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Pakistan Lets China View US Stealth Technology
Oswald McWeany writes "Tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan have moved up a notch in light of news that Pakistan allowed China to examine the downed stealth helicopter used in the operation to kill Osama bin Laden. Pakistan also provided Chinese intelligence with samples of the 'stealth skin.' 'Pakistan enjoys a close relationship with China, which is a major investor in telecommunications, ports and infrastructure in the country.'"
Did US and Pakistan have some kind of deal where they are not allowed to improve their technology with their friends if US happens to dump their trash all over the country? US would do exactly the same with UK or their other girlfriends.
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I would say that's just what you get for leaving your stuff in someone else's house.
I'm sure this wasn't really a surprise to the US. That's why the seals spent valuable time doing their best to destroy the helicopter.
It's useless without the formula for the secret serum! It'll make a nice paperweight though...
Parts for the helicopter were probably made in China anyway.
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Is it possible that the US left that helicopter there in order to mislead interested parties on stealth countermeasures and development?
Might that helicopter be, in essence, a doomed spy?
I'm not sure why anyone didn't see this coming.... I was actually surprised they didn't send some locals to clean up the chopper rests. Either that, or it's really not that advanced. Radar-reducing skins are known, and the shape didn't seem that out of the ordinary. Oh look, a cover over the tail rotor to reduce radar signature. The biggest deal would be the electronics. I can only hope they were reduced to dust.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The "Fundamental" law of religion is that the more Fundmentalist one is the more literally religious one is.
Pakistan was founded as a Muslim state, and it is not a reasonable expectation for it to work against Islam in Afghanistan by supporting the heretical idea of secular government. The only reason Islamabad gave the US the time of day in the past was to obtain arms to use against its mortal enemy India which was buddies with the Soviets during the Cold War.
The Cold War is finished, and Islamabad has everything to gain from a Talibanistan protecting its flank so it can prepare for war with India.
As Uncle Sugar wises up under pressure, Islamabad must suck up to China.
India would be wise to make buddies with the US after the US-Pak relationship collapses. If it comes to war, US assets could help India take out Pak nukes which are a menace to civilization. China would have no interest in intervention since its own Muslims are a problem more easily dealt with if Pakistan becomes an ashtray.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I mean, the US did come in on a raid and killed a resident of a sovereign nation. I'm not sure how much Pakistan knew ahead of time; between information leaks in the Pakistan chain of command, and the need for plausible deniability to a populace that doesn't love the US, we will never know.
And didn't they buy the F117 Nighthawk wings that the Yugoslavs shot down? Again, this new sale is possibly disturbing, but not surprising.
They have the nuclear technology agreements and other cooperative agreements. It's all good. China, Iran, N. Korea are the REAL future threats -- and India just so happens to be stuck in the middle.
Pakistan's and America's relationship is faltering. The fact is, that pakistan is harboring terrorists PURPOSELY.
To be honest, part of the issues belong to us. W/neo-cons gave India access to 'civil' nuke tech, but not to pakistan. Once we opened that up, we basically told pakistan that we did not trust them. Of course, that was true. We don't. And we are helping what they consider their mortal enemy (even though it is also their 'brother').
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's only $300M because there was an entire multidecade R&D program behind it and there have only been a few units produced, the marginal cost of a unit is probably no more than $60-70M (base unit is $44M, add 50% for materials and advanced electronics). Heck they might also be assigning the cost of the Comanche program to those few units since to my eye it looks like the took the Comanche tech and applied it to a Black Hawk.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Yay! Cheap knock-off stealth choppers for everyone!!
that fail part at high speed or stop working after lightning strikes .
because instead of having the military do their own r&d in-house and at cost, we waste billions on these third party crooks who are getting fat suckling the teet of our government. lockheed-martin, boeing, raytheon, et. al. can all die in a fire.
...
"One can not truly appreciate Shakespeare until you have heard it in it's original Klingon" -Star Trek
Well every machine has some point at which it will fail. If ours were indestructible/undetectable, it wouldn't be laying in the middle of Pakistan
Not stupid at all. This is economies of scale. There's no assembly line churning out stealth helicopters with customers down the line buying them up by the thousands, so what do you expect these to be other than expensive? Most of the parts are probably machined and assembled by hand by a team of engineers/mechanics with secret clearance -- they're not Foxconn workers getting $2/day.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
We already had an agreement in place with them that covered the mission in question.
