Lol I honestly reflexively don't believe stories about Chinese or Russian military tech. It serves all parties to lie, for China they can talk about tech superiority, America has an excuse to funnel more money to the military.
It's funny once you start seeing the parallels between military reporting and those political campaign emails you get if you've ever gotten on one of their lists. The fluctuation between smug satisfactory glee and panicked doomsaying. They hit 2 different target audiences. The people who want to donate to winners for clout in their administration & the people who vote out of fear of the enemy and panic.
Same goes for these articles. Panicked ones about how we are losing are sob stories to get more military funding. Gloating smug articles outlining overconfident plans appeal to the warhawks who vicariously gain happiness from victory in their nation's campaign (think about the Iraq War articles with the details of how we would win in 1 month).
This one I believe. China has been saying they had this tech for a decade and it makes sense they'd investigate it. If the US was looking into these kinds of weapons it wouldn't be able to justify endless naval spending on big ass boats.
The primary reason this matters is because it makes the Pacific fleet about as dangerous as a bunch of row boats.
