J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII

latenlazy said:

In general there’s nothing wrong with sharing rumors and online chatter. The question is over how the information is presented. If you’re going to claim something is proven or conclusive, adequate support and evidence should be given to back the strength of that claim. Note, when J-20 production was claimed to be at 48+ a year we actually didn’t take the claim as fact. Instead we had a prolonged discussion here about how plausible that claim was and what kind of hard evidence we’d need to see validate the claim. The decisive factor that built consensus belief in the claim was not any particular individual or social media account or confirmation bias, but a photo showing us batch serials that could only be consistent with a production rate of at least 48 a year.

Sharing a discussion on Weibo, even one filled with speculation, is itself not a problematic thing to do. What becomes problematic is when you claim that the speculation is a confirmation of fact and when asked for evidence sufficient to back that conclusion you get defensive and shifty rather than just show the piece the evidence you think gives you certainty. Usually if a piece of evidence is strong enough you should be comfortable letting the evidence speak for itself. But you can’t expect people to believe you by default just because you can point to an account that RTs or is tagged in some kind of speculation. The issue people are taking here is really not about the Weibo post, but your justification for believing it’s strong confirmation for the claims within.

I do think that some of the criticisms against your claims can take a less hostile attitude, but because this forum *is* often used as a primary source to inform general public knowledge about the PLA you should expect that claims of a speculative nature will be vetted quite vigorously, and sometimes harshly. Everyone here can believe what they want, but for the sake of accuracy any claims without sufficiently hard evidence is going to be publicly scrutinized and tested with reasons for why we shouldn’t believe the claim too readily, just for the sake of establishing proper and transparent comprehension for how strong in terms of evidentiary standards a piece of information actually is. In my view, the point here is ultimately not about reputation, but evidentiary standard.

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Did the word "allegedly" somehow not clear enough to be understood by you lot?

No one in this forum could present an absolute evidence to back up their claim, no one. It's all speculative at best, and what the PLA wanted you to believe as truth.

Heck, even Minnie Chen was right about the production of J20 which was quickly dismissed based on her previous rep, again, confirmation bias.

Double standard is not going to work anywhere, you either impose this clear cut evidence-based discussion norms from now on, or we go back to usual.

minusone said:

Did the word "allegedly" somehow not clear enough to be understood by you lot?

No one in this forum could present an absolute evidence to back up their claim, no one. It's all speculative at best, and what the PLA wanted you to belief as truth.

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From what I can tell, people weren’t fighting with you about the “allegedly” comment. The image you shared didn’t say outright what you claimed it did, even if just “alleged”, and when inquired about that you referred to some other content, but when people asked you to share that other content you became combative and avoidant.

minusone said:

What is there to defend? You either believe or move along. Why make it a big fuss about me? Time will tell who's right.

Is that how SDF operate? No one presented an ounce of truth when they claim CAC annual production rate of j20 is at ~48. Yall just accept via confirmation bias. And the leak of j10c export to Pakistan was rejected outright by SDF as if they were PLAAF spokeperson. Tone down the arrogance, when it comes to fact and latest update on PLA, this forum hardly ever broke any news ahead of the official.

Seriously, stick to highschool RCS simulation on J20.

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Don't worry, this isn't about you.

If this was anyone else making the same post in the same manner you did, providing the same additional back up as you did, we would all be asking them to give additional clarity in the same way.


There is a method in which rumours and indicators are processed.
Your screenshot simply didn't jive with your writeup even if it was used as "allegedly". Simple as that, and we want to know what you're actually basing it on and why you are sufficiently confident in it to post it.

minusone said:

Did the word "allegedly" somehow not clear enough to be understood by you lot?

No one in this forum could present an absolute evidence to back up their claim, no one. It's all speculative at best, and what the PLA wanted you to believe as truth.

Heck, even Minnie Chen was right about the production of J20 which was quickly dismissed based on her previous rep, again, confirmation bias.

Double standard is not going to work anywhere, you either impose this clear cut evidence-based discussion norms from now on, or we go back to usual.

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And I don’t remember when the word “alleged” grants people amnesty to claim whatever they want to with no proof to back it up.

To get the facts straight: OP is a CG artist and military enthusiast, he posts 2 images of prototype 2011 with no additional information other than the words “承前启后” which translates roughly to “building on the past and opening the future” (if there are any doubts, he never mentioned WS-15 in his post)

One random guy (I checked his Weibo posts, doesn’t seem to be affiliated or anything) in the comments asks if it’s the ws-15 test bed and another random guy (also checked) thinks it’s quite likely this is the case.

Of the 7 people who retweeted the OP, 4 (including Angadow and Oneninety, both at least partly credible from history) said absolutely nothing, one had a thumb up emoji. One person (ID: 接地螺旋）did say “patiently waiting for WS-15” along with the retweet, but afiak he historically hasn’t been a source for leaks and his posting history suggests not much more. Just a regular guy interested in aviation and Air Force to the extent of what I can see. The last of the 7 retweeted his retweet with “patiently waiting for WS-15”. When checking this account, it has very little other than tons of retweets all with sexy plane pics. Good if you want said sexy plane pics, bad for using as a source for WS-15 development.

There, those are the facts accompanying that original tweet, and if I may be so bold, cataloguing these info and presenting them together with the post and the claim should be the job of whoever makes the claim, this is like constructive discussion 101.

Now, where in all this is any shred of proof to make you claim that this “allegedly” is a WS-15 testbed?

minusone said:

Did the word "allegedly" somehow not clear enough to be understood by you lot?