Nice try though. Please play again.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The "copter" was such a setup. Look at the photos. A prop.
Also supposedly, bin Laden had no radio or Internet communications - not even TV! But half of the early photos show a huge dish - later removed.
There is nothing about that story that has any truth in it. They even "ditched" the body before any validation.
Then the once trustworthy New Yorker publishes a "real narrative" of the mission - written by an intelligence operative, who's the son of a former CIA official.
There is nothing here but lies. The only thing you can KNOW FOR SURE is that NONE of this is true.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It's China's soft diplomacy backed by hard currency (artificially weakened) versus US hard diplomacy by weak currency (artificially pimped and by count on the advantage of world reserve currency and unrivaled military and technological advance). But it's working for China.
China's huge dollar position is both it's strength as it's weakness, as value deteriorates. China is trying to put their money in foreign investment and soft diplomacy to gain influence in Africa, weak economies of some European countries (for example Greece) and now also Pakistan, openly, without any worries knowing it is crossing US interest. Outsourcing productivity is followed by knowledge, science and technology, in contrast with popular belief that such follow up doesn't occur. It's starts with shameless copying is the prerequisite of understanding and improvement, this is the present case for China much as it was for Japan in the past. With the only difference that it is maybe even more easy for Chinese companies, as the state is shareholder. The Chinese does business with everyone, not asking too many questions or human right issues. For those who not know, China has been most of her existence been the world power state. They have a great history in diplomatic cases.
Keep in mind that the actual cost per unit will also be significantly higher than the projected cost per unit--this is a truism in military hardware that stems from the fact that they cancel most programs far before the projected unit count is reached to amortize the R&D costs the way that the projections are given to Congress.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Tongue in cheek.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Except that the whole war was about folks harboring uncle Osama and refusing to hand him over. Which makes any claim for Pakistan to be "allies" pretty dubious.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Aircraft are like computer processors. It's the design and fab equipment that costs, then economies of scale (can) happen.
The F-4 Phantom was a very complex aircraft, but thousands were built so sprinkling several hundred (yes, really) of them all over Viet Nam/Laos/Cambodia was no big deal.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Yep, Congress always decide that spending the last 10-20% of the total budget to actually get the hardware is too expensive for some reason. This phenomenon is particularly perplexing to me since the actual manufacturing jobs are the ones that tend to best spread the money among the different states, the R&D jobs tend to be more concentrated. I was very pissed when they cancelled the F-22 program so early, spending another 10% would have meant we had a nice reserve of airframes instead of having another B1 program where any crash is so catastrophic that it risks the entire program, then again with what retrofits end up costing perhaps it's for the best.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
There is nothing speculative about it. Lets assume for a second that NOBODY knew about OBL (yeah, right). It is well known that they are in FATA, but it was LET that attacked in mumbai with help of the paki military. All sorts of proof of the above. In addition, we CONSTANTLY kill terrorists all over pakistan via bombs. At this point, I think that we should drop a few MOABs on various places of FATA. We know a number of the caves. Drop these in, and simply take them out. Issue solved.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What did you expect to happen when you leave top-secret military hardware after forcing yourself into a sovereign nation?
USA has made a deal with the devil, and is betrayed one more time. Leave Pakistan to their own devices, and get out of the arena. Bin Laden is no longer an excuse for American occupation. The generals led in Viet Nam, and Afghanistan, with the same results. History has repeated itself - enough.
Nuke 'em from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
The chopper was done in by a wall, and I think China has that technology covered. So they're protected from an attack by us.
to India. Let Pakistan chew on that prospect, if they think it's cool to harbor our arch enemies and give our secrets away to arch-enemies in the making.
And before some Poindexter points out, "but but but most of the supplies for our forces in Afghanistan pass through Pakistan!" I'll say it's high time to pull our forces out of that godforsaken place. We got bin Laden. The Taliban are reduced to one among many warlord factions. The status quo ante has been achieved. Miller time.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The NYT and BBC prefaced their stories with the qualifiers "probably" and "may have", while these disappeared from the Slashdot summary. The reports may well turn out to be true, but the summary is assigning a level of certainty about the claims that does not yet exist.
