J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VI

[Deino]

...; it's probably not flyable. ....

Did you ever consider it a flyable model??

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

It’s a cultural thing. Recall for example the poem we got about an engine with the codename “Mt. Everest”. A few days later we get pictures of a celebration banner for an event related to an engine code named “Mt. Everest.” It’s one way to be cryptic about information in Chinese.

Before the Invasion of Normandy Leonard Dawe a British school master and part time crossword puzzle maker, released a number of crossword puzzles to the Daily Telegraph that had the words Utah, Omaha, Neptune, Mulberry and Overloard.
It was pure coincidence.

You're not new to PLA watching, you must know how the grapevine works.

I don't put a lot of faith in the grapevine.
Because 1) it's easily manipulated.
2) by this point if the powers that be don't know about it they have to be complete idiots.

I highly doubt possibility 2, seeing as a poorly made physically inaccurate mock up doesn’t work too well if your objective is realistic training

Doesn't need to be exact if it's meant to be seen from a satellite. Or in a movie. Or as a bombing target.

The article insinuates that the US stole it Firefox style.

We must be talking about a different story the article debunks it.
As I said before if the US had an actual J20 it wouldn't be in Hilton head. The Hilton head Sahvanah airport is a civilian airport. I have been there.
It's an international airport with an Air national guard station. Puting it there is like parking it on the Whitehouse lawn.
In the past the USAF has and is suspected today of having Gotten Migs and Sukhoi fighters. When that happened they were sent not to a busy civilian accessible location to to the desert of Navada and parked and flown first at Area 51 then at Tonohpa. Both far away from civilian population and in restricted airspace.
The article is meant to debunk when some idiot Netizen posts it on Facebook as proof of a J20 in the US.

Easy way to tell it's a fake, the actual J-20 has pronounced curves on its main body trailing to its rear, probably for aerodynamic effects.

Most likely outcome is that this is either an American knock-off built from hacked plans, an American vis-mod of an existing aircraft (then which one is it? an F-15? An F-18?), or a plain model.

2 seems most likely, considering that it looks as though the aircraft is operable.

It's likely not flyable in any way shape or form. When the US does Aggressor training they fly aircraft that have characteristics but don't look exactly alike.
The main aggressor fighter is the F16 with FA18 to a smaller extent and F5.
It's grounded. Wherever its job it's grounded. And my money is Tom Cruise will climb in it.

Did you ever consider it a flyable model??

I know that's beyond a stretch. There have been some heavily modified helicopters made to look like Hind D but a 1:1 fighter? It would be easier to modify an F16 with Cannards and a DSI to play J10 and a Eurofighter to play J20. Or pull a couple Raptors.

It's not unheard of for the DOD and military contractor forms to build 1:1 mockups to test radar returns. There was a whole documentary on Northrop Grumman doing that for the Horton flying wing. I suspect that the USAF and USN have programmed virtual models of the J20 iterations and SU57 in a classified computer somewhere used to test flight characteristics and radar return
that seems somewhat lack luster for that. What this is is likely intended to sit in the background or get a walk around by some smooth haired actor wearing a flight suit with a snazzy Handle that thinks a barrel roll is spinning the aircraft like Anakin Skywalker.

 

[MwRYum]

The difference is that the poems and cartoon drawings directly reflect actual developments.

Whereas this "J-20" is obviously not a real aircraft even on a cursory glance. There's nothing wrong with speculating a bit about what a model J-20 (and a poorly made model at that) is doing in the US, but the amount of work they did to even ascertain if it could've been a real aircraft is bewildering.

Thing is, DoD and USAF themselves had repeatedly claimed the J-20 is no match against the superiority of F-22 and F-35, and there they are, actually bothered to go through all that trouble to put together an unknown-scale mockup model for visual-ID recognition training (the most likely use for one) purpose.

 

[AssassinsMace]

Producing a mock up is not newsworthy. So why write such an article that brings up the question of its origin unless to insinuate the US was clever enough to steal it from China. So it's a saving face measure when it's just revealed to be something not newsworthy. Again when we see mock ups of Western aircraft in China, it's seen as China stealing superior Western designs for themselves. Now we're seeing the reverse happening so what would be the conclusion from those that see no other conclusion other than China stealing from the US? It would be like everything else where China is seen as challenging US/Western position in this world. So to save face what would the excuse be to counter all those insecurities? The US was so skilled and genius enough to steal it from China and China couldn't do anything about it. It's no different from some who believe there are Sea Wolf submarines frequently molesting Chinese waters because Sea Wolves are that good. Or how about believing The US bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia intentionally committing an act of war rather than it was just an accident? So it's not hard to believe someone would question the origin for something not newsworthy unless they want to believe it was boldly stolen by Americans from China. They don't see the conclusion that would only happen if the US saw the J-20 as a superior aircraft worthy enough to risk war stealing it out of China. People don't think just to save their ego.

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

Producing a mock up is not newsworthy. So why write such an article that brings up the question of its origin

First the Aviationist is a blog. With modern asymmetric media of Blogs and such smaller reports get more air.
Second tell me that after looking back over every time some one posted an image of something they are on the Highways of China. Remember the Apache on a truck on a Chinese highway?
Yeah. It got blogged.
Third because it's curious. If you are an aviation-phile it's clickable.
There is a whole subculture of people who are interested in that kinda thing. We should know we are part of it.
The rest is just spin.
The facility it was spotted at is a civilian airport. Again why would something like that be there and not Edwards or Nelis?
The best answer though is viral marketing It also should be apparent that unlike the B grade movies of the 50-90s you can't getaway with taking stockfootage or using easy to get aircraft to splice movies together.
The "Mig 28" doesn't hold up anymore. And having been blasted with CGI for decades now we can tell when CGI is what we are seeing.
There are web sites devoted to hunting down 1:1 TV and movie production models and props.

