There's a dedicated topic for Ru- flankers in PLAAF service on the forum.
Long story short - while they hurt some feelings, they'll probably stay here for their full service life.
J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII
- Thread starter siegecrossbow
- Start date
- Status
Long story short - while they hurt some feelings, they'll probably stay here for their full service life.
Let's stick to topic shall we?
To commemorate the sixth anniversary of J-20 entering active service (by official press release anyway), it's interesting to note the significant change of the tune of western reporting on J-20. The following report is exhibit A of the change.
It's from Fox News I know, but still pay attention to the quotes and by who; they're pretty representative these days.
The biggest change is that J-20 is no longer to be denigrated as a fifth-generation-stealth-fighter-wannabe with dubious stealth characteristics and inferior engine incapable of super cruising, or a one-trick pony long-range interceptor disguised as an air superiority fighter.
That's quite a change. In fact, a compliment in my view.
There is even implicit recognition that the Chinese have come a long way to equip J-20 with advanced aircraft engine.
Of course, it's not the nature of American and American media to acknowledge China or any other countries' such achievements in a domain where they believe only the US excel and should. Much of the report focuses on how China steals technologies from the US to get where it is today with J-20. This in itself is not terribly new these days. That is, instead of claiming China is innately incapable of innovation merely less than 10 years ago, the more prevailing practice today is accusing China of stealing from the West, particularly from the US. That's a subtle acknowledgement that often Chinese technologies and products are among the world's best. I call it a progress.
But this report goes a step further than simply accusing China of stealing technologies. It effectively indicts Chinese culture for philosophically encouraging stealing.
I'm quite impressed. This professor can even quote the saying ”窃书不算偷“ ("To steal a book is an elegant offense") by the protagonist in the famous satiric novel KongYiJi by author Lu Xun. That's not a saying by Lu Xun, by the way.
In the end, the mood of the entire report can be boiled down to the final paragraph:
It's from Fox News I know, but still pay attention to the quotes and by who; they're pretty representative these days.
The biggest change is that J-20 is no longer to be denigrated as a fifth-generation-stealth-fighter-wannabe with dubious stealth characteristics and inferior engine incapable of super cruising, or a one-trick pony long-range interceptor disguised as an air superiority fighter.
That's quite a change. In fact, a compliment in my view.
There is even implicit recognition that the Chinese have come a long way to equip J-20 with advanced aircraft engine.
Of course, it's not the nature of American and American media to acknowledge China or any other countries' such achievements in a domain where they believe only the US excel and should. Much of the report focuses on how China steals technologies from the US to get where it is today with J-20. This in itself is not terribly new these days. That is, instead of claiming China is innately incapable of innovation merely less than 10 years ago, the more prevailing practice today is accusing China of stealing from the West, particularly from the US. That's a subtle acknowledgement that often Chinese technologies and products are among the world's best. I call it a progress.
But this report goes a step further than simply accusing China of stealing technologies. It effectively indicts Chinese culture for philosophically encouraging stealing.
I'm quite impressed. This professor can even quote the saying ”窃书不算偷“ ("To steal a book is an elegant offense") by the protagonist in the famous satiric novel KongYiJi by author Lu Xun. That's not a saying by Lu Xun, by the way.
In the end, the mood of the entire report can be boiled down to the final paragraph:
I wonder how much of the US natsec and intelligence and defense community genuinely believe most of China's military advancements are an outcome of espionage.
There are some interesting strategic consequences of this if that kind of expectation is truly prevalent (which I somewhat doubt if it is held that strongly tbh)
Well, since China's military advancements are an outcome of espionage, logically the best way to handle it is to strengthen the safeguard against espionage. Clearly this will halt all Chinese advancement, doing it for 20 years should widen China's technological gap to two decades.
Therefore US must wait another 20 years before making a move on China, it is all very logical really. Someone please tell it to the American congress.
I’ve listened to a podcast by guancha folks where Yankeesama stated that China does not use direct espionage to develop new military equipment but the researchers do follow open source information very closely. CAC has a department whose sole purpose was to translate and pick apart foreign articles on aerodynamics.
It's a basic requirement to keep in touch with new development in the field for any kind of research institute worth its name. Only MSM would hype it into IP theft though unfortunate that's also not something mass public know enough to differ.
The core issue with the line of thinking that espionage = inferior is flawed in the first place, your opponent is able to observe what works and what doesn't in your design and is able to avoid the pitfalls that your product is too late in the design cycle to avoid.
Furthermore China remains one of the two countries worldwide able to independently produce a 5th generation stealth fighter plane and also field it in numbers, you can have all the papers and tech in front of you. But you need the manufacturing engineers, metallurgy experts, system engineers and even down to a large force of skilled fabricators that is capable of actually producing the product. For all the noise very few countries can actually do the whole cycle from development to deployment.
But this is getting fairly off topic.
Furthermore China remains one of the two countries worldwide able to independently produce a 5th generation stealth fighter plane and also field it in numbers, you can have all the papers and tech in front of you. But you need the manufacturing engineers, metallurgy experts, system engineers and even down to a large force of skilled fabricators that is capable of actually producing the product. For all the noise very few countries can actually do the whole cycle from development to deployment.
But this is getting fairly off topic.
- Status