as well. But in any case we're in that we're in that range of we're in the ballpark of 2500 kilm to 3,000 km is being the combat radius of this aircraft meaning that that aircraft can take off from an Airfield fly 3100 km in One Direction in a perfect straight line. And then turn around at that point and then come directly back and they will have exactly zero fuel left that's where we're going so why does all of this matter why why is it worth talking about this so so much well let's jump to Google Earth and I'll show you why remember those numbers that I told you earlier so looking at Google Earth let's look at the Pacific Theater a little bit we've got China right here we've we got Japan we've got the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia and we've got where the bombers flew now again we don't know exactly where they flew in this area. But we do know the Chinese have stated and the Russians have stated and the Americans have stated all three sources have stated that the Bearing Sea was flown parts of the Northern Pacific okay down here south of the illusion Islands I am assuming uh and also parts let's see if I can get it to focus here probably not classic Google Earth not loading. But part of the chuki sea up here in the north part of Russia so pretty good flight right so looking at the photographs of the exact aircraft that flew we can see that one of these aircraft has a tail number visible and this tail number from my own very limited research can be associated with the 10th bomber division at Lua Airbase here in northern China makes a lot of sense right this is one of the most northern bases that they have for their strategic bombers now for Russia things are really really easy one because they showed us the Airfield uh they showed us exactly through the nose of the aircraft uh what the pilot saw when he was landing and that looks exactly like ukka uh Airbase if we zoom in here I can show you very clearly ukka Airbase so fairly standard uh you can also associate the um uh all the markings on the aircraft the library uh you can associate all of that with uh I'm not I can't remember which unit it is uh from Russia. But anyway the Russian part's easy okay um because these bombers are only here at ukka or at Les I believe so yeah the Russian part's easy the Chinese did not show us where they took off or landed from in their propaganda uh videos as far as I know and this matters a lot uh because of what I'm getting ready to do right now which is show you the range so let's go ahead and take our little circle ruler tool here and let's drop it over l Air Base let's assume assume that they took off from there well knowing what we know about the combat radius of that aircraft let's say 3,000 km is that right there my friends is how far they could fly in a straight line in any direction from this Airbase do you maybe see where the problem lies bottom line I don't think these aircraft launched from China uh because well it just doesn't seem like that's possible so let's just say worst case scenario let's just double it let's just double it for fun. Even if the Chinese did like a doitt raid and they flew their aircraft in One Direction and crash landed them in the Pacific they could barely get there on fumes if you doubled their range uh so I don't think it's possible if China to use the air to- a refueling version of this uh platform I have seen a lot of very wildly um differing numbers on that. But I would say that even if the Chinese flew the airto a uh fueling capable bomber aircraft meaning that what they did was they took off from their Airfield and got up to altitude met up with a tanker up at altitude and that tanker topped them off. And then maybe once they got to the edge of their range another tanker topped them off again all possible this is what the Russians do the Americans do every country with air to a refueling capability does this so it would not be out of the ordinary I'm just saying I don't think it's possible because of the platforms they used uh and also so it would make very little sense for China to fly a refueler all the way off the coast of Russia up here the Japanese didn't scramble so what I think happened is this I think the Chinese took off from luha Airbase a few days before this and they flew all the way to ukka and refueled and probably stayed there for maybe a day or so waiting for weather and I think that once they were at ukka moving our range Circle here again to be a little bit more a little bit more accurate I think they flew from ukka all the way to uh once they refueled they flew all the way to anadir now again the combat range of this aircraft being 6,000 M or 6,000 km excuse me means that anadir was well within range so here's what I think happened based on Purely mathematical evidence no evidence supports my theory here except for my own math which is based on premises that are assumptions so you see what I say that take all this with a grain of salt I think what happened is this I think the Chinese from their 10th bomber division took off from Lua I think they flew to ukka First maybe they flew all the way to anadir I don't know I probably would have flown to ukran first because the weather around this part of the country this time of year is not great so they probably flew to UK cranka landed maybe linked up with the bears that are there maybe had a little bit of team building you know. And then they continued on to anadir uh air base anadir is another uh excuse me it's not anadir Airbase everybody calls it anadir but it's really ugoli ugoli Airbase in the city of anadir it's really confusing because there is if I remember correctly