 

[latenlazy]

QUOTE="TerraN_EmpirE, post: 534980, member: 40"]Before the Invasion of Normandy Leonard Dawe a British school master and part time crossword puzzle maker, released a number of crossword puzzles to the Daily Telegraph that had the words Utah, Omaha, Neptune, Mulberry and Overloard.
It was pure coincidence.[/QUOTE]

Are we talking about the British Invasion of Normandy? No. The poem I used as an example was followed up with some concrete evidence, in a place where we frequently get valid information leaks that come in lots of other esoteric forms. We’re not taking poetry as valid because it’s poetry. We’re examining validity based on information content. Format of information is not a disqualifying characteristic.

Doesn't need to be exact if it's meant to be seen from a satellite. Or in a movie. Or as a bombing target.

Sure, but the utility of an inaccurate mock-up is limited.

I don't put a lot of faith in the grapevine.
Because 1) it's easily manipulated.
2) by this point if the powers that be don't know about it they have to be complete idiots.

That the grapevine *can* be manipulated doesn’t mean information gathered from it is inherently invalid, or that all or most of it actually *is* manipulated, or that even when information is being manipulated it is inherently untrue and has no informative value. Regardless of whether you put your faith in the grapevine or not most of what we know about the PLA’s modernization in the last decade plus has comes out of it, and so far it’s worked quite well. The record here speaks for itself. Of course rigor and judiciousness should always be exercised when reading these sources, but that doesn’t they’re fundamentally unreliable. If you have a better source or method for getting information on developments in PLA modernization though I (and I think most of us) would gladly welcome hearing about it.

The powers that be almost certainly know about the grapevine. That doesn’t mean all information from it is somehow compromised or invalid.

Thing is, DoD and USAF themselves had repeatedly claimed the J-20 is no match against the superiority of F-22 and F-35, and there they are, actually bothered to go through all that trouble to put together an unknown-scale mockup model for visual-ID recognition training (the most likely use for one) purpose.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We still don’t know who made this model or what it’s for yet.

 

[Air Force Brat]

The article insinuates that the US stole it Firefox style. Why steal it risking WWIII unless the J-20 was a superior stealth fighter to anything the US or anyone else in the world has hence why they would? They wouldn't be stealing an inferior aircraft... When you see mockups of Western fighters in China, the automatic assumption is China is stealing great American designs for themselves. The fact is someone bothered to make a mockup either because they admire the J-20 or they see it as enough a threat to make a mockup in order to analyze it. That offended someone for them to turn lemons into lemonade and suggest it was stolen from China in order to save face.

Anybody watch the TV show MacGyver? They had an episode where the characters wanted to extort a Russian arms dealer by threatening to tell the Chinese he stole one of only two J-20s China had. Life imitates kindergarten art.

OH Good Grief Mace, he did NOT insinuate something that stupid! its just bizarre to see a scale of a Chinese fighter of any type,, who knows why it was there,,, and believe it or not, there are people here very interested in knowing more about the J-20 because they are aviators or aviation enthusiasts?

What do you think would happen if we parked a realistic full scale of an F-35 in front of Chengdu??? think people would shut up about that, the Chinese internet would be a sheet of flame!!!

the author went to the trouble to ask Deino?? because people know that Deino will give them the straight story, that's all he wanted, "What the Hell is that??"

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

Are we talking about the British Invasion of Normandy? No. The poem I used as an example was followed up with some concrete evidence, in a place where we frequently get valid information leaks that come in lots of other esoteric forms. We’re not taking poetry as valid because it’s poetry. We’re examining validity based on information content. Format of information is not a disqualifying characteristic.

esoteric.. that's putting it mildly.
Oh the cartoon has a red helmet that must mean something ...

No we were talking about a mock up I the US. That was investigated by a blogger.

Christ, they spent way too much effort analysing a paper mache mockup

Why was it there? Some are drawing up some kind of conspiracy theory to somehow convince the world or at least the US that they had pulled off a theft ripped right out of a 1977 Novel?
You attack it as a model. And it is. Congrats.
I was simply pointing out the hypocrisy of claiming that a blog debunking a photo is somehow more of a waste of time that spending days studying the details of a characture style drawing for some hidden mystical truth.
Ohhh.. the pilot has a red helmet perhaps this means such and such. Or maybe the artists likes the color red.
And let's not even get on to Poems and quatranes.
You spend So much time chasing your own tail looking at the poem and looking for code words and phrases that it gets beyond silly.
Give me a model built by the maker. Give me a photo.
Drawing I place less faith in that Photoshop and fan art.

 

[latenlazy]

esoteric.. that's putting it mildly.
Oh the cartoon has a red helmet that must mean something ...

If an esoteric source ends up being accurate, then it is accurate. How esoteric it is has no bearing on its accuracy. What has bearing on accuracy is confirmatory evidence and history of reliability. That people overread a source of information doesn’t make the source of information itself invalid. That’s a problem with the reader, not the source. I mentioned rigor and judiciousness for a reason.

I do find it notable that you seem pretty sore about people going to lengths to overread meaning into trivial things like red helmets in a cartoon but you seem rather defensive about an article that basically exhibits the exact same tendencies.

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

but you seem rather defensive about an article that basically exhibits the exact same tendencies.

The report was a debunking as such it depended on details to prove 1) the where. And when.
2) the what.
Doodles don't have solid details other than whatever the artist chooses or has chosen to include. That may result in details or it could be chasing tail.
The Article was a debunking. IE proving it's a fake. Yet it's. Getting attack for taking lengths to cover bases.