If you would excuse me, it takes time to reply - since I don't just reply to you only, there are many other posters in this forum than you.
Now, what I was trying to point out is - experience matters. It certainly doesn't mean China can't catch up, but from a historical point of view, China wasn't able to indigenous design a high performance engine, because IT HAS NO EXPERIENCE. This has plague China for how long now? over 50 years??
Experience and capability are not pure functions of each other. In fact, technological capability (which is what we're really talking about), is determined by several other factors that carry far more weight than experience. Furthermore, the lack of "experience" does not deterministically imply incapability. You're tying your assessment of a country's overall technological capacity to your assessment of the airframe, which is fallacious. The only direct determinant of the airframe's performance is its physical properties and not what you think of its country's technological capabilities. This is something you are not an expert on, and using what you think of a country's capabilities to fill in the gaps in knowledge is fallacious.
To show how faulty and inconsistent that logic is, we can use the Space Race. The US thought that the USSR was technologically inferior and couldn't possibly beat the US into space. Then the USSR launched Sputnik. Then, if you continue to apply that logic, because the USSR had more experience with space travel, the US couldn't possibly build a better platform on their first go.
So, forget about something as complex as stealth aircraft. With China who still languishing in development hell of completely designing and putting together a fighter - can you understand my skepticism?
Are you skeptical that South Korea is now one of the most developed countries in the world even though it was still backwards before 1954? Are you skeptical that China only took 40 years to become the 2nd largest economy in the world despite the fact that it was a mess for 140 years prior? That's the kind of faulty conclusions your logic allows for.
Your skepticism is meaningless if it's not logically consistent. It is also not meaningless if it's not logically balanced. I could match your skepticism that China has no experience with my skepticism that the US is in decline, but I don't because it's a piss poor thing to base an argument on.
The fact of the matter is despite your skepticism China has assembled a stealth platform which meets its design requirements, which in turn only makes sense if it helps China against the US (because that is the only significant security rival it has in the region). Unless you know more about how to measure RCS, your skepticism and attempts to use arguments unrelated to the physics of stealth shaping is meaningless in assessing just how stealthy the J-20 is.
Again, even for a technological advanced country like USA with massive infrastructural/technological/talent base, it takes them decades to come to this singular point of achievement. Even Russia has to abandon the failed stealth project at least once. And here is China who can't even master engine comes along and believe it can design the complete stealth package.
Russia failed because it didn't have money. The fact that China doesn't have a strong a grasp on one technology is a fallacious way to claim that it doesn't have a grasp on any technology. Different technologies are discrete from each other, and therefore how far along a country is in one technology is not an indication of its progress in another. (Otherwise comparative advantages wouldn't exist). To put it short, this is a
No, of course J-20 doesn't have to as stealthy as F-22 or PAK-FA to be comparable. If its subsystem and weapons are superior, it could be comparable. So, let's say J-20 can detect F-22 or PAK-FA and fire its BVR missiles before F-22 or PAK-FA can. Now, this argument - let me just ask you one question. Have you ever heard of ANY weapon system in Chinese inventory that's superior to Russian or American example in same category???
WELL???
Chinese submarines.
In any case, just because you don't think they can doesn't mean they can't, or that they won't come up with these systems eventually. The fact that we are seeing a stealth platform indicates that what they don't have they're quickly acquiring. The fact of the matter is we have only corollary hints as to how far along China is with its avionics technology. However, I will point out that China has a much better semiconductor and computing industry than Russia does, and modern avionics is heavily dependent on that.
