Simply put, that various public articles and reports didn't write about a fifth-generation fighter coming from China (before 2011) doesn't have anything to do with what US intelligence knew about the program. Since you spent several pages arguing that China doesn't have to reveal things about its military developments, surely you agree that US intelligence doesn't have to comment on them either. That China's intelligence services don't make public comments about secret weapons projects in other countries doesn't mean they don't know about them or are for some reason underestimating them.
I absolutely agree that the US intelligence doesn't have to reveal their hand.
But we've also been talking about what the US has been willing to openly disclose via their declassified information.
The problem is that we enthusiast and amateur PLA watchers have been able to do a better job of predicting the US govt and military declassified reports in almost all major new weapons developments.
So the big problem which arises, is if we can glean so much from so little open source rumours and forum talk, then why does the US govt and military want to preserve their sources and methods? Especially AFTER such rumours have already been released that they could point to instead?
Now, I'll post some sources showing what US intelligence agencies did say publicly about the J-20. If they were underestimating it, you should be able to find similar articles with wrong assessments.
The first is the
article from 1997.
From Richard Fisher's article that you linked, we also know it was described by the ONI as having "a reduced radar signature design". Everything attributed to the ONI here is correct.
LOL ONI could have said "China is developing a next generation fighter which will likely be an aircraft with wings and engines" and everything "attributed to ONI" would be correct.
That Flight Global article which really is quoting ONI, says nothing about XXJ being intended to compete with F-22.
Given the way that ONI wrote that particular part of their report, they could have been referring to a 4+ generation fighter instead. With the benefit of hindsight we are able to say that regardless of what ONI may or may not have known, we knew that XXJ ended up being the J-20, a 5th gen fighter.
But back then, the fact that ONI merely indicated a next generation fighter was under development (merely a few years before J-10 made its maiden flight!!) and not explicitly stating it would be intended to be 5th generation, means we are unable to assume at all that they meant what we now know.
Next.
Second,
in May 2010.
Actually, let's see what Ulman said at that
in full.
Even by the exacting standards of SDF, this is spot on.
That is definitely closer to what we would expect from PLA watching standards, but making such a statement only a year or two before the maiden flight of J-20 is a bit late don't you think?
Considering the rest of the PLA watching community had basically known important everything there was to know about J-XX/J-20 by about 2006/2007.
Third,
in 2009.
So far, I have shown that US intelligence has known about the project since at least 1997, correctly predicted the timelines and was aware of the technological aims and progress. Conversely, the position that US intelligence significantly underestimated the J-20 remains totally unsupported.
You've shown the US intelligence community in 1997 (namely ONI) knew that a next generation fighter was under development in China. The fact that they did not explicitly state such an aircraft would be intended to be 5th generation and rival the F-22 is a massive omission that cannot be used to support the idea that the US had any idea what the then called XXJ would be intended to be capable of.
Only later in the 2000s, did a few members of the US intelligence community explicitly state that China was intending to develop a 5th generation fighter intended to compete with the F-22.
And I would like to add, in my last post I explicitly said that there were individual analysts and commentators who were able to accurately predict the emergence of J-20, and I included a few examples in my own post... however what I also said was this:
But you will be hard pressed to find any official US national govt or military service level reports about the PLA that accurately described the J-20 in the years leading up to its unveiling.
Congressional hearings that quote a few analysts, or reports from a commentator, is unfortunately
insufficient to fulfill that criteria of
national govt or military service level understanding of what the J-XX/J-20 would end up being.
Now, a note on the burden of proof. While I've already stated my view on "proving a negative", there's another issue that needs addressing. That being "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", or that claims that are less likely need more substantiation. One such claim is that US intelligence was vastly wrong about the J-20, or specifically that they knew less about it than posters on SDF.
This is an extraordinary claim because there are large numbers of professionals, across several agencies and departments, whose job it is to gather information on such developments in all available ways. This obviously includes open source, as demonstrated by Fisher and Ulman mentioning blogs, but also things such as hacking and human intelligence. For them to get it vastly wrong means they would have had to totally fail in these attempts or not try at all. For context, we should remember that China repeatedly hacked the US and took "terabytes" of data on the F-35 and other systems. There were also numerous arrests of people accused of stealing classified technology for China. Are we to believe that the US was unable to obtain via hacking any classified documents on the J-20 and unable to compromise even one of the thousands of people working on the J-20 and its subsystems? Obviously, without claims from either side we'll never know if and how much they learned through these means, but it remains extremely unlikely they weren't able to get anything.
In conclusion, my claims are by now well demonstrated.
I describe my position in my previous reply #3417, but I will repeat the relevant part here:
"My belief, is that certain elements or individuals in US intelligence may or may not have had accurate assessments of what J-XX or J-20 may be like (especially closer to 2010), however that such information did not rise up to the service level or govt level of intelligence.
In other words, there may have been some groups or analysts in the US intelligence community who had a semi accurate or even accurate understanding of J-XX/J-20 in the years leading up to 2010, but such information for some reason never made its way up to national level or service level appraisals of Chinese next generation fighter developments."
To me, the definition of getting it "vastly wrong" is the inability to keep their service level and govt reports up to date with
open source PLA watchers who do this as a
hobby and being sometimes
years behind.
In my reply #3403 I already acknowledged that there are individual analysts and commentators who had made more accurate assessments of J-XX/J-20 than what the govt level and service level reports had made.
That has not been a matter of dispute for me.
So in conclusion, how about you show me a govt or service level declassified report where they were able to report on something about J-XX/J-20 that ended up being true, before we already knew about it on the PLA watching grapevine?
