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Chinese Stealth Fighter Jet May Use US Technology
Ponca City writes "In 1999, a US F-117 Nighthawk was downed by a Serbian anti-aircraft missile during a bombing raid. It was the first time one of the fighters had been hit, and the Pentagon blamed clever tactics and sheer luck. The pilot ejected and was rescued. Now, the Guardian reports that pieces of the wrecked F-117 stealth fighter ended up in the hands of foreign military attaches. 'At the time, our intelligence reports told of Chinese agents crisscrossing the region where the F-117 disintegrated, buying up parts of the plane from local farmers,' says Admiral Davor Domazet-Loso, Croatia's military chief of staff during the Kosovo war. 'We believe the Chinese used those materials to gain an insight into secret stealth technologies... and to reverse-engineer them.' Zoran Kusovac says the Serbian regime routinely shared captured western equipment with its Chinese and Russian allies. 'The destroyed F-117 topped that wish-list for both the Russians and Chinese,' says Kusovac."
We got the technology for the F-117 Nighthawk from the downed alien space craft in Roswell. So why can't the chinese get it from us?
Fight Spammers!
In March it was shot down, in May, the US "accidentally" bombed the Chinese Embassy. There was widespread speculation the next day that it was to destroy stealth material. It wasn't a random bomb that fell onto Embassy grounds, but the most precise bomb that was available, with GPS coordinates given by the CIA rather than military intelligence, and dropped right on top of a specific foreign agents office, 5 times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._bombing_of_the_Chinese_embassy_in_Belgrade
You do realize that not only that but the F-117's were restricted to a very specific flight pattern flying over the exact same pass day and night over and over again.
He may have used some old equipment that had a different radar freq, but he also got lucky that Political stupidity played a major role(flights into and out of the region where very limited, which areas they could and couldn't fly over).
The Chinese fighter is larger and heavier than the Raptor. It doesn't use thrust vectoring nozzles, or even distributed nozzles to limit heat output by the engines. it is only stealthy head on, from any other angle it will be easy to spot. Those giant canards will also turn a very large radar reflection back too. It uses old school radar so it will be easy to track. All in all it isn't a bad attempt at an updated fighter for china, but it is two or three generations from being capable as the Typhon or raptor.
Not to mention this is the initial test flight. it will be ten years before they have decent production going. remember the raptor's flight demo for the USAF was in 1991, and the first production model flew in 1997.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The F-117 was used in the Serbian conflict because it had the ability to make quick, stealthy precision strikes on the Serbian air command, paving the way for the heavy cavalry to move in and decimate the ground forces.
When I visited Belgrade some years ago, I was told by someone in a position to know that US planes were actually kept away from the most demanding targets. Apparently, it was mostly the French (gasp!) who accounted for the strikes in downtown Belgrade. Their handiwork was impressive, to say the least: The Ministry of Defence building was completely destroyed, falling in on itself, while neighbouring buildings sported only a few nicks from flying debris.
The US were responsible for at least one raid in Belgrade itself. But more about that in a moment....
As a Hungarian, I'm also pleased that the one and only time the Goblin was downed was at the hands of a Hungarian commander, one Zoltán Dani, who used an old modified Russian radar unit operating at very long wavelengths to defeat the F-117's stealth capability, and used manual guidance on the missiles along with several spotters who reported the flight path.
At least some parts of the wreckage must have made it into the Chinese hands. That would account for the *cough* tragically mistaken bombing of the their Embassy. (The US knew what it was doing. If you don't think that NATO had spotters on the ground, you too are tragically mistaken.)
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
As for the new Chinese stealth fighter, it's reported to be an even match for the Raptor...
You mean the J-20 which is due to be operational 6-8 YEARS from now? Most of what is "known" about it is just speculation based on some very limited information. Most performance projections are going to be pure conjecture until more information is available.
As for matching the F-22, did it occur to you that the folks selling the F-22 might have a vested interest in proclaiming this jet to be competitive with the F-22? Fear is a great way to sell weapons. It's certainly possible to design a jet to match the F-22, but its not remotely clear that this Chinese jet reaches or will reach that level of performance.
Concerns are based on two problems:
1. Russians were above and beyond West in both radar tech and SAM tech by at least two-three decades according to jane's back when soviet fell apart and some US specialists got to poke at some soviet tech. It's one of the development areas known to have not stopped due to lack of funding as it was considered strategically important to Russia. Decades old S-300 is most likely capable or detecting and tracking F-117 if it comes close enough. S-400 was specifically built to track and kill B-2-generation aircraft and its derivatives in addition to cruise missiles. S-500 coming next year was officially designated as an "AWACS/Electronic warface aircraft killer" carrying insane sounding range of 600km.
Most Chinese radar tech is direct derivative of russian tech. This was largely confirmed when US and Israel all but pissed their pants when hearing about S-400 being potentially sold to Iran - it would've essentially make any airstrike against Iran a one way trip for many strike craft and force to essentially use nothing but last generation stealth aircraft and still most likely take significant losses, cutting both Israel's options to zero and making US "plausible deniability" to any airstrike made zero as well.