there are a lot of military installations throughout Russia that are named anadir so excuse me for for referring to that incorrectly it's technically Yugi uh Yugi anadar Air Base so. Anyway that's what I think happened and on the day of the flight what I think happened is the Russian bombers took off probably uh flew all this way here all the way probably to to yugol anadir where their fighter escort took off now again that's another that's another major thing to to keep in mind is they in their propaganda photographs and videos they had fighter aircraft they had su30sm as the H6 isn't that weird how that works out so I think what happened is the fighters the the the fighter jets uh the Russian escorts uh just going all the way back to World War II things have changed very very little you have your bombers stationed way back behind your lines they take off they burn a lot of fuel and when they get over uh when they get over the city of anadir there's a refueler there waiting for them along with their fighter escort cuz their Fighters have you know smaller fuel tanks obviously in a shorter range so everyone links up uh they they all form up uh at anadir. And then they're Off to the Races to do their their their nice little drill here and you can see that if I drop that 3,000 km uh ring that combat range around anadir you can see how much range the Chinese had uh if if indeed they did stage there you could see the range that they had uh they could have flown a very very long long way uh. And then from that let's just go just purely theoretically just to show you uh what all of this is about let's go right here uh and let's put well. First of all let me go ahead and save that just to have it there and let me draw another one let me draw another range ring here of 2,000 miles which is roughly what the Chinese have as far as their their conventional cruise missile this isn't their nuclear stuff this is just conventional uh the nuclear stuff obviously would have a longer range because this is a smaller Warhead or lighter Warhead uh. But you can see if the Chinese flew in a straight line over Alaska to their absolute maximum combat range and launched their missiles at the US they could hit Washington and Oregon and Northern California and Idaho and places like that now again this is all theoretical it's all war gamey kind of stuff. But I I I thought this was interesting because why would the Chinese do this I it seems like the Chinese went through a lot a lot of logistical nightmare like I I can just sit there and imagine the flight crew just thinking how much of a nightmare this would have been logistically to to hop all the way across the world to make this flight happen just for American news media to talk about it for 30 minutes on the air. And then just kind of ignore it uh the Chinese did something special here if that's what they did again big ifs all over this this whole thing is dotted with huge ifs and assumptions. But I don't think they're that big of an assumption and I think that this may be uh China's way of letting us know hey you thought you were out of range. But again one of the main reasons why the United States dominates the Pacific is probably one of the better you know military in my opinion one of the better military ideologies that we've had uh and lessons we've learned from World War II which is hey the United States we had better own this part of the world here the the Pacific we better own every place where a bomber could land. And so on and so forth but uh purely because of the range of the Chinese bombers China is undoubtedly the American America's biggest adversary in the Pacific um you you may disagree with the United States pushing out our presence so far into the Pacific I I don't want to debate that um because there's there's good arguments on either side of that I'm just explaining to you why why do we have bases in the Philippines why do we have bases in Japan why do we still control Midway and Guam and uh you know why do we still do these things well this is why because if China let's see here let's see if China here's Guam if China were to take Guam with their aircraft we can see that the mainland is just within bombing range of Guam so with bombs on board could they do it uh they'd be taking a they'd be taking a less than standard load I can tell you that for sure they'd be they'd be flying a gas can out there to Guam to bomb it if they wanted to which is why China has to take Taiwan because from Taiwan Guam is well within range or not well within range. But just barely within range do you see do you see why this this kind of stuff is important to or maybe interesting maybe not important for most people. But it's interesting to me because of this so you can see that if the Chinese take Guam with their h6s assuming that they just use a standard variant which in a case of they're not going to be flying around using their extreme long range variant those extreme long range variants are going to be used for nuclear weapons the h6k are going to be used for uh probably conventional Munitions like cruise missiles or anti- ship cruise missiles or something like that that's why China can dominate the South China SE from where they're at let's just say one of the Southern air bases down here China can launch and and by the time they get you know Airborne they could launch anti ship cruise missiles at anything floating in this part of the world here so you can see how nasty this can get uh. But in terms of attacking the American Homeland that's why people like me are not really concerned about the Chinese um. However uh in terms of this flight uh again it is it