No one in this forum could present an absolute evidence to back up their claim, no one. It's all speculative at best, and what the PLA wanted you to believe as truth.

Heck, even Minnie Chen was right about the production of J20 which was quickly dismissed based on her previous rep, again, confirmation bias.


Double standard is not going to work anywhere, you either impose this clear cut evidence-based discussion norms from now on, or we go back to usual.

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The most reputable member here are *very* clear about establishing a healthy level of uncertainty and laying out reason why they hold their varying levels of certainty for any particular bit of information we encounter. If we take some source as incontrovertibly factual it’s often because they have a *very* high batting average (like 80-90% of the things they say will happen end up panning out) and when things don’t turn out the way they say often times there’s some verifiable reason that they can give for why things turned out different, and other information they share following some change in conditions still retains a very high batting average and is consistent with those earlier changes in condition. Minnie Chan gets laughed at here because she has an extremely poor batting average. It’s not the case that everything she reports is wrong but most of the things she does report are *so* inaccurate that they’re provably so with even a basic google search, and most of the things that are right are things that are confirmable through other sources and have nothing to do with her own reporting prowess. Dismissal of her reporting isn’t “confirmation bias”. It’s being judicious about sourcing.

There is no double standard here because the standard is about *how* you convey and frame evidence, not about declaring absolute authority through some piece of information. You seem very fixated on using information to stake out personal credibility and authority, but truth doesn’t care about authority, and the best work done in this forum is not about collecting authority but distilling *truth*. What we really prize here is the ability to put clear uncertainty bars with grounded and well founded arguments around the information we collect to get us closer to a complete picture of the PLA. Even the best sources aren’t sacred. There have been more than one occasion where sources we’ve deemed to be very reliable have made claims we’ve found to be suspect, and have had to work through their believability. We are basically treating the claims you’re presenting as consistently as we’ve treated any other. If the evidence is inherently strong of course there will be less vetting than if the evidence is a lot more piecemeal and fuzzy, and he said she said kinds of evidence are inherently going to be more piecemeal and fuzzy unless it’s from someone who has a record of making very specific claims and being right almost all the time.

latenlazy said:

The most reputable member here are *very* clear about establishing a healthy level of uncertainty and laying out reason why they hold their varying levels of certainty for any particular bit of information we encounter. If we take some source as incontrovertibly factual it’s often because they have a *very* high batting average (like 80-90% of the things they say will happen end up panning out) and when things don’t turn out the way they say often times there’s some verifiable reason that they can give for why things turned out different, and other information they share following some change in conditions still retains a very high batting average and is consistent with those earlier changes in condition. Minnie Chan gets laughed at here because she has an extremely poor batting average. It’s not the case that everything she reports is wrong but most of the things she does report are *so* inaccurate that they’re provably so with even a basic google search, and most of the things that are right are things that are confirmable through other sources and have nothing to do with her own reporting prowess. Dismissal of her reporting isn’t “confirmation bias”. It’s being judicious about sourcing.

There is no double standard here because the standard is about *how* you convey and frame evidence, not about declaring absolute authority through some piece of information. You seem very fixated on using information to stake out personal credibility and authority, but truth doesn’t care about authority, and the best work done in this forum is not about collecting authority but distilling *truth*. What we really prize here is the ability to put clear uncertainty bars with grounded and well founded arguments around the information we collect to get us closer to a complete picture of the PLA. Even the best sources aren’t sacred. There have been more than one occasion where sources we’ve deemed to be very reliable have made claims we’ve found to be suspect, and have had to work through their believability. We are basically treating the claims you’re presenting as consistently as we’ve treated any other. If the evidence is inherently strong of course there will be less vetting than if the evidence is a lot more piecemeal and fuzzy, and he said she said kinds of evidence are inherently going to be more piecemeal and fuzzy unless it’s from someone who has a record of making very specific claims and being right almost all the time.

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Again, "allegedly". Just accept your mistake, and stop trying to justify it by framing my post. I have never once claim it as absolute fact.

minusone said:

Again, "allegedly". Just accept your mistake, and stop trying to justify it by framing my post. I have never once claim it as absolute fact.

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I’ll accept my “mistake” if you accept yours . People aren’t hounding you because you claimed something to be absolute fact, but because you misrepresented the information content of something you shared and then became combative when people asked you if you had better evidence. Like, did you really need to be going around accusing people of double standards and confirmation bias just because they didn’t think your evidence supported your claims? That kind of behavior might just lead people to think that you don’t actually feel the claim you presented was “alleged”. Humility is an important part of seeking truth.

minusone said:

I stopped reading at "oneninety only retweeted once". Nah, you don't deserve anything. Stay ignorance and uninformed.

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It was you who claimed that the CG artist (四川地产界高层-军事画匠) provided the "clearest pic of ws-15", so why are you being so evasive when I and others asked you for a link to the said image? It shouldn't be a hardship to be able to back up something as basic as this, unless, of course, you either mis-remembered or spoke an untruth. So which is it?

Does anyone know what those needle-like protrusions on the outer ends of the trailing edges of the canards and main wing are? You can see them in this video of the J-20 taxiing.
I've looked for similar structures on the F-22 but couldn't find any.

ZeEa5KPul said:

Does anyone know what those needle-like protrusions on the outer ends of the trailing edges of the canards and main wing are? You can see them in this video of the J-20 taxiing.

I've looked for similar structures on the F-22 but couldn't find any.

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Probably this: