What we know for sure about the new Chinese J-20 stealth fighter jet is subject to some debate. We know that, according to claims within the Chinese government, that it was designed to compete directly with the latest in American fighter jet technology: the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Outwardly, its appearance resembles that of the F-22. Internally, the latest advances in Chinese air-combat technology are supposed to make it a formidable opponent for the best of the West’s fighter aircraft. That’s assuming you believe China’s claims. They are, of course, the same nation that produces the Geely GE, which looks exactly like a Rolls Royce on the outside…
…but rides like the $30,000 platform it’s built on.
The Chinese have a long and illustrious history of using spies to skip the research and development phase when developing new technologies, so I can’t help but use a critical eye when reading China’s claims of total air superiority. In July of this year, a U.S. District Judge in Los Angeles sentenced a Chinese spy named Su Bin to 46 months in jail for his hand in a hacker led, Chinese spy ring that included, you guessed it, plans for the F-22 and F-35 platforms.
Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with the Teal Group, believes the new J-20 to be a direct rip off of the F-22 in a number of ways, but with one glaring exception: it’s just not as good, particularly in the stealth department. The glaring difference between the J-20 and the F-22 are the front canards, which are similar to the elevator surfaces usually found on the tail of an aircraft. These surfaces, while making the jet aesthetically different than the American fighter, also severely inhibit the plane’s stealth capabilities.
The Chinese may have had the blueprints for our planes, but they lacked the thorough understanding of stealth technology and the methods that need to be utilized in order to reduce a radar signature from all directions. Based on the design of the craft, Aboulafia suggests that the J-20 would only be stealth from the front, but would otherwise be detectable due to how the radar waves would bounce off of plane’s angled surfaces. “In head-to-head combat, the J-20 would lose in seconds,” Aboulafia went on to claim.
To add insult to knock-off injury, China also has another next generation fighter in production: the J-31, itself a direct aesthetic copy of the F-35. Of course, based on current issues with the original F-35, it might be in China’s best interest to wait it out and steal another copy of the Joint Strike Fighter’s plans once we can keep them in the air.
The United States may not need to be too concerned about China’s new plane, but other nations in the region may. Although the J-20 doesn’t seem to be a technological match for the US, nations like Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam are all generations behind China’s counterfeit-fighter, giving the People’s Republic a distinct advantage in any skirmish that could develop in the area. It is also likely that China will make the J-20 available for sale to its allies in Asia and the Middle East.
If China decides to mass produce the J-20, as they tend to with military aircraft they hope to utilize as well as sell, it could cause issues for the U.S. and allied defenses worldwide. A single J-20 may be no match for our F-22, but ten J-20s would certainly pose a threat. Because China’s production methods are less expensive, and they were able to skip over the costly research phase, China could easily out-produce the United States in terms of fifth generation fighters.
Justin Bronk, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, believes the mass production of J-20s could spell trouble in the future, “They might not be a matchup one-on-one with the F-35 but they may well be able to put far more of them in the sky in the next few years.”
China may not have beat the U.S. with their copy-cat plane, but that doesn’t mean the new fighter doesn’t dramatically increase China’s tactical capabilities. The fighter will provide China with longer range strike capabilities with far larger weapon payloads than ever before available to the communist nation.
The J-20 likely won’t go into mass production until 2018, and until we get a better look at the craft and what it’s capable of, most analysts agree that the best we can do is speculate. One thing is certain, however, regardless of where China got the plans, they just took a major leap in offensive capability. With a number of ongoing territorial disputes with U.S. allied nations in the South China sea, the unveiling of this new fighter must be seen as a bit of indignant posturing toward an already tense region.
Images courtesy of the Associated Press and AutoHome
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Michelle B Remember the US Fighter Pilot caught last year? and no doubt they have others insiders. Cambridge Five and many other example through history. US has one type of weakness same as other Western States open access.
In non-military speak...does that mean they have someone with actual experience teaching them how to fly these things? Maybe it's just American pride talking here, but our pilots go through a ton of training taught by the previous generation of experienced pilots who can teach the subtle nuances. Not saying they can't catch up, just that (I assume) they're still behind the curve, and that getting the bucket of knocked off technology up in the air is only part of the story to becoming a threat in the air.
I have no doubt they have already operational programs and recruitment drive prior to the China Sea mission creep.
Spot on Shooten, Also the backhand deals being done to corner the USA is being ignored by US media. SOFREP is the ears and news of the real world of puppet masters. Mustang Voodoo1 touched base and we are sucked one sided trade deals while destroying our military with cuts.
MAD is awesome, but I wonder if it is still in effect. There was this informal press conference on RT where Putin was saying we destabilized the nuclear balance. He was referring to our missile defense systems. It leaves me wondering what they are refering to. I wonder what the reality of that is. I don't think they mean Patriot missile systems scattered about. Who knows if star wars is for real. Putin talked about how they were ramping up nuke production to counter this imbalance that he attributed to US actions as of the last administration, and the deterioration of relations. At some point it gets so murky that you almost have to invest substantial time to confirm the legitimacy of info out there. One of those issues is the assertion that we have reduced our nuclear weapