Your problem is that you're not working in the hard sciences, or even the soft sciences. You're working in intelligence analysis, where the certainty of the basic evidence is far more questionable, with key details being classified, and entities deliberately spouting misinformation. This is ultimately an art, not a science.
From a soft sciences point of view, your problem is that you're willing to reject evidence out of hand, instead of actually going through the process of evaluation, and what's more, you're not willing to float multiple hypotheses and understand that there is more than one way to interpret a piece of evidence.
As I've said before, Gongke101's posting is not "loose", it's ambiguous. In my experience, when people are discussing or leaking secret materials, they are liable to be ambiguous, especially when they should not be talking about the matter. And if they are deliberately leaking, as a matter of communications, they are going to be ambiguous so they are not going to be held liable for the leaks, or if the leaks turn out to be wrong, they have a Cover-My-Ass (TM).
Most importantly, your tone is just wrong. The thing is, when handling intelligence materials, there is no right or wrong. It's all probabilistic; that is, one hypothesis is more likely to be true than another. For instance, there is a very slight possibility, to the level of conspiracy theory, that the J-20 is just a flying mock-up, i.e, we've never seen the J-20 actually fire weapons, while the stealth shaping could exist, but the Chinese, in order to save costs, ended up building the J-20 without RAM or actual AESA because we've never seen one mounted onto the nose of the J-20. I'm not saying that this is true, but this is not a hypothesis excluded by the evidence provided. It is just a highly unlikely one.
On the other hand, there is something called the most parsimonious hypothesis; i.e, the scenario most probable with the evidence provided. In this scenario, the J-20, to appearances, is not agile with its WS-10s or AL-31s, given the leaked maneuvering videos. Of the WS-15, we can't actually confirm anything because all we have to stand on are rumors concerning a black project.
Less parsimoniously, however, we have statements in the Chinese press, which could be treated as disinformation, or Chinese propaganda, that the J-20 is reasonably maneuverable (F-16 level), which could also be in reference not to the basic J-20 currently in the air, but with WS-15 upgrades (we know the claims are based on training simulators), and that the WS-15 is seeing appreciable progress.
On an even less parsimonious level, we have Gongke and official leaks; i.e, people end up making ambiguous statements they should not be making, authentic-looking research documents get reposted online, etc. Some of these sources are highly interpreted, for instance, vincent and others are saying that Gongke said "in the next three years, we won't see the entirety of the WS-15 engine", when 最近 maps both to recently and soon.
Others, on the other hand, exist only by implication; for instance, when we first had the Chinese AESA with 450 km detection vs 0 dBsm docs leaked, there was no way to know whether the actual radar performance of the aircraft would meet specifications; this was only a research paper, not necessarily review of a well-tested combat radar. This was only semi-confirmed when CCTV itself claimed that the J-11 AESA could hit 450 km.
And on final level, we can assume that the WS-15 is almost ready for flight testing. This relies on only two things right now; one, a specific interpretation of Gongke's statements regarding the WS-15 engine, and a claim in CCTV that a "next-generation engine" is being tested on the J-10B with TVC and will eventually be tested on the J-20. This last statement is ultimately only a hypothesis, but you can't simply go around saying "it's wrong" or "you're listening to bullcrap / mistranslating Chinese text" etc. It's a hypothesis that needs additional evidence to either prove or disprove, and while it's not on the most parsimonious level, neither is your agile J-20. Let's see what happens at Zhuhai and on the next 1-11.
From a soft sciences point of view, your problem is that you're willing to reject evidence out of hand, instead of actually going through the process of evaluation, and what's more, you're not willing to float multiple hypotheses and understand that there is more than one way to interpret a piece of evidence.
As I've said before, Gongke101's posting is not "loose", it's ambiguous. In my experience, when people are discussing or leaking secret materials, they are liable to be ambiguous, especially when they should not be talking about the matter. And if they are deliberately leaking, as a matter of communications, they are going to be ambiguous so they are not going to be held liable for the leaks, or if the leaks turn out to be wrong, they have a Cover-My-Ass (TM).
Most importantly, your tone is just wrong. The thing is, when handling intelligence materials, there is no right or wrong. It's all probabilistic; that is, one hypothesis is more likely to be true than another. For instance, there is a very slight possibility, to the level of conspiracy theory, that the J-20 is just a flying mock-up, i.e, we've never seen the J-20 actually fire weapons, while the stealth shaping could exist, but the Chinese, in order to save costs, ended up building the J-20 without RAM or actual AESA because we've never seen one mounted onto the nose of the J-20. I'm not saying that this is true, but this is not a hypothesis excluded by the evidence provided. It is just a highly unlikely one.
On the other hand, there is something called the most parsimonious hypothesis; i.e, the scenario most probable with the evidence provided. In this scenario, the J-20, to appearances, is not agile with its WS-10s or AL-31s, given the leaked maneuvering videos. Of the WS-15, we can't actually confirm anything because all we have to stand on are rumors concerning a black project.
Less parsimoniously, however, we have statements in the Chinese press, which could be treated as disinformation, or Chinese propaganda, that the J-20 is reasonably maneuverable (F-16 level), which could also be in reference not to the basic J-20 currently in the air, but with WS-15 upgrades (we know the claims are based on training simulators), and that the WS-15 is seeing appreciable progress.
On an even less parsimonious level, we have Gongke and official leaks; i.e, people end up making ambiguous statements they should not be making, authentic-looking research documents get reposted online, etc. Some of these sources are highly interpreted, for instance, vincent and others are saying that Gongke said "in the next three years, we won't see the entirety of the WS-15 engine", when 最近 maps both to recently and soon.
Others, on the other hand, exist only by implication; for instance, when we first had the Chinese AESA with 450 km detection vs 0 dBsm docs leaked, there was no way to know whether the actual radar performance of the aircraft would meet specifications; this was only a research paper, not necessarily review of a well-tested combat radar. This was only semi-confirmed when CCTV itself claimed that the J-11 AESA could hit 450 km.
And on final level, we can assume that the WS-15 is almost ready for flight testing. This relies on only two things right now; one, a specific interpretation of Gongke's statements regarding the WS-15 engine, and a claim in CCTV that a "next-generation engine" is being tested on the J-10B with TVC and will eventually be tested on the J-20. This last statement is ultimately only a hypothesis, but you can't simply go around saying "it's wrong" or "you're listening to bullcrap / mistranslating Chinese text" etc. It's a hypothesis that needs additional evidence to either prove or disprove, and while it's not on the most parsimonious level, neither is your agile J-20. Let's see what happens at Zhuhai and on the next 1-11.
