China's 'stealth fighter' flies – brown trouser time, or not? The death-tech beat has spoken of little else but China's new "stealth fighter" for some weeks now – and yesterday, funnily enough just as the US Defense Secretary was visiting Beijing, the J-20 (or whatever it may turn out to be officially called) finally took to the air. The People's Republic is making no real effort to keep …
"the only reason China has done this is so it can sell a bucket load of them to the US for a fraction of the cost of an F22."
Nice theory, highly topical with US outsourcing (and I'm sure you're being satirical) but I doubt it. This thing just looks like yet another cheap shitty Chinese copy of a Western design and its only saving grace is that they can probably knock it out by the thousand and have ample pilots (or meatsacks at least) to fly them. Missiles to knock it out the sky are probably still cheaper though even at Western prices.
of a Russian design perhaps... It just looks so...
but nevertheless, how many countries can do this?
If it's main _PURPOSE_ of existence is to provide some sort of perceived deterrence to any US carrier group closing in on Chinese soil, it may just be successful in that role.
Consider :
(1) How would a US carrier group actually cope _in_practice_ with a zerg of anti-ship missles..
(2) How many planes/missiles it would cost China to nail a US carrier if push came to shove. This number probably really exists, I am thinking something like 10-20 planes maybe but who the hell really knows? If a better plane design, even though incremental and not revolutionary, had the potential to reduces this number, it is probably worth it.
(3) This is NOT Soviet era Russia we're talking about. This is China in the 21st century. They make iPads, Eee PC's. They have cloned their own MIPS. One would do well not to underestimate them. Both their technical prowess and actual manufacturing capability.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5SRyG6UR2A
either way safe is NOT a word I would use in conjunction with anything made in china.
Look at their toys Still have lead paint, thousands of times above the legal limit and little bits that fall off and choke the children. watch the car one and tell me you would even want to get into one.
China has more borders than their Eastern one.
To the South and Southwest lies India, a country they've already had one shooting war with, and the host for the Dalai Lama - obviously being supported to try to subvert Chinese control over Tibet.
To the North and Northwest is Russia, another country they've already had a shooting war with.
Improving their military capabilities vis-a-vis these is a far more attainable goal than butting heads with the USA.
Also, China's military budget might be small, but the Renminbi is artificially held low, so the money is worth more than the nominal value - and the low wages and prices in China means that the same money goes a lot further; you get a lot more soldiers and airmen to the yuan than you do to the dollar - which means you have more left after salaries to pay for R&D.
China is more likely to go to war over a resource grab with India or Russia than the US, even with the Taiwan situation.
As to the engines - a number of reports have pointed out that they're having problems developing 5G power units, so they may well be testing with existing 3G or 4G jets, hence the shape of the afterburner control foils/spout (or what ever it's called).
Much more of the same old same old from the "masters of the universe" on Wall St and it will be a moot point whether or not the US government will be able to afford the Raptor's price tag. Its no good having the better technology if it costs so frakking much in relation to your GDP that you cannot pay for it. The Chinese seem to be pursuing a doctrine of "affordable strategic sufficiency", roughly translated as "we won't start it but it will cost you if you choose to get in our face". Might be something for certain Western powers to consider. If you can't afford to build it, you can't afford to fire it.
Like many other countries China is rapidly garnering Western tastes particularly the "money-grabbing bastard" ones. If their runaway investment in the property market is anything to go by they could quite easily develop their own Wall Street tendencies and piss it all back down the drain.
The author believes (despite past form) that the US could actually win a war against a well armed adversary.
Conveniently, he omits to mention China's ability to remove US aircraft carriers from the face of the planet:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/03/china-turning-m/
or their satellite removal technology:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/alert-on-star-war-missiles-20101220-1937b.html
which would probably result in the US losing to Afghanistan!
Not even hundreds of billions of dollars and the might of the greatest army in the world can get Afghans to be anything but ignorant poppy growing goat farmers who refuse to leave the 12th century. Don't confuse putting a hurt on your enemy (2.5 million Vietnamese deaths to 60k American deaths) and building a nation.
They are living in a state of war for 36 years now. You expect what kind of culture to flourish under these conditions already?
As for our culture: daily soaps and what else for the last 20 years?
Pray for our troops that nobody gives proper equipment to the Afghans, like Mr. Page's darlings did in the eighties.
AC, obviously.
The Chinese maintain a much larger army for a much lower cost than the UK, US or any other developed nation, primarily due to the fact that the average wage can be much lower.
Lewis does seem to have missed the point that it is believed that the current engines on their jet are only temporary until they can produce a stealthy, vectored thrust unit (with a greater power output), which is when the advantages against the US are going to significantly narrow.
The plane itself is bigger than its rivals, meaning it has provision for more fuel and weapons capacity, so when it is out of the prototype stage, I expect that the US and UK defence analysts will stop laughing at it then
"The plane itself is bigger than its rivals, meaning it has provision for more fuel and weapons capacity, so when it is out of the prototype stage, I expect that the US and UK defence analysts will stop laughing at it then"
Hmm, read what Boyd had to say on that subject. Thinking that bigger is better is what made US fighters from Vietnam-era jets to the F14 relative dogs.
What counts is thrust:weight ratio and the fuel+payload fraction of the MTOW, not absolute size.
"...which is when the advantages against the US are going to significantly narrow."
That would only be true if the U.S. military stopped researching and developing new aircraft. As it is, the J20 (supposedly China's most advanced fighter aircraft), is at least 10-15 years behind the west. By the time China works out any kinks and sends the prototype to production, the U.S. would have produced advanced aircraft that would make the J20 obsolete.
