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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."
The u.s. is like the decline of Rome. Most of the budget spent on the military to little gain.
When will we realize we need to spend those billions on educating new engineers and scientists,
repair our education system and bring industry back home? Do we value having $1.00 stores so much
we will slit our own throats to save 0.50 cents on plastic goods? China's power is there is no individual, there
is only the state. Need a new bridge? Seize houses. New factory? Take land. We need to realize what we are
up against and adjust our outdated ideals about business. There is no more free market, there is the chinese
way, of the western way where people and property are respected and protected. We need to set up protective
measures to protect what is left of our industry.
Except the Chinese and American economies are too interlocked to repeat something like the that. Its hard to say what Sino-American relations will look like in the future, but I don't think the Cold War is a particularly good model.
You're playing semantics. If plans were taken without the owner's permission then it was theft. Just because IP laws have been taken to an absurd level doesn't mean that there's no reason at all to protect intellectual property.
Hmmm, I guess we should start taking Chinese espionage seriously?
No, we should be taking the Chinese seriously. Every time one of these articles come out, there's a large contingent of people who dismiss it as "They're just copying", "It's still not a challenge to what we have" and, my favorite "These commies will never catch up to us."
Can we realize that the Chinese are on a nice technology curve that is bound to intersect with ours within our lifetime? And that their plans include putting China back into the center of the world, where they believe it rightfully belongs? Maybe the F-35 will be enough to counter any threat from the Chinese for the next 20 years. But after that, we better make sure we have the technology edge, because we sure as hell won't have the manpower or economy edge.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It has been at least 50 years since heat-seeking missiles were invented. They can hunt down a fighter with far more accuracy than a human pilot can, they can withstand much higher accelerations, they are much cheaper than a manned fighter plane.
Why do they insist on manned fighter aircraft?
Like maybe the SR-71 "Blackbird"...which certainly looked stealthy, although in reality wasn't.
Not very much needed if you travel faster than the missiles anyway ;)
At that time that is :)
Cool plane, sad you've got rid of it, make a new one =P
They may be just copying, but the implications of "just copying" apparently haven't sunk in yet.
If they are able to acquire that much of our technology, then they've acquired the rest of it too, as has every other country to which we've outsourced our technology manufacturing. 10 years ago, I ranted about how outsourcing was not just an economic problem for geeks, but a major national security risk. At that time, I was still naive enough to believe that the folks who owned defemse technology companies gave a damn about the United States.
Well, the national security risk is there in the photo, and it's clear that those executives who were willing to sell out their country for next quarter's earnings and a bigger bonus didn't, and don't, give a rat's patoot about the USA. They can live quite comfortably in any country, after all. Why should they care? Let the peasants get bombed.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I think the Soviets once said "Sell the Chinese a fighter and 5 years later they have a fighter factory". The Chinese are determined to become the next super power and they have a huge pool of science and engineering talent to pull from. Some of whom were trained in Europe and the US. They have a good feel for the US and and Europe's capabilities and want to surpass that. I personally do not underestimate them.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Meh. India is the ones who should be worried. When China gets more control of all those headwaters in the Himalayas, it's gonna get *real* ugly for India.
Diversion of the Brahmaputra... the Ganges... etc.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
In the financially strapped 1960s/70s the Soviet Mig 25 Foxbat appeared and it's rumored capabilities saved the US F14 and F15 projects from significant budget cutbacks or cancellation. Perhaps the savior of the F22 and F35 projects has arrived.
I've thought about this, and the Foxbat comparison might be apt here. This will sound conspiracy theory-ish, but Lockheed is probably going to milk this for all it's worth in order to drive their own sales. "Look, ooooh, a scary Chinese stealth fighter! Better buy more of ours!".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Now, excusing the obvious fact that you don't seem to know the difference between unsecured U.S. Treasury Bonds (debt sold to others) and Secured Debt (a house mortgage etc), 75% of our debt is held in America, 25% by foreign countries. China owns about 20.8% (of that 25%) of all foreign held U.S. Debt. Japan also holds a little over 20%. So you could just say China owns 5% of our debt. Even if we completely forfeited on china's Bonds, they can't simply come over and take California from us (which is too bad). They don't OWN anything but a promise with no security. Its like you borrowing $5 from your daddy and you tell him you will pay it back next week, put that debt on paper and give it to him and its a bond. There are legal ramifications, fees, fines, etc that the debt holder may be eligible for in international court, but they don't in fact own jack shit.
I think that's a very basic assessment of a very complex situation, and one which isn't necessarily correct.
The way I see it, if a war is obviously started by China or as a mutual, gradual escalation, without it being obviously and/or openly about the debt currently owed to China by the US, the US is going to have no problem gathering allies, nullifying said debt, and beating the crap out of China in any sort of war. That'd free up the US economy and cause significant growth, while not impacting the US credit rating.
If, on the other hand, the US is an aggressor, or the war is openly about the debt, then the Chinese have the upper hand, and would surely win - if not in the actual war, in the economic effects of the US having a plunging credit rating.
Are they looking at different photos than what were published? The side-view photo certainly doesn't appear to be a high-speed test. Hard to tell with all the grain, but I would expect some blurring of the background and/or jet exhaust if it was traveling at high speed, but you see neither in those two photos. For all I can tell it could be a mockup sitting still on the tarmac. Not to say the Chinese haven't conducted high-speed tests of it, I just disagree with the claim that these photos show any evidence of it.
