Slashdot Mirror
First Pictures of Chinese Stealth Fighter
Frosty Piss writes "The first clear pictures of what appears to be a Chinese stealth fighter prototype have been published online. The photographs, published on several unofficial Chinese and foreign defense-related websites, appear to show a J-20 prototype making a high-speed taxi test — usually one of the last steps before an aircraft makes its first flight — according to experts on aviation and China's military. Several experts said the prototype's body appeared to borrow from the F-22 and other US stealth aircraft. The US cut funding for the F-22 in 2009 in favor of the F-35, a smaller, cheaper stealth fighter that made its first test flight in 2006 and is expected to be fully deployed by around 2014."
Well, pictures were leaked of the blackhawk and the stealth bomber from the US too, though it occurred later in its life.
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Since the blackhawk is not remotely stealthy (it's a helicopter), I'm assuming you meant something different. Like maybe the SR-71 "Blackbird"...which certainly looked stealthy, although in reality wasn't.
Cobra maneuver:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgHoBDW56CI
Draken (01.55 02.05 02.13):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgHoBDW56CI
No such thing in the JAS 39 promotional video :/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNWpK9Qe4vk
37 Viggen going backwards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fye_2AipFTA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11-osaKapEI
I don't know why it was odd that a Swedish one happen to be able to do it. Just because it's not Russian or what? =P
Regarding Viggen development (en.wikipedia):
"In 1960, the U.S. National Security Council, led by President Eisenhower, formulated a military security guarantee for Sweden. The U.S. promised to help the Swedish militarily in the event of a Soviet attack against Sweden; both countries signed a military-technology agreement. In what was known as the "37-annex", Sweden was allowed access to advanced U.S. aeronautical technology which made it possible to design and produce the Saab 37 Viggen much faster and cheaper than would otherwise have been possible.[5]
According to the doctoral research of Nils Bruzelius at the Swedish National Defence College, the reason for this officially unexplained U.S. support was the need to protect U.S. Polaris submarines deployed just outside the Swedish west coast against the threat of Soviet anti-submarine aircraft.[5]"
The U.S. is in decline because a lot of people think the problem is overspending on the military. It's not. Don't get me wrong; yes there's lots of pork in the U.S. military budget which could be cut. But it doesn't comprise most of U.S. government spending, nor is it the cause of the U.S.'s budgetary woes. And a good part of the reason we're in the buget mess we're in now is because people like you who think that it is implement solutions which don't address the real problem.
U.S. military spending is actually one of the few parts of government spending which has been more or less steadily declining since WWII, both as a % of the budget and as a % of GDP. It started climbing after 9/11, but it's still close to the lowest it's been since WWII.
What's killing the budget (indeed, where most of the money is spent) are the social programs; specifically, medicare and medicaid. They're projected to grow so quickly that even if you stopped all military spending, dropped it to zero , all the money that saved would be eaten up by growth in medicare and medicaid within 20-25 years. In other words, in 20-25 years we would have no military, no military spending, and our budgetary problems would be the same as they are now.
The first step in fixing a problem is to correctly identify what is causing it. The Congressional Budget Office hires a lot of really smart people to do nothing but identify the causes of the budget problems, and publishes a nifty report on it about every 2 years. Please go read it. Put aside any moralistic preconceptions you may have about which parts of the budget are good or bad. Look at it purely from an accounting standpoint - which parts are decreasing and which parts are ballooning out of control? The parts that are ballooning out of control are what we need to address to fix the problem, the parts that are decreasing are a much lower priority.
IIRC, The Bear was a literal, exact replication of a US aircraft, except for Russian tags and imperfections from inferior manufacturing capabilities.
Do you mean Tu-95 Bear? If so, you must be confusing it with the earlier Tu-4, which was a direct and literal copy of B-29, and Tu-85, which was an evolutionary development of Tu-4. But Tu-95 was a brand new design, and pretty unique at that (fastest turboprop aircraft ever by a large margin even today - 'nuff said).