Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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."
Boo hoo, indeed.
There is no need for the US to keep financing the Pakistani military. The upper echelons of their military is living high on the hog, based on the US aid, and and as result has no incentive to end the war. The upper echelons are not suffering any pain, it's the lower echelons and the normal people that are paying the price. And since they know what the upper echelons are doing, they hate them (and the US) for that. Nukes or no nukes, there is no reason for the US to keep the river of money flowing, certainly not in these times. Leave Pakistan to its own devices. Their military knows what the Mossad, the Indians and their proxies will do them and their families if they let things get out of hand.
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.
I'm sure the SEALs destroyed the stuff that really matters. Stealth technology is not new. China has already started testing their own prototype of a stealth plane. Will the Chinese learn something from what was left behind? Maybe. Maybe not.
I suspect that if this technology was so uber-secret, we would have saturated the place with enough ordinance to blow it into dust. So either it's not so terribly secret (the SEALs destroying what needed to be destroyed) or there was a plan to leave it behind specifically to mislead. Either way, I'd suggest this is a tempest in a teacup.
Yay! Cheap knock-off stealth choppers for everyone!!
Your surmise is correct. That's what happened when the Chinese embassy was 'accidentally' bombed during the conflict in the Balkans. A stealth aircraft had recently been shot down and the Chinese were known to have collected a ton of parts from the wreckage, and they were being held in the embassy awaiting extraction to China. Whoops, a whole ton of precision guided ordnance accidentally wiped it out. Fancy that.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
"One can not truly appreciate Shakespeare until you have heard it in it's original Klingon" -Star Trek
No the US had the deal to tell the Pakistan government before shooting someone.
And the deal going the other way was to A) not harbor a wanted criminal, and B) assist in finding said criminal. They failed on both counts.
Years ago, we discussed this in my organic chemistry class during a lab exercise using GC-MS (gas chromatography - mass spectrometry). Just because you know what something is made of does not mean you can replicate the process that makes it. That is why things that matter a great deal of money to certain businesses such as the formula for coca-cola or the colonel's 11 special spices are still secure despite their wide-spread availability. Things may have changed, but it still seems like most of material science can be compared to one way functions so widely used in cryptography. It is relatively easier to make something by putting things together than it is to reverse the process in a meaningful way.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
Well, Pakistan does have an "accept several hundred billion dollars a year from the US" deal. If China's making them a better offer, then Pakistan's actions make sense.
You put that in quotations as if it was a quoted fact... but several hundred billion dollars a year? The US yearly defense budget is a bit over $600B, Pakistan doesn't get half of that. The real number is $1-2B. Still a lot, but off by a couple orders of magnitude there ;)
Though to your point, the US just withheld $800M of that yearly aid last month after the latest concerns about Pakistan's military allegiances. Looks like that might backfire if they just get money from China instead.
Because they are a nuclear power with a large fundamentalist population ruled by a military oligarchy. So the US gives that oligarchy shitloads of money to both bribe them for support and try to keep them in power to prevent another Iran.
Of course, the US gave lots of money and weapons to the Iranian government before the revolution there, and in the end all that did was make the new regime both heavily armed and even more pissed off...