Other Photos seem to have the same issues - that might be some heat waving in the Guardian photo, but tough to tell.
Claiming that this could be a prototype fighter that challenges the F-22 based on these photos is just ridiculous, and one would think a writer for Jane's would know better. It is quite possible, as China has really made no secret of the fact that they are pursuing aviation technology very aggressively (and I do seem to recall reports of large portions of engineering data for the F-22 being stolen a while back. My mistake - apparently it was the F-35), and no doubt they are working on bringing their high-tech fabrication technology up to speed. But there is a very big jump between putting together a stealthy-looking mockup (all that can really be determined from the photos) and producing an effective combat system, from airframe to FCS to weapons systems and avionics. Like I said, I don't doubt that this is their goal, and I don't doubt that they will be fully capable of it within a relatively short time, but a couple of photos really doesn't prove (or even really suggest) much of anything.
Given the amount the US owes to China, I am reminded of the Ankh-Morpork anthem, which goes, in part:
Let others boast of martial dash
For we have boldly fought with cash
We own all your helmets, we own all your shoes.
We own all your generals - touch us and you'll lose
See also this version
That $183 M covers the R&D so it not the series production cost. In wartime, things have historically cost around 1/3 once the R&D has been paid back and economies of scale achieved. This makes the F-22 very affordable (one reason the USAF was pushing for more of them is that it gets cheaper when you get more).
If a future war lasted long enough the US would still outproduce and out muscle anyone else (I'm not from the US and this is obvious even to me). Out of the biggest countries it still has the biggest economy; most internal natural resources; biggest, most advanced, best equipped and led military; best educated population (on average); most allies; and relatively attractive ideology to most of the World (meaning its allies would stick with it). Despite all the hand-wringing about it's fall (and it is interesting to see even the USAF release classified studies in an attempt to get even more F-22s, when the USAF is so much stronger than all the other countries combined) it is very unlikely that the US will not still be extremely influential into the future. The Chinese are not contenders at this point and no one apart from themselves and pariah states wants to see them dominate the rest of the World in the future.
About half of the discretionary budget is spent on the military.
http://www.warresisters.org/files/FY2011piechart.pdf
The reason the United States is dying is because we aren't collecting enough taxes to pay for our infrastructure. We started two wars and then dropped taxes. That shit doesn't work.
When our way of life actually was in danger during WII, we immediately raised taxes to pay for the cost of saving our country, and those rates lasted throughout the 50s, which was one of our best economic periods in history. Our national debt dropped, and continued to do so through 1980. Then an actor named Ronald Reagan decided to hand the nation's wealth to the wealthy, and hope they wouldn't blow it all on coke and hookers and stupid investments. He was wrong. Then he passed deregulation that led to the S&L crisis, just like Clinton passed the regulation that would eventually lead to the derivatives crisis that's still boning our economy. Reagan also raised military spending but dropped taxes, and that shit didn't work back then either. Bush I and II continued the same idiot policies, and people complain that Obama hasn't fixed the economy yet. Well, when you've had some fucking frat brats with sledgehammers renting a place for the better part of 30 years, it tends to take more than 20 months to fix.
Anyway, Bush II got kicked out for doing the sensible thing and raising taxes to cover our debt. Clinton raised the top rate again to 39.6%, reduced military spending, and our national debt dropped. McCain even ran in 2000 on protecting Social Security to fulfill our promise to "the greatest generation" with the extra money we had lying around. But that sad sack of shit has sold out along with the rest of the Republican party, pandering to some illiterate backwoods fuckwits called "Evangelical Christians" who believe that Obama is a Nazi Socialist Muslim born in Kenya.
But you need a certain type of idiot to vote against their own interests and ignore common sense and hard data for thirty years running. They're the same idiots who give Jesus $5 hoping for a $10 return. They think the GOP will give them the same deal, and they don't know how fucking right they are.
same reason the USSR lost to the US: they ran out of money.
How many times should it be pointed out that this is a myth that exists for the sole purpose of retroactively justifying Cold War and US military-industrial complex?
USSR did not have for-profit military contractors, it kept all production, including military one, in the hands of government. It couldn't run out of money even if it tried -- it didn't need to pay anything other than employees' salary, what was usually the same across all industries for the same type of work, and nothing astronomical by any measure.
Dissolution of USSR was a politically, not economically motivated move -- if anything, it had no effect on the economy from the moment of dissolution and until Russian version of Libertarians taken over (and provoked a massive economic crisis that lasted through 90's). American ideologues can take credit for inspiring those though -- in fact, spreading "free market" ideology is probably the most effective way Americans have to destroy other countries. Too bad, they have caught the disease they were spreading among their enemies.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Yes because all our possessions, military, natural resources, and land will vanish in a puff of smoke.
Cool plane, sad you've got rid of it, make a new one =P
Nothing like it will ever be built again. :( All reconnaissance aircraft from now on are likely to be unmanned.
And there's a related saying in the US Navy: The last American fighter pilot has already been born.
Money is just a proxy for other resources, and you can't magic those out of thin air by decree. Every ton of steel used in building submarines is a ton of steel that can't be used for making tractors, every hour a man spends mining iron ore is an hour he can't spend harvesting grain, and so on.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."