is one flight of two bombers who were probably loaded down with nothing but fuel tanks um or maybe they had some kind of internal fuel system either way they're operating well outside of their Homeland they're operating well within our defenses and you know they're operating well in our backyard um either way I think that um assuming that China could not or would not launch a substantial sort of um attack on the Homeland you know people like me who thought well it's just it's just not militarily likely um some people went further and said it's not military possible well this proves that it's possible uh and I think that it's gone my my level of concern on this has gone from like mild to medium you know what I mean uh on this it's not like oh my gosh this world is ending um. But this is important like this is a groundbreaking historical event and I don't see very many people talking about it um so I I thought that I would kind of share some of my ideas on uh and thoughts on this um again it's probably not that important uh considering that there's this. But one of the things that kind of is groundbreaking is if China did in fact land in Russia and start for deploying from a Russian base well now now we have to change all of our our Doctrine don't we um because we now have to consider Russian bases to potentially House Chinese aircraft which now increases China's range by a lot do you see where we're going so I don't know um I think that ignoring this would be would would not be a wise idea by the Pentagon. But I'm sure they will I'm sure some nerd out there you know Nora northcom or or probably some Naval command out there in the West in Alaska I'm sure they're writing a a very lengthy paper on this that no one will read uh. But I I I think it's important and I think that it would probably be a good idea for the American public to to keep this in mind as well uh is this a direct threat for you and your family tomorrow no um. But it's interesting I can tell you that it's interesting uh especially if if China is now starting to use Russian air bases uh for something like this um you know the the battle for the Arctic has has uh definitely uh reached new heights I think so um. But again for most people it probably wasn't interesting enough to to talk about in the main uh brief for today so I thought I would separate it out and and talk about this because you know maybe maybe I'm all wrong again maybe I just and gotten the ranges wrong on all these and China can just fly a long way on their bombers. But I just I just don't think so you know unless they put fuel bladders in the Bombay and you know doubled their range I don't think they took off from China they had they would have had to have taken off from Russia and that's probably the biggest biggest lesson to to take away from this is that China and Russia are now cooperating to the point to where Chinese bombers can take off from Russian bases and they're familiarizing themselves with this you know like I said in the beginning China and Russia diplomatically they may not be getting along on everything. But they're getting along well enough to where Chinese bombers are becoming familiarized with Russian equipment or well with Russian procedures they all share the same equipment really. But they're getting familiar you know the value the value of a Chinese pilot knowing the procedures and getting the real world experience for landing at ugoli that Pilot's now worth a lot of money that pilot is now worth a lot because now he's said he's familiar he's landed at that Airfield before he can now he's now got a higher chance of doing it into state of duress people really you know underestimate the ability of of training you know someone who's familiar with a flight is now more valuable so if China were to do this again it's very likely that you know the PC or the pilot in command in in one of these aircraft that that went uh if not the Squadron leader will probably go again because they're now familiar with the route of how to get up there so you know something something to to keep in mind like I said probably not interesting to a lot of people. But I thought I would talk about it anyway so um you know let me know what you think uh I I guess this is really one of those things which is very debatable it's all theoretical we're all working off of Old manuals from a long time ago because you know we're not operating in the classified you know sphere so I'm sure that's you know all you know different. But still you know we have a pretty good BAS of understanding to work from and I think that the the bottom line thesis for this is that China would have had to have taken off from Russia there ain't no way they took off from China uh they would had to have staged it a base in Russia either ukra or what I think more likely anadar in order to fly that that far so um at least with their standard bombers so again kind of an interesting tidbit I think that it's going to be interesting because as we all know from China if they did it once they're going to be doing it a lot so this is something to keep in mind for when they do it next time so that's all I've got on this I'm probably going to immediately realize a point that I forgot to bring up the very minute that I turned the camera off. But still but anyway that's all I've got for now thank you for sticking around and putting up with my crazy theories but sometimes it's interesting to kind of kick some of these ideas around and see what's possible so thank you all for watching and uh we will get back to it with the standard wire reports on Monday and I guess we'll see you then so as always fight in the shade.