J-20... The New Generation Fighter

Some people are saying that the weather wont be suitable for flight testing until next Tueday at the earliest

AssassinsMace said:

People are already declaring failure of the whole program. Is this like when one of China's satellite's malfunctioned a couple years back it was declared a disaster in confidence for all future Chinese satellite launches. Last year they just broke a record for satellite launches. Like it ends here based on speculation on an unofficially announced schedule. Dream on.

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They could have just said it wasnt going to happen, instead of letting people get their hopes up

terrorhunter said:

they should have declared failure of the F-35 programme and DDX programme centuries ago then haha. bunch of hypocrites

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There's so much being reported on problems with the F-22 and F-35 that if it were the other way around, what would they be saying?

Perhaps they have done away with first flight ceremony. In place of it will be the-beginning-of-flight-testing ceremony that doesn't really involve seeing the prototype doing first flight. That's why we see 2 prototypes on the tarmac. Why would anyone take more risk by flying 2 prototypes at one go?

(A counter argument would be the two already have their first flights before this, but that's again another speculation.)

bladerunner said:

They could have just said it wasnt going to happen, instead of letting people get their hopes up

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Since when was this official?

GreenestGDP said:

My 3 cents ... ...

Perhaps, there is political angle on the delay of J-20 flight.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is visiting China next week.
Secretary Gates has been very nice and not belligerent toward China.

China collective Central Leaderships respect Mr. Gates and feel there is no need to embarrass Mr. Gates at all.
Thus, the public show of force of flying J-20 was postponed until Mr. Gates departs from China.


Too bad the incompetent idiotic lowlife Rumsfeld and his thugs are no longer managing Pentagon.
Flying J-20 in front of Rumsfeldese face and challenging him would make plenty of people around the world happy.

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Perhaps not. The series of massive military exercises US pulled against China late last year means all bets are off. China need to have something to show the US that they ain't got no cards in their deck. Test flight and proving J-20 ain't stage prop or PS work would send a message, damp down the "American's arrogance", in a way.

Besides, after the last year's election the congress is already not as friendly against China, and so goes the Administration, play nice won't get US to loosen up on China anyway, test it this week or after next Wednesday (after SecDef off to next stop, Japan) makes little to no difference to the situation.

And as everyone comes to know, Chinese authority is purposely letting the J-20 fervor brew, unlike anything they did before, if they don't strike the iron while it's hot it'd be completely half-arse job. In short, play to this point of the game if J-20 won't fly it'd likely backfire on the PR front, not just CAC or PLAAF, but perhaps China as well... of course, it's perfectly reasonable that things hit a snag due to technical difficulty (it'd hurt even more if push forward despite better judgment) and no flying just yet.

Unless it was a premature "leak" that cause it cook up far too early.

AssassinsMace said:

Since when was this official?

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You mean to say that the politicians/officials weren't aware of national and world wide speculation on the posibility of a test flight, after the first photos were published? LOL The Forums and BB were full of it.

rhino123 said:

True. But facts is, the chinese never officially claim that they will fly the plane today. And they also do not need to heed whatever other third party country's claim and expectation. Afterall this is China's project and the chinese can do whatever they want with their project. Heck... they might even fly the plane once everyone was out of sight.

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Indeed. Up to now Chinese government claimed nothing and denied nothing, if you want anything close to official line, it'd be the only one news forum section on CCTV channel 13, and it's like "those outside said we have something like that" and "it'd a necessity to have that to face the future battlefield".

bladerunner said:

You mean to say that the politicians/officials weren't aware of national and world wide speculation on the posibility of a test flight, after the first photos were published? LOL The Forums and BB were full of it.

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I'm sure they know what's going on but since when did they tell you? The government has officially announced nothing. Nothing has happened and so that's considered failure? You didn't even have a crash to see and now all of the sudden it's doom and gloom. You don't know what's going on except speculation. What about the specualtion that the J-20 has already flown? Are you going to pick and choose what speculation fits your agenda?

There is no myth about the delay of the maiden flight, the sample reason is: the weather dont allow the maiden flight.

They were planned to have this first flight at today's afternnoon with all bosses come here, and they sealed the road/airports etc, however they cancelled this due to the heavy fog around CAC this afternoon (the weather is OK as of morning today, but turn heaviliy foggy after ~12:00 and they decided to cancel the maiden flight around 1:30PM).The visual range at CAC, according to eye witness, has reduced to only 600-700 meter in the afternoon.

Now even the guys at CAC dont know when to conduct the maiden flight, but basically they get the order to feel free to chose the time to have this maiden flight, whenever conditions are satisified.Judging by the weather conditions in Chengdu, until Jan 11, the weather will be quite cloudy, but who knows, they may decideded to use their weather army to modify the weather a bit.