Acceptance of this sort of distortion seems to have become so routine in Slashdot's selection of story submissions, it sometimes feels a bit like reading the Daily Mail.
That would be seriously cool, if it were not for the fact that those two would cozy up with each other and take over their neighbouring country. By the way, they are already doing exactly that.
This sounds up like something that would be told only to backup an already made up story about Osama Bin Laden being killed this year. According to many sources, he was found dead already on 2001 (one source: http://www.rense.com/general93/laden.htm)
And who the heck cares about a downed stealth plane ? Why write so long arcticles about it? It's a god damn plane! At the same time, people are being murdered everyday abroad by the US Military. Yes, murdered, cold blooded, high tech killings. Women and children, innocent families, slaughtered in the name of Oil and Money, those which are the most holiest to the US of A, even surprassing human lives and the wellbeing of it's own citizens.
This is just something to get people arguing in the news again, giving them something to think about while the Army continues to ravage and kill innocent people just in the name of money and oil. And trying to provide more false background info, so that we would buy the false fact that Osama was killed this year, although no evidence has still surfaced about the body and it all just seems like a big scam!
GeoKone.NET
You have to wonder how much longer the wars can go on, how much more money can be printed and how much longer will China support subsidizing USA at these levels. Vote the right way and have troops come home, stop money printing and inflation, stop the wars. Nobody, Democrat or Republican will help you. The only choice who will do the correct thing is obviously Ron Paul.
That's why they are scared.
You can't handle the truth.
Not to say that there's not room for improvement in the system, but if you had a fucking clue about anything, you'd change your tune. That, or you're just a total douchebag. Now, if you want to point out ways that contractors can lower costs while still delivering good products, we probably share some common ground. If you think that the government itself can deliver the same kinds of quality products at a lower cost, then you are truly a retard.
They're our friends! We need to up the payments to them so they know we mean it.
The Corporate states of America ran Russia out of money, now they're doing the same to US.
Long live the banksters! May they fly like the American flag, hanging from a pole.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
probably, may have, and no direct source quoted...sounds like someone in the department of defense is trying to justify their budget.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Back in 1995, there was a news story on the major networks about the US giving Israel weapons which Israel would turn around and sell to the Chinese who would use them for their Silkworm missiles. Somehow, this investigation died in committee and was never brought up in the Senate for full debate.
Israel was questioned about their involvement, but they just gave a canned response, "Israel does not discuss its military workings on public forums," and that was the end of that story.
Just like the other night, I was watching CNBC's coverage of "The China Question." Regardless of the fact that the majority of the US population does not support giving money or weapons to our great ally Israel, the same story could be narrated as "The Israel Question", but somehow that story never makes it to public television.
BTW, I was actually shocked to find that Ronnie Reagan in his diary wrote that Ronnie thought that Shimir was an international thug. The only way that I can explain that is it must be disinformation to show that Ronnie was thinking of the average Joe!!
Israel and their jewish buddies in America, taking important position in government and industry. For example, Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs....
Twitter: @dainsanefh
I disagree. It's not for nothing that China had been considered a superpower and had one of the 5 permanent seats in the UN throughout its history (although I never thought either the UK or France deserved to be there, just US, Soviet Union/Russia and China). China is a country that defeated India in 1962 and seized some of its territory: its power has only grown since. Until the 80s, military spending was their biggest item, and the economic boom since has only enabled them to throw even more money @ it (and it's not $500 toilet seats either). They have the full power to retake Taiwan if they wanted, and any of the islands in the South China Sea that are currently in dispute b/w China, Vietnam, Malaysia & the Philippines. And even during the Cold War, they weren't defensive vis a vis the Soviets @ all: Mongolia voluntarily put itself in the Soviet orbit b'cos they were scared of China overrunning them. On the above topic, China is discovering Pakistan to be a double-edged sword as an ally: on one hand, they're both allies against India, but on the other, most of the Uyghar separatists trying to secede Xinxiang from China have been training not only in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan as well. Maybe China can do what India or the US can't or won't respectively.
