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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."
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 We need to realize what we are up against and adjust our outdated ideals about business.
How long can China realistically keep that up? Manufacturing in the U.S. is so damned expensive because you can't just dump your industrial waste into the nearby stream. China is enjoying a 1st world economy with 3rd world living conditions. It'll catch up with them eventually.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
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.
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.
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+
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]"
Because missiles are extremely bad at patrolling airspace. War isn't about blowing everything up - it's about blowing the right things up, at the right time.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
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?
Because to date, every attempt to replace manned, and in fact gun-armed and dogfight-capable, fighters with missiles or "missile truck" aircraft has failed miserably. At some point a combination of SAMs and UCAVs may replace fighters, and manned combat planes generally, but we're not there yet -- or more precisely, we have no evidence that we're there yet. There's only one way to really put it to the test, of course, and nobody wants to go there.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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.
...For what it's worth, the USA doesn't have the resources to build F-22s either ;)
Yurt, actually, I'm in complete agreement with you. I've been in the aviation field for a long time now, both for fun and for paychecks. And there was a great article written more than 25 years ago.... Lord, I wish I could find it.... where the writer predicted that the US would eventually come to a point where it could "build a fighter with all of the electronics of the Starship Enterprise, but what good will it do us if we can only afford two of them?"
I think we hit that point starting with the B-2, and have continued it with the F-22 and F-35. Instead of following the American model of WWII... buy the best weapon that you can get in large numbers affordably... we've adopted the German model of WWII, which is to design the finest, most exotic weapons and make do with limited quantities of them (most people would be absolutely shocked if they knew, for instance, just how few tanks the Germans produced in comparison to the Allies. The Germans produced less than 1350 of the legendary Tiger tank, and less than 500 of the King Tiger). I think we saw how that turned out for the Germans. Americans and Russians just kept churning out Shermans and T-34's, and simply overwhelmed them. I'm very much afraid that in any future war with a peer foe (which, for the record, I think is a LONG way off), we might get smeared simply because we don't have enough fighters and ships and tanks and will be outlasted in the field. I think we desperately need large numbers of easy to use and maintain weapons, not 187 F-22's. That's not even enough to guarantee security of US borders, let alone deployment in a Korean or Eurasian war. But not even the greatest economy in the world can afford $183 million per fighter, flyaway (the CBO's estimate of the eventual cost of the F-35). That's simply insane.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Not to mention that the Cessna would be flying at 70,000 feet.
:-)
What, yours can't?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
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
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).
Tadah! Captain Literal shits on another joke!
How is it possible to defecate on an expression of humor? I mean maybe one could shit on a fixed representation of a joke, like a joke book, but this is on the internet, so I can only guess you just crapped on your monitor. Which seems like a pointless and self-defeating gesture if I may say so.
Or am I taking Captain Literal too literally?
The enemies of Democracy are
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."
Death panels, you mean?
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.