Chinese Engine Development

Brumby said:

I was watching the conversation from the beginning and was rather amazed that it became so convoluted because unconsciously you guys through different mouthpiece with Blackstone created a much wider, unnecessary and unfocussed conversation. The original issue was simply about WS-10 reliability and transparency. It morphed out to include problems, accidents or crashes; double engine failure; conspiracy in reporting; reliability of big shrimps vs official sources, et al. TP's point I thought was to bring everybody back to the center of gravity and i.e. there were some serious initial problems with the WS-10 and now is working fine, a path not unlike any engine development in history. I thought Blackstone's original assertion was rather weak but you guys gave oxygen to the conversation.
IMO, the lesson in this is just to stay on topic and unfortunately emotional appeal got into the mix.

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Honestly, if the discussion was only limited to WS-10 reliability and even if it was about the transparency of PLA developments in general, then that wouldn't have been a problem if it was asked with respect.

But there was so much blatant condescension behind the way his post was originally written that it was virtually guaranteed to lead to a mess. I have no issue with trying to bring back the discussion to more stable ground, or even simply ceasing the discussion as it is for a period, but by trying to criticize everyone's criticism of Blackstone as some sort of "ganging up" only driven by being "pro China" and an implied "CHINA STRONGGGG!!!1!!!" sentiment is quite frankly offensive and a mis-portrayal of how I think most people who've countered Blackstone's original assertions see it.

Bltizo said:

criticize everyone's criticism of Blackstone as some sort of "ganging up"

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TP's statement is a description of fact and not necessarily a criticism. There are no rules against ganging up but it does make the whole conversation rather unmanageable and easily go off track as demonstrated by this example.

Bltizo said:

only driven by being "pro China"

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I believe the "pro China" comment was in the context of a historical discussions on the WS-10 problem on another forum.

Bltizo said:

sentiment is quite frankly offensive and a mis-portrayal of how I think most people who've countered Blackstone's original assertions see it.

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I think there is universal consensus that Blackstone's premise was rather weak or lack substance to it. Typically an assertion with weak premise is easily disposed off but how did the subsequent conversation ended up so convoluted? I think if members bring emotion into the conversation rather than focus on the objectivity of the issue then the conversation would not have over extended and that in my view was what TP was trying to convey.
In the context of Blackstone's original assertion the simple disposal is to invoke Hitchen's razor "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence".

b787 said:

my point is the article in Russian was from 2009, the Russians knew that from 2009, but AVIC confirmed it in 2016, only that,

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No the AVIC doesn't confirm anything It said they took some inspiration from US and Soviet Union that is it So to insinuate China copy WS 10 from AL 31 is just Insane.

There is no direct involvement of Russia in the design at all.No blue print, NO manufacturing process, No material formula, No aerodynamic testing NOTHING. Maybe some freelance Russian engineer but it won't make a difference

Brumby said:

TP's statement is a description of fact and not necessarily a criticism. There are no rules against ganging up but it does make the whole conversation rather unmanageable and easily go off track as demonstrated by this example.

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Well if it wasn't a criticism, then the replies that myself and others have offered in response were not criticisms of his criticisms, and everyone's responses were thus only descriptions of fact as well...

I believe the "pro China" comment was in the context of a historical discussions on the WS-10 problem on another forum.

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Hard to tell what he's explicitly referring to, but it doesn't detract from my position that the chorus of counter arguments against his post were not only due to blind headed nationalism.

I think there is universal consensus that Blackstone's premise was rather weak or lack substance to it. Typically an assertion with weak premise is easily disposed off but how did the subsequent conversation ended up so convoluted? I think if members bring emotion into the conversation rather than focus on the objectivity of the issue then the conversation would not have over extended and that in my view was what TP was trying to convey.
In the context of Blackstone's original assertion the simple disposal is to invoke Hitchen's razor "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence".

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Maybe on a different forum populated by different people of a different background less predisposed to being offended by the specific stance he took and the way he spoke it, they would have let his original statements slide, and responded with less stringent and comprehensive counter arguments, but on this forum the positions he took were perceived as very inflammatory.

If the wave of counter arguments against his original posts were enough to dispose of the original post, then it should have been enough to simply move on gracefully... but by insinuating that the counter arguments were irrational or driven by nationalism, and as somehow unjustified overall, then that is creating a whole separate topic of argument altogether, which in many ways has the potential to become just as bitter as the original area of contention itself because it can be perceived as much more personal.

Hendrik_2000 said:

No the AVIC doesn't confirm anything It said they took some inspiration from US and Soviet Union that is it So to insinuate China copy WS 10 from AL 31 is just Insane.

