Forbes: China is ahead of the US in the development of explosives The USA invented a super-powerful explosive, but abandoned its production.
How China "picked up" technology and now threatens America with it, read the Forbes article.
Jeremy BogaiskyAfter the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Pentagon weakened efforts to create new types of rocket fuel and explosives.
The Chinese have achieved a lot in this area.In 1987, researchers from the US Navy invented a new explosive with frightening characteristics.
It was named substance No. 20 China Lake after the name of the base in Southern California, where it was developed. The destructive power of this explosive and the range when used as fuel was 40% greater than that of other explosives used in the US armed forces and first manufactured during World War II.
But with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the urgent need for this work disappeared. The expensive task of improving the CL-20 explosives and creating weapons in which it could be used was also canceled.
But China saw great opportunities in this. This country was actively developing long-range missiles in order to force American warships and aircraft without the characteristics of low-visibility tanker type to operate at a distance in the event of an attack by the Chinese army on Taiwan. It is believed that some types of such missiles use one of the CL-20 varieties as fuel, which China first adopted in 2011, and now produces on an industrial scale.
"This is the case when we can be defeated with our own weapons," Bob Kavetsky, who heads the Center for Energy Technologies, a non-profit research organization that works for the government, told Forbes.
Kavetsky and other experts involved in the development of explosives have been warning for many years that the United States, which has long held the position of a world leader, is now dangerously behind China. Last year, the Pentagon unveiled a plan to modernize and expand its obsolete ammunition factories at a cost of $16 billion and with a 15-year implementation period. However, Kavetsky warns that it did not include the creation of an advanced base for the mass production of new explosives such as CL-20.
Another thing is even worse. For the United States, China is the only supplier of five to seven chemical components for the production of explosives and rocket fuel, and other countries that cause Washington concerns supply a dozen more such components. Proponents of improving this production hope that legislators and the Pentagon will be prompted to take action by the deplorable situation with ammunition, whose stocks have been depleted due to supplies to Ukraine, as well as increasing concern about China's preparations for the forcible seizure of Taiwan.
If Washington enters into a fight with China on its territory, a huge number of Chinese missiles will act against the Americans, which today have a longer range and lethal force. All this is only partly due to the CL-20. The Chinese are also developing technologies to improve the combustion efficiency of rocket fuel and are building large rockets, which the United States does not have either in the air or at sea.
"We are not able to build enough ships and aircraft capable of carrying the number of missiles necessary to eliminate the imbalance in firepower that exists inside the first island ridge," said retired Major General Bill Hix, who served in the army as director of strategy, and before that commanded the troops. in Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, he advises the Center for Energy Technologies.
"The only solution to the problem is new energy materials," he said. This will allow the United States to make smaller missiles, but with the same lethal force. Ships and planes will be able to take them on board in large quantities, and in addition, the launch range of such missiles and their striking power will increase.
Last month, Kavetsky held a briefing for members of the House of Representatives, including the deputy chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Republican Rob Wittman, who told Forbes that eliminating the backlog of explosives is given "great importance" in the bill on military spending for this year.
Wittman said that he supports the idea of filling the existing CL-20 missiles and creating a structure subordinate to the Minister of Defense that will deal with flammable and explosive substances. The Pentagon leadership is aware of these problems, but Wittman says: "I don't think they consider them urgent. We're going to make them feel the urgency of these issues."
Chinese scientists have owned three-quarters of published scientific papers on flammable and explosive substances and other related issues over the past five years, as evidenced by an analysis by the Hudson Institute and Georgetown University. They are working on creating materials with improved characteristics compared to CL-20, Kavetsky said.
In the United States, work on the creation of new explosives turned out to be in a state of stagnation, as the Pentagon focused all its attention on improving the accuracy of weapons to improve their fire impact, but not on the damaging effect of explosives, as stated in the report of the Center for Flammable Substances Technologies, commissioned by the Pentagon on behalf of Congress. Between 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, and September 11, spending on R&D in the field of ammunition in the United States decreased by 45%. Then low-intensity conflicts began in Iraq and Afghanistan against a weakly armed enemy, and ammunition allocations began to be increasingly reduced in order to finance the development of large weapons systems such as ships and aircraft. The bulk of the work in the field of flammable substances was carried out in accordance with the instructions of the Congress of 2001, where the task is to make explosives less sensitive in order to avoid accidental explosions.
Taking into account the dangers and limited use in the civilian sphere, military explosives are almost entirely developed and manufactured at state-owned American enterprises. Over the past decades, military researchers have developed several new explosives and fuel components, but their mass production has not yet begun. (A small amount of CL-20 was manufactured for use in detonators, but its cost was more than $ 2,000 per kilogram.) The work on creating flammable substances was dragged to various research organizations of the armed forces, and now there is not a single high-ranking leader who would insist on its centralization and changes.
"There is no one in the Ministry of Defense who wakes up in the morning and thinks only about explosives," Kavetsky said.
The government has been aware of this problem for a long time. In 2012, the Ministry of Defense created a working group on critical issues of energy materials to eliminate deficiencies in the explosives supply system. However, observers say that her work has been overshadowed by other priorities.
Now that Washington has transferred a large number of missiles, artillery shells and other ammunition to Ukraine, there is concern about the stocks in American warehouses. Studies have been conducted that have shown that in the event of a high-intensity conflict in the Taiwan Strait, the United States may run out of precision-guided munitions in a week.
Almost all explosives in America are manufactured at a plant in Holston, Tennessee, which belongs to the ground forces, and is managed by the British-based defense contractor BAE Systems (profit for 2022 is $ 25.5 billion). This company was established during the Second World War. The production process as a whole is outdated, Kavetsky says. Explosives are prepared in vats of one and a half thousand liters, which resemble dough mixers. Many modern energy materials cannot be made in this way, including CL-20. It is synthesized in smaller volumes in chemical reactors.
With the available amount of starting chemicals, 9,000 kilograms of CL-20 per year can be produced, Kavetsky said. But with its active use, 900,000 kilograms per year will be required, and it will take three to five years to reach such production volumes. "If the Ministry of Defense says that it needs a large amount," Kavetsky said, "the industry will respond."
In its report prepared in 2021, the Center for Energy Technologies recommended that the Ministry of Defense create a joint agency to monitor the work of various types of armed forces and branches of the armed forces to create explosives and flammable substances, giving it the authority to use new energy materials in weapons systems. The Center also called on the military department to privatize production and take measures to ensure that the industry develops new energy materials. To do this, he recommended allocating $50 million a year over five years for contracts to create prototypes.
There were other recommendations, for example, to create small experimental-scale enterprises in the image and likeness of pharmaceutical factories that could manufacture different initial components, switching from one to another depending on needs, as well as take urgent action to produce the most important chemicals inside the country or to purchase them from allies, meaning creation of numerous sources of procurement and expansion of production.
The Pentagon is also looking for other opportunities to close the gap with China. For example, he is conducting research on improving the combustion efficiency of existing types of rocket fuel, because this will help increase the range of missiles. Gorenje He is also developing lasers and microwave weapons capable of shooting down missiles on approach. Such weapons will be less expensive and practically inexhaustible as long as there is a source of electricity.
According to General Hicks, he doubts that such promising equipment will be ready in time this decade. But the US can quickly increase its firepower by improving explosives and rocket fuel.
"Coordinated work on the creation of explosives is possible," he said. "But it requires investment and effort."