Your uncle and the felon are old buddies
No, the US and Osama is not old buddies. Osama fought against taking help from the US from the start, as that would taint the Islamic victory in Afghanistan. They did fight the same fight, but Osama clearly would have preferred winning on his own. I can recommend "The Power of Nightmares" (a BBC documentary about the rise of the neo-conservatives and the Islamists), it highlights a lot of interesting facts, and does a good job of explaining what went wrong in America (in short, the neocons started believing their own lies, which was only meant as a noble lie for hoi poloi)
>> {tongue and check}
Maybe he was just hungry and wanted it to go?
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
??? India split itself. Nothing to give back. Nor is it our place to interfere in that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So many mods must be struggling with wanting to mod you up more but wanting to claw their eyes out at the "tongue and check" phrase in there.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
Errr -- I was just quoting from 'Aliens'. Whereas you appear to be some kind of nuke-happy nutjob. My, what strange bedfellows we are!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
The tongue in cheek part is that they were shocked...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
> China, which is a major investor in telecommunications, ports and infrastructure in the country.'"
Umm, more to the point, "China, which like Pakistan also has tense border relations with India."
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
No the us did something far worse - they nuked 2 complete towns...
fine. let's fix the system. from now on, anything publicly subsidized will also be publicly profitable, in any industry. if you get any sort of government money while making money, the goverment gets a return on its investment, before you do. how about that?
isn't a huge part of why everyone bashes government in regards to its spending directly related to shit like this? why is it that, even without the wars, our military spending still goes up every year, even more than during the cold war? is it because contractors funnel money to congress to funnel even more back to their districts as 'jobs', many of which exist only to keep the cycle going? do we really need whatever that new jet is that they've been dumping billions into for the past decade? can any branch of the military really not do any of its own logistics?
i mean if we're so gung-ho about the government giving out money willy-nilly, where is the free health care, college-for-all and what-not? surely those are equally important for the preservation of our nation's future, right?
...
The US government complaining about someone else being for sale? That's rich.
Learn to love Alaska
The government does get a return on its investment in the way of the products it buys. Do you walk into Home Depot and demand a cut of the profits on the lumber you're about to buy, because you think they're making too much?
Oh, sure, that analogy doesn't use tax money. For some reason, though, defense seems to be this whipping boy for this kind of "profits are evil" attitude. I can't even begin to guess how many computers the government procures in a single year. Or ball point pens. Are you screaming for Dell or Bic to make sure the government gets its cut before they do? Why is this example any different? Surely, the government could spin up departments to manufacture PCs or writing implements so much cheaper by cutting out the greedy Monopoly guy who just steals profits from the taxpayers pockets, right? Well, there are good reasons why they don't. It's because they *can't* do it cheaper or better. Why do you think military technology would be any different?
The cycle you talk about isn't unique to defense contractors either. Labor unions are one of the biggest players in that kind of cycle. So are energy companies, health insurance companies, and a number of other entities. I'm on board with you that the cycle needs to change. And the way to do that is by holding your elected representatives accountable.
At the same time, I am of the belief that defense spending is important for the future. I'm not saying that we should be maintaining some kind of imperialist world domination scheme and jumping into wars all over the place just because we can. If it were up to me, I'd drastically reduce the amount of money we spend in keeping our reach extended and active in the rest of the world. But I also believe that spending on new military technology is crucial because other countries who aren't so friendly to us are doing it. If we were to fall far enough behind the curve, it would be the beginning of the end. Still, there's a ton that could be safely cut from the defense budget (intelligently), without putting our nation at risk.
And there's also a ton that can be saved by improving the way contractors do things. And it's not because of evil profits. It's partly because of the way they have to operate within the system that is imposed upon them. There's a saying that if you subsidize something, you get more of it. When government mandates all kinds of CMMI/SEI process on its products, simply because it seems like a good idea, and they're willing to pay for it, then they get exactly what they asked for: huge unnecessary costs heaped onto the simplest of things. If you knew what it cost to change one line of code in a production QA system for the government, you would probably become physically ill. Obviously there are things contractors can improve in the way they do things too, and those kinds of improvements are actively being made all the time, because of pressure to do things faster and cheaper. And that will probably result in a net improvement in the way business is done.