There is no direct involvement of Russia in the design at all.No blue print, NO manufacturing process, No material formula, No aerodynamic testing NOTHING. Maybe some freelance Russian engineer but it won't make a difference

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i do not need to argue pages and pages with some one who only wants to see one side so i will put it simple for the benefit of others, the Chief designer of 117 said the Chinese had technical documentation of Al-31, the technical documentation was used to copy up to 70 percent that is what he said he said that, the report says China used the control system, you want to believe it or not is not my problem let the reader decide, both articles say basically the same thing but the Russian one says they copied more and the Chinese only says the copy little, so since i know this tends to get into nationalistic rants i will leave it here

b787 said:

i do not need to argue pages and pages with some one who only wants to see one side

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Sort of the pot calling the kettle black, Mig-29?

superdog said:

You got that impression because you don't know where most of the so-called "big shrimps" get their information from. How many of them do you think are real insiders of AVIC or PLA and that they're leaking sensitive information (e.g. undisclosed accident investigation report of military projects) to the Internet? Good luck finding one. There may be a few who's really an insider, but they will be extra careful in choosing what to discuss, because once they say something they shouldn't, there will be serious disciplinary or legal consequences. Besides, many real insiders tend to make their real life identity public, such as test pilot Xu Yongling, or the recently deceased CMS pilot/navy photographer Sun Liping (Xunhai).

Then there are those people who may have loose affiliation to relevant industry/military circles, and sometimes they can get bits of general information like project xxx has been started, equipment x has been delivered, deal x with Russia has been signed, etc., but what comes from them are often vague, and could be inaccurate (think about the Su-35 deal). It is unlikely that these people can provide you specific information on an military aviation accident report.

The rest of them, which are the vast majority of "unofficial sources" on Chinese military BBS, consists of people who make stuff up to pretend they're "big shrimps", as well as people who simply monitor, organize, and analyze information available from open channels. If you're good at digging and analyzing open information you can become a "big shrimp" too. For example, let us look at this article about the WS-10 development:

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The author is not an AVIC insider. Where do you think he get all those historical details from? I can tell you they were collected from news articles published on the newspaper China Aviation News many years ago. Guess who owns China Aviation News? Who else but AVIC.

In short, if you think WS-10 troubles were hidden by official reports and leaked by so called "big shrimps", you just haven't learned to look at the right place like a "big shrimp" does. Have you wondered who is this "big shrimp" you trusted that told you WS-10 caused a crash? What could be his real life role, how did he get the information, and how good was his track record? Have you considered these factors, or do you just trust him just because he has a bunch of followers calling him a "big shrimp"?

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Just like the Pentagon, Boeing and Lockmart all writes articles to promote their own achievements, AVIC and PLA do the same thing. I don't consider this particular article of AVIC congratulating itself to be useful news. I had months ago already posted that WS-10 has achieved production certification, which is far more important and significant accomplishment. Now, I've spent vast amount of time (some would say wasted) in the past 10 years of my life browsing through Chinese forums identifying which sources are more authentic. Even those, I don't come close to trusting 100%. And with these "official articles", a lot of them are written in a way to really appreciate the hard work of those who worked on these projects and boasting about their successes. Looking at the context, the relevance and reliability of sourcing is a large part of what I talk about here on this forum. And if you welcome that as part of your research into Chinese military, then that's a great thing. Just please use it on both arguments for and against achievements of AVIC.

Bltizo said:

Well if it wasn't a criticism, then the replies that myself and others have offered in response were not criticisms of his criticisms, and everyone's responses were thus only descriptions of fact as well...

Hard to tell what he's explicitly referring to, but it doesn't detract from my position that the chorus of counter arguments against his post were not only due to blind headed nationalism.

Maybe on a different forum populated by different people of a different background less predisposed to being offended by the specific stance he took and the way he spoke it, they would have let his original statements slide, and responded with less stringent and comprehensive counter arguments, but on this forum the positions he took were perceived as very inflammatory.

If the wave of counter arguments against his original posts were enough to dispose of the original post, then it should have been enough to simply move on gracefully... but by insinuating that the counter arguments were irrational or driven by nationalism, and as somehow unjustified overall, then that is creating a whole separate topic of argument altogether, which in many ways has the potential to become just as bitter as the original area of contention itself because it can be perceived as much more personal.

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blackstone's comment maybe offensive to some, but I certainly don't think it was or I would've deleted his post. Either way, this has gone so far off topic down to irrelevant bickering. Anything more on this will be deleted.

tphuang said:

Just like the Pentagon, Boeing and Lockmart all writes articles to promote their own achievements, AVIC and PLA do the same thing. I don't consider this particular article of AVIC congratulating itself to be useful news. I had months ago already posted that WS-10 has achieved production certification, which is far more important and significant accomplishment. Now, I've spent vast amount of time (some would say wasted) in the past 10 years of my life browsing through Chinese forums identifying which sources are more authentic. Even those, I don't come close to trusting 100%. And with these "official articles", a lot of them are written in a way to really appreciate the hard work of those who worked on these projects and boasting about their successes. Looking at the context, the relevance and reliability of sourcing is a large part of what I talk about here on this forum. And if you welcome that as part of your research into Chinese military, then that's a great thing. Just please use it on both arguments for and against achievements of AVIC.

