Please elaborate on how the UK "stole" the F-35 design. The UK is buying a total of 138 F-35s from the US including licensed technology transfer. Where is the theft of the F-35 design happening, and can you substantiate any of it with anything other than statements from yourself? As for the Harrier, if you are referring to the McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II that the US manufactured, that was an Anglo-American joint development of the British Hawker Siddely Harrier. Again, no theft of anything. Any other irrelevant planes you want to throw in there to try and muddy the waters?Much like how UK stole the F-35 design and US stole the Harrier design?
They negotiated a license buy from Russia. No one is saying that’s it’s not a flanker variant, but you can’t steal something you have the rights to.
OT: does parade J-15s mean the carrier(s) will play a role in the parade?
As for the Chinese "license buy" from Russia, it's not rocket science, which means that if you're still arguing about it, you have ulterior motives. It's VERY simple: the Chinese contracted with the Russians to locally produce 200 Su-27s (as the "J-11") using Russian-supplied kits. After producing about a hundred, the Chinese decided to stop producing using the Russian kits. By that time they had mostly absorbed the technology of the Su-27 and were going to indigenize the design and produce the design locally as the J-11B using many but not all locally-made subsystems; the engine especially was not locally-produced until later batches as the WS-10A was still having reliability problems for several years. There are now several hundred J-11 and variants produced by China. Again, the original license was for 200 Su-27 builds using Russian-supplied kits. To imagine that the Russians gave permission for ANYTHING beyond exactly this is to be utterly delusional and/or intellectually dishonest. This is a clear technology theft from China of the Su-27 design.
BTW, I'm still waiting for evidence of that Chinese stealth ASCM with cooperative engagement and "ECM". Where is it?
No, I have not ignored anything. Actually you are the one ignoring my statements. I clearly made reference to this point when I made statements like "Not in every last detail and modernizations aside" and " The Russians did NOT give permission for China to copy (and subsequently modify) the design and thereafter produce several hundred more using local subsystems". So why did you ignore these statements? I am fully aware of the development history of the J-11, including the desire on the PLAAF's part to use Chinese weaponry.You and AssassinsMace are both correct in your own ways. You've ignored the point he's trying to make. That being, China took out what they didn't like in the Su-27 design and added what they wanted to add, in this case it was domestic subsystems and ability to completely use Chinese weapons. So his point is, the charge that China copied the Su-27 entirely isn't accurate since all the innards and subsystems are Chinese not Russian. In fact the whole point of the domesticising exercise to make the Su-27 into the J-11 was to NOT copy the subsystems that made the fighter thoroughly Russian. The Russian Su-27 exported in built form and kits did not have an ability to fire Chinese weapons or become compatible with Chinese avionics and radar. Even the positioning of the IRST is different along with the system itself on the J-11B. It's a flanker derivative and PLAAF has stuck with the flanker design because it offers range and payload along with many attributes that were never available to PLAAF in the past. It's still building off this platform today because it's a damn good platform for subsurface upgrades just like the Russians have been doing.
But you are correct in the direction you're coming from. That being the J-11 is a outward copy of the Su-27 and engineered from the kits supplied. The thing is no one here denies that or wants to hide it. There is not evidence anyone wants to hide that fact. What AM was challenging was the half-arsed conclusion that the J-11 is a Su-27 copy. If the avionics, electronics, and software are totally Chinese origin and not copies of what was onboard Su-27, then it's better to not be extreme in either view. I think his main point is criticising the article in the assumption it makes that everything Chinese must be derived from a foreign design... in this case it was the D-21 allegation.
It's Cypher's post that alluded to the kit assembly deal. He asked a question. He's been corrected. It's not a forum fanboy thing like you're claiming. One guy asked a question whether kit assembly and modification counts as stealing. This question is a difficult to answer one but interesting. Personally I consider it as a violation of Sukhoi's IP and faith that engineers at SAC who could reverse engineer and build the entire thing, wouldn't do just that. 90s China didn't care for respecting this and valued producing unlimited numbers of their own domesticised flankers as more important than respecting Sukhoi's IP. The decision was a pragmatic and financial one. It has less to do with technology and capability. Of course China back then wasn't wealthy enough to devote decades into developing their own F-15/ Su-27 equivalent even if it had the ability and organisation to do so. The need was for hundreds of these heavy fighters. The price in this case was reputation and goodwill from the Russians.
Nobody including me is saying that the J-11B is an exact one-for-one copy of the Su-27. This is a total straw man that doesn't stand up to scrutiny, not least because of the well-known reason that China wanted the Su-27 to launch local weapons. But the avionics were definitely wholesale reverse-engineered from the Su-27, as China had nothing similar to the Su-27 at the time it was copied. Pointing out exceptions like the radar and software is to completely ignore the dozens to hundreds of other Su-27 subsystems that the Chinese certainly had to copy and reverse-engineer from the original design to make the J-11B flyable. Additionally, while Chinese engineers almost certainly identified and improved some deficiencies in the original Su-27 airframe given their now intimate knowledge of the design, the J-11B airframe is in general a wholesale reverse-engineering of the Su-27 airframe. We can call the J-11B a "variant" if it makes us sleep better at night and quibble about what "copy" really means, or how much copying is still considered copying, but in the end the Chines stole the Su-27 design without Russian permission and are now making derivatives of the Su-27 in the hundeds (?thousands), way beyond the wildest imaginations of what the Russians ever intended or gave permission for. If this situation had been reversed, the fanbois here would be screaming their pretty little heads off at the thieving Russians.