I wish I could be as charitable. Sinosoldier has a hisotry of embellishment, mis-interpretation, mis-representation, mis-attribution, and failing to provide source text. I refuse to put up with his habit of playing fast and loose, at least not here, because SDF isn't a fanboy site.
I think it’s far more important that we establish regular habits for how information is being sourced and referred to than in policing what people believe. Everyone will have their own interpretation of information when it is deliberately framed ambiguously. That’s just the nature of this hobby. The best thing we can do is to let primary sources be the sources of record. That doesn’t mean there aren’t interpretations that are either more or less accurate, and we should debate those interpretations fully, but I think the conclusions we draw from these debates is less important than the record keeping.
Sigh... Let me walk you through this again.
Before we proceed, some definitions are in order:
1) The designation 'JH' stands for 'Jian-Hong', or 'fighter-bomber'. An example would be JH-7.
2) The designation 'H' stands for 'Hong', or 'bomber'. One example would be the Xi'an H-6. These are designed as pure bombers.
3) The word 'are' indicates present tense. The word 'were' indicates past tense.
Now onto the meat of our disagreement...
超级大本营CDF, a.k.a. fzgfzy, posted on his Weibo account the following on May 2, 2018:
The above photo is accompanied by a caption at the bottom that reads "战轰鸭嘴，另一款红色B2就…", as seen in the cropped screen capture below:
"鸭嘴" means duckbill, or it can be a shorthand for "鸭嘴兽" (duckbill beast), which means "platypus". "红色B2" translates as "Red B2".
With the above in mind, the caption translates literally as "duckbill/platypus bomber, the other is Red B2", or alternately "duckbill/platypus bomber, the other item Red B2 is or may..."
In my opinion, "Red B2" can only refer to the Chinese counterpart to the American B-2; in other words, a Chinese flying-wing, long-range, strategic stealth bomber. Taken together, these photos indicate the existence of, in the present or the past, two distinct bomber projects: one being the platypus bomber, the other the flying-wing B-2 equivalent.
Subsequently, on May 3rd, 2018, fzgfzy , which depicts a mockup at Shenyang.
In the comment section for the above photograph, 超级大本营CDF, a.k.a. fzgfzy, answered some questions from commenters:
Redeye123：这是你讲的鸭嘴兽吗？
超级大本营CDF：我讲的更漂亮
精准微操蒋中正：这个就是你之前说轰1X？？
超级大本营CDF：不是的，我说的在西北方向，而且更科幻更漂亮
Begin Translation:
Redeye123: Is this the 'platypus' you talked about?
超级大本营CDF: What I talked about was more beautiful than this.
精准微操蒋中正: Is this what you referred to previous as the H-1X?
超级大本营CDF: No. H-1X is from the northwest** and is more futuristic-looking/more science-fiction-like than this.
**Northwest seems to imply XAC, which is located in Xi'an, in northwestern China.
End Translation.
So basically, the Shenyang mockup is not the platypus bomber, nor is it XAC's H-1X bomber. In other words, the platypus bomber is something else entirely.
In other words, fzgfzy implied the existence of two distinct bomber projects. He didn't say if they are current projects or defunct. He also never applied the designations such as 'H' or 'JH' anywhere.
Here is the post in question, which I shall quote the relevant part in its entirety:
"He absolutely implied there were two bomber designs: one which was photographed in that FC-31 album and another that he hinted was more "beautiful". I believe I've provided links to his claims as well. We don't know if there were two concurrent designs or if one was a natural evolution of the other, but if fzgfzy is indeed credible in his claims, there should be a change from what was photographed in that FC-31 album and what was ultimately displayed in the recent cockpit mockup photos (if the latter is representative of an actual bomber project)."By "one which was photographed in that FC-31 album", he meant the mockup in the background that was photographed in 2013 and only recently released in a SAC photo album. I shall call this the 2013 mockup.
By "another that he hinted was more beautiful" and "displayed in the recent cockpit mockup photos", Sinosoldier was referring to the Shenyang mockup below. I shall call this the 2018 mockup.
Sinosoldier seems to think that the 2013 mockup and the 2018 mockup represent two so-called JH-XX designs, with the two being either "concurrent" with each other, or the 2018 mockup being a "natural evolution" of the 2013 mockup. Since both mockups were photographed at Shenyang, this tells me that Sinosoldier thinks both JH-XX designs are/were Shenyang projects.
Also telling is the fact that Sinosoldier never once mentioned XAC in his exchanges with me.
