China’s mystery warplanes: head fake or another Sputnik moment?

Headin’ into twilight

Spreadin’ out her wings tonight

She got you jumpin’ off the deck

And shovin’ into overdrive

Highway to the danger zone

I’ll take you right into the danger zone

– Kenny Loggins

In a likely apocryphal scene in the 2000 historical thriller “Thirteen Days” on the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara character berated a US admiral conducting the naval blockade from a Pentagon war room, saying:

You don’t understand a thing, do you admiral? This is not a blockade! This is language – a new vocabulary the likes of which the world has never seen. This is President John Kennedy communicating with Secretary Nikita Khrushchev!

On December 26, on Mao Zedong’s 131^st birthday, China, with no fanfare, publicly flew two apparently 6^th-generation warplanes (fighters, bombers, both? Who knows?). It also flew a large AWAC plane and, with much fanfare, launched its new Type 076 amphibious assault ship. As an anti-climactic stocking stuffer, the PLA also flew a strange-looking large reconnaissance drone for all to see.

Expectedly, social media went wild. PLA fanboys deliriously trolled US military fanboys. US military fanboys put up a brave face with the usual pabulum of stolen technology and, “we already secretly flew the NGAD.” Indian military Twitter ran the gamut from delusion to despair. It was much fun for all involved.

But social media fanboys were not the intended audience. These were neither weapons tests nor military parades. Like the US naval blockade of Cuba in 1962, this is a language with a long-forgotten vocabulary that is quickly being relearned. This is Secretary Xi Jinping communicating with President-elect Donald Trump with deadly seriousness.

What does this mean? What is being