2. Air-to-air combat between two stealth fighters has a very high probability of becoming dogfight situation. This is very, very bad for US whose strategic approach is to field a low number of nigh-untouchable aircraft from remote bases and aircraft carriers using long and medium range radar guided missiles as their main weapon. Stealth on the opponent's side makes both early detection and radar guidance difficult, and makes superiority of your own aircraft much lesser then that of the opponent. Up until now, US was counting on fielding something around 200 stealth aircraft to suppress Chinese airforce in event of Taiwan escalation (the main conflict at the moment). China can field approximately ten times that at least. So strategically this requires each airstrike group being able to fight in at least 1:4 scenario, and win with minimal attrition. Old stealth may indeed still allow for numbers, but would raise attrition rates to unacceptable levels causing a strategic failure.
We know how China's tech is mostly simply copied/licensed russian tech, we can trust that craft in question most likely have older, worse stealth, but significantly better radar system and most likely better tracking. We still couldn't fit helmet-mounted HUD and wide-angle tracking on F-22, it simply wasn't ready yet. It's a major feature of F-35 though, and it's a direct copy of russian tech reverse engineered from MiG-29 lifted from the few aircraft that Germany gained in unification. This system gives pilot tremendous advantage in dogfighting, and if chinese can indeed use older stealth to force F-22 into close range dogfights and has a copy of that old russian tech as well , F-22's superiority itself becomes questionable.
Finally, there's an obvious home field advantage for stealth aircraft and radar usage. Firing up your active radar essentially nullifies your stealth to a large degree. This is why neither F-117 nor B-2 carry any kind of active radar. F-22, being an actual air superiority fighter however does, and would have to actually fire it up to engage enemy fighters stealthy enough to disallow passive guidance. This makes it vulnerable to ground-based interception as well as air based one.
All in all, any opponent who is in possession of any stealth tech AND plans to fight inside or close to its border presents a number of strategic and tactical problems that opponent that doesn't have stealth fighters won't. Even in best-case scenario where Chinese wouldn't have access to russian radar tech and software, this would cause a major headache and significantly more restrictive rules of engagement, cutting down strategic options.
After that incident i always found it odd how the media reacted to such things. The media never reported on just how blatant the strike was. Instead the main stories been reported around the time were "attacks on US nationals increase" as various Chinese protest groups vented their anger on American government buildings around the world. Essentially the reports were made to make the Chinese look bad.
Now it's obvious that Chinese media is a complete farce. It's state controlled and blatantly so. But i also have to wonder if our western media isn't exactly the same but just smarter about it? Sure it isn't blatant like Pravda or China Daily but our western media still seems to reach for the same goals as Pravda and China Daily would. From getting people behind support of a war to excusing completely unjustifiable actions. Our media seems no better, just smarter and less blatant. Probably makes our media more dangerous than theirs to be honest.
Similar things happened in the Hainan Island spy plane incident. The Chinese returned the crew in perfect health and the also spy plane to the US but they were the bad guys according to the media i'm exposed to. I really don't get our media. I'm sure if the roles were reversed China would still be made out to be the bad guys.
Yet again the same thing with the Iraq war. There were never any links to Al-Qaeda. No WMDs. But our media didn't even report that as a possibility in the lead up to war.
The F-117 is 25-30 year old technology at this point. I would be more worried about the tech being freely handed over to China by companies like Boeing when they go into partnerships with Chinese state owned firms.
What exactly is the basis for these claims that the tech is stolen and they cant do it on their own?
The fact that China is not a major exporter of aircraft, particularly of the cutting edge military variety. The fact that they don't even produce a 4th generation fighter of their own design (most of their fighters are copied/adapted from Russian designs) and suddenly they unveil this supposed 5th generation fighter supposedly without any foreign technology. Major leaps in technology like that generally do not happen without some help. The Chinese are smart people but development of that kind of technology takes time and infrastructure neither of which seem to be applicable here. It's not that they couldn't do it; it's just that it is unlikely that the could do it that fast without getting a little boost on the information front.
Stealth has been around for a long time
No it hasn't and what has been around is among the more highly guarded secrets among the military forces that have access to it.
Chinese may well have found a way to do it.
Certainly possible, though the smart money says that they probably acquired significant amounts of knowledge through spying. Please note that this isn't a condemnation, every country spies including the US. China acquiring this technology illicitly seems the most likely source.
there have been a lot of Chinese researchers in the US, they may not have worked directly on the projects, but definitely there must be many who worked on relevant projects, and nothing is stopping them from taking the knowledge back to their country with them.
You think the defense industry isn't aware of that possibility? I've been in factories where they make fighter jets. Foreign nationals are quite carefully monitored and aren't given access to sensitive technology without some very careful background screening.