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It appears that you didn't get the point I was trying to make by linking that article.

I was not posting that link to show off the achievements of WS-10. I was not arguing with you about how successful or unsuccessful the WS-10 development was, or how much praise should we give to AVIC. I was not judging the validity of that "WS-10 crash" statement based on whether it is a positive or negative news. None of these were the things I was trying to show.

My point from the very beginning has been that, in most cases, officially released information were much more reliable than what you hear from the so called "big shrimps" on the Chinese Internet. Yes, company statements and official media tend to gloss over things, and they often don't tell you everything we military watchers wanted to know, but they also have a pretty good track record of not making claims that were simply false. AVIC was under no pressure to confirm to the public whether the WS-10 caused any crash or not. Common sense would dictate that if a WS-10 crash did happen, they would simply omit talking about this, rather than going out of their way to insert a lie into their company statement. It would not make sense.

In contrast, what we hear from anonymous "big shrimps" on the Internet were far less reliable, for reasons I explained in my last post. Of course you can get a lot of information from these unknown sources and some of them could be very valuable, I'm not saying we should disregard them altogether, but I'd never put them at the same level of trustworthiness as official statements. Therefore, on this particular topic we're talking about here (whether WS-10 caused a crash), it is clear to me which answer was more likely to be true, especially when that "big shrimp's statement" wasn't even widely circulated on the Chinese Internet (indicates lack of corroboration).

In my previous post, I linked an article because you were saying that official sources tend to shy from describing troubles (and therefore we have to rely on "big shrimps" to get those information). If you read that article thoroughly, you would see that it summarized a lot of the troubles we now know about the WS-10's development. I was telling you, to the best of my knowledge, most, if not all of those details originated from old reports on China Aviation News, which was an official source. It did not came from the "big shrimps". It would be unwise to assume that we must rely on unofficial (hard to confirm) sources for negative news. After-all, sometimes the "big shrimps" themselves were just people being very good at searching and extracting information from open publication.

I don't expect anyone else to think exactly like I do, but I hope I've made it clear as to why I believed one claim rather than its opposing claim. This is my analysis on relevance and reliability. Given the presence of an official statement, I don't believe in rumors that WS-10 caused a crash, just like I don't believe in rumors of 001a having catapults. It has nothing to do with being unable to accept negative news on Chinese achievements. I sure hope that's not what you're suggesting.

Regarding the J-11B that crashed; if memory serves me correctly, it was a J-11BS and the culprit was the digital FBW system, not engine.

The imported Flankers have analogue FBW. The J-11B at that time retained the analogue system due to time constraints. The J-11BS was the first to be fitted with a Chinese digital FBW system.

After the crash, they didn't know what the cause was, so every possibility had to be considered. One possibility was of course the WS-10. There were also the usual finger pointings among the different teams.

The problem never occur again until a few years after the J-11BS has been in service. The aircraft (the digital FBW) suddenly pitched up without authorisation. Control was lost, but luckily the pilots were able to regain control and brought the aircraft to the ground. This incident was reported in detail by CCTV. It's only after the second incident that the problem was fixed.

The incident with the J-11B being grounded was engine related, but not due to the engines themselves. Some people on the WS-10 manufacture line screwed up, then covered it up. The problem was only discovered when the engine got fired up. They didn't know why, so to be safe, the entire batch of engines was deemed defective. The result was that the first batch of J-11B's had no engines to use.

Engineer said:

Regarding the J-11B that crashed; if memory serves me correctly, it was a J-11BS and the culprit was the digital FBW system, not engine.

The imported Flankers have analogue FBW. The J-11B at that time retained the analogue system due to time constraints. The J-11BS was the first to be fitted with a Chinese digital FBW system.

After the crash, they didn't know what the cause was, so every possibility had to be considered. One possibility was of course the WS-10. There were also the usual finger pointings among the different teams.

The problem never occur again until a few years after the J-11BS has been in service. The aircraft (the digital FBW) suddenly pitched up without authorisation. Control was lost, but luckily the pilots were able to regain control and brought the aircraft to the ground. This incident was reported in detail by CCTV. It's only after the second incident that the problem was fixed.

The incident with the J-11B being grounded was engine related, but not due to the engines themselves. Some people on the WS-10 manufacture line screwed up, then covered it up. The problem was only discovered when the engine got fired up. They didn't know why, so to be safe, the entire batch of engines was deemed defective. The result was that the first batch of J-11B's had no engines to use.

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That's what I remember as well. Although I don't know which incident TP was referring to, so I can't be sure if he's talking about the J-11BS prototype crash.