Technological/Industrial development in this or that country does not follow the same timeline in each successive country that goes through the phase concerned. Britain was the first country to go through what historians now call the Industrial Revolution. The "dates" commonly accepted are from approximately halfway through the eighteenth century to about halfway through the 19th - by which time Britain was no longer primarily an agricultural nation. One hundred years. Do you believe that all the countries in Europe that followed Britain into the Industrial Age needed to go through 100 years of industrial development to achieve parity? Of course not. The fact that the Chinese are 15 years behind NOW does not mean that the "techno-time-gap" will be the same in, say, five years time. Take a look at consumer electronics, they've gone from merely being the Western Worlds low rent assembly line to being a major player in that area - in what? Bout ten years or so?
Modern China has no interest in agression or expansion. Why on earth would they need to when they will be the major economic power in the world by the end of the century? War with your major trading partners tends to be bad for business.
So this fighter isn't some sort of escalation of their ambitions. At most, it'll be used to keep those uppity North Koreans in check and will be available for export to anybody who wants it, at a fraction of the cost of an F-35, and completely unhindered by US trade embargoes. Expect Iran to be a client. Again, it's all good for business.
The (thank you, anglosphere) highly successful french landgrab started in the late 16th century and went right on until it suffered an minor setback at the end of the first Napoleon's reign and a larger setback at the end of the third Napoleon's reign. That was later corrected by Lloyd George and Wilson, and again by Roosevelt and St Churchill and we rest at that.
But for the cold war, the french would by now have territory on both sides of the Rhine - nearing what they arrived at around 1800, before being pushed back a bit.
So your count is not exact at all. What you are talking about are roughly rounds 29-31.
Making proclamations about what China has in mind for the future and only considering economics as a factor is pretty damn stupid. They will be under tremendous pressure due to their one child madness. Madness because Asian culture values males over females and because of that, their male/female ratio is horrible - read somewhere it will reach 10-1 shortly. So what do you do with all those swinging dicks out there? Send 'em to war, get some stuff back, get some extra stuff. Cut your male population down and get new stuff. Win Win.
Hell, the Number One reason to go to war is ego. My balls are bigger than yours.
In any case, shit happens and anything else is a best guess.
(I have a sneaking suspicion that China will be fighting the Middle Eastern Islamic countries one day. Close to each other and they don't exchange Christmas cards either - not much love lost)
The article forgets to mention that the plane doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough, when you can fill the skies with them, and the oposition only has a couple of dozen "full up" stealth fighters to hand.
Also how many of these are China going to sell to india, pakistan, et al?
with the author's rant...no one in the US DoD is even bothering to give this thing a second glance, let alone go "brown trousers" over it. Did the author really expect no one to sit up and take notice when China produces a "fifth generation" aircraft? Of course the various pundits are going to do their thing, from both sides of the argument...that's what pundits do. So a "Well Done!" on highlighting the very obvious and wasting our time. The course is fixed for the next decade or so. Continue testing unmanned fighters/bombers until they can pass the "interesting, but what good is it?" stage; and secondly, get a replacement bomber for the B-52s, B-1s, and B-2s, most of which are older than the readers on this site and I suspect the author as well.
..is surely populated by legions of idiots who can't read and write, who don't know Physics and Chemistry. Only idiots could invent Silk while others wore that solid dead-bear-skin. And only idiots would need a compass when Vikings simply used the sun. What you say ? No sun. Dammit.
Before you don't know something substantial about a potential adversary's systems, it is best to refrain from ridiculing said systems. There are Chinese engineers who can write RF modelling code and use RF modelling code. Also, there are Chinese engineers who can read certain uncontrolled publications where this Mil-RFy issues are discussed.
There is not much known about the J-20 and it might turn out that there is an innovative concept behind it. It might turn out that they made serious progress on engine durability. It might turn out that this aircraft is part of an elaborate tactical concept and part of a large program to achieve a certain capability. As a wild guess, long-range strike paired with an attack on reconnaissance assets of a potential adversary of China.
Never underestimate what opponents might achieve on tiny budgets. Tiny budgets mean someone with a sharp mind and a sharp pencil might have developed something clever and quite effective. Some people call this "asymmetric approach".
Look up the T-34 and the Vympel AAM. World-leading Russian technology exposed only after the fact.
China has not yet developed any millitary tech of it's own, only updated/altered Soviet/Russian planes, tanks, fire arms and ships. Even the 'state of the art' J9 fighter is rumoured to be a clone of the IAI Lavi, oh and the uprated avionics were sold to them by Israel.
Still you are right about their inventive and technical skills through out the Millennia, however the last couple of centuries have seen them lag behind by quite some distance.
"Look up the T-34 and the Vympel AAM. World-leading Russian technology exposed only after the fact."
We can be grateful that the Abwehr did not at the outset understand what the T-34 could do. The German army found out of course at the Battle of the Kursk Salient when the Red Army ripped the guts out of the German army. My personal vote for "my best tank"!
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Likewise when you have the biggest collection of military hardware in the world, everyone else looks like an enemy. They're not. Mostly they simply aren't interested in what you think.
The Economist recently [4 Dec 2010] had an article about the ascension of China and the decline of the USA. It's conclusion was that China is perfectly capable of expressing its economic dominance without the need or desire to go nose-to-nose with anyone else. It knows it has time on its side and if the worst did happen it could just unload its trillions of dollars of american debt and screw them into the ground economically rather than militarily. Though there's no need for that when nature is taking its course.
So, on that basis, I'd be prepared to view the possibility of a chinese stealth jet more as a chain-yanking effort (possibly showing the chinese sense of humour: "woooohooooo - we're coming to geeeeet you - nah, we're just messin'") that will allow them to laugh at the overreaction it will cause from their insecure and terrified neighbours on the other side of the pacific.
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