Slashdot Mirror
China Building Gigantic Structures In the Desert
vbraga writes "New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the middle of the Chinese desert. The first one is an intricate network of what appears to be huge metallic stripes. It's located in Dunhuang, Jiuquan, Gansu, north of the Shule River, which crosses the Tibetan Plateau to the west into the Kumtag Desert. It covers an area approximately one mile long by more than 3,000 feet wide. The tracks are perfectly executed, and they seem to be designed to be seen from orbit."
Having watched this area and activity for years when I was in the military. There's several things that you've found out here. Some of it is "cool" and some of it is just random.
The Gobi area is rife with military activity. The Chinese frequently use it as a military training area. They use it to test new Radars/Weapons Systems/Aircraft etc... Sometimes it's nothing more than just lame artillery training and other times we've been able to catch them testing some pretty advanced weapons systems they've developed to counter our systems. This was the case when I was able to watch them over the course of a few days testing out their "Dragon Eye" system before they placed it on their Luyang II DDG's. Which is their equivalent of our "Aegis or Spy I" system on our DDG's.
The areas that are random roads are just training areas for artillery as speculated.
There are other neat things to look out for as well out in that area. They frequently test their upcoming aircraft out there all the time. You may catch them testing out their XXJ fighter, which is their answer to the F-22 and the F-35. In addition, they are testing the J-10 out there as well. You may catch things like the Y-8AEW flying around as well monitoring the activity.
Other neat areas in China to watch for military activity...Dinghai Shipyards outside of Shanghai. This is where a lot of their current DDG's that they are creating are housed and tested. If you look closely you can see SA-10 and SA-20 arrays just outside of the shipyards. Dalian Shipyards...they build and test most of their submarines here. Guangzhou and Fuzhou are also neat areas to watch as well. In addition to the Bohai Gulf.
Up and down the Yangtze and Huang rivers you can catch glimpses of them conducting shallow water trials with their DDG's.
There ya go...have fun!