There is a good reason we vacuum away from the so call china's cyber espionage, it is a dirty hole and we do not want to dig. I mean, there is no real evidence of that happening. I believe countries are spying on each other though... (look to Snowden and you will know what I am talking about).
Secondly... how do China know the properties of US RAM if they don't know what make up that RAM coating and how effective that coating was except for some publicly available information which can actually throw the calculation off by quite a bit.
Also... if cyber espionage can produce that much information and China had been doing it for decades, shouldn't the J-20 and the J-31 already started mass production, since they would already by now get all the information they needed. Also... they could also be mass producing engines rather than having that much issues with WS-10A until recently.
Again... how would China know for sure the effectiveness of the RAm coating used on latest US aircraft? By public information or as what Latenlazy seemed to bent on saying - cyber espionage? Again... a replica although look alike, will be totally wrong in terms of calculation and if China is basing on that data, it is not going to work. You need accuracy in this area...
It may be a dirty hole, but by no means should we simply assume it's not relevant. I advocate that we consider the possibility out there, especially given the specific reporting.
Knowing the properties of a material doesn't mean you can easily replicate it, but it does mean you can stick its properties into the parameters of a computer simulation to do testing. Replicating a material is a whole different aspect of knowledge from studying something's properties, but you only need the latter for simulation purposes. This is the sort of intelligence that is targeted by cyber espionage.
And no, just because you know the design and property of a material doesn't mean you can just replicate and copy it, nor is the design, testing, and production process of a fighter platform even remotely correlated with knowing someone else's blueprints. In fact, as proven countless times, reverse engineering can take more time and be more difficult than studying the basic science and properties behind another design and coming up with your own solutions using that basic knowledge. Furthermore, the knowledge requirements for countering a technology and replicating it are very different. It takes far more information for the latter for one, and it requires knowledge that can't always be gleaned from blueprints and specific properties.
You're assuming that the replica will be a physical entity, which would have been true three decades ago but simply isn't true now. That's why you don't need to replicate the fighter to figure out its different properties. By your logic, we couldn't possibly do climate simulations because we're not building an actual replica earth. I'm not suggesting that any simulation would be 100% accurate, but even a simulation with a clear range of error creates serious advantages in studying someone else's capabilities and developing countermeasures.
How high a resolution a photo can be, 5MP? 10MP? 35MP? I mean, those meant nothing when you try to replicate something accurately. Of course we are not talking about armchair analysts like yourself and myself. What I am talking is reverse engineering and it needed accuracy, especially when it come to stealth department (every angle and millimeter counted).
I mean, look at something as simple as an iphone... if you do not have one on hand, by looking at 'high resolution' photos, can you make one that is exactly the same... even only outlook appearance, taken that I gave you a tolerance of 5mm (which is impossibly large for something that small). I doubt anyone could do it... it is just not that simple.
Same to China's J-20. I doubt with all the 'high resolution' photos out there, the US could duplicate an exact replica of the J-20 from those photos and get very very accurate results out of the replica.
And I am not talking about reverse engineering. Reversing the physical external geometry of an object through pictures is not that hard. When done on a computer, you furthermore have the ability to modify parameters based on new information, and present a range of possible solutions in the event that you have concerns of accuracy. The ability to make accurate simulations is simply enhanced because of the quick and powerful iterative capabilities of computing. Furthermore, it's not like any simulations done with the F-22 geometry would be done without knowledge of how to minimize radar reflections. You could simply take that knowledge based on best practices, and apply it to the simulation for a best case scenario. This isn't a caveman studying a car.
And yes, with the right amount of resources in fact you can create a replica of the iphone. In fact, with the right resources and access to the right parts I could make a 100% copy of it by studying all the pictures of its internal parts etc etc, not that that would be remotely practical. What I'm suggesting however is nowhere near that complex. You don't need to know 100% of the F-22 to simulate its RCS performance. You just need to account for all the most important factors that affect RCS.
) that is whole another ball game and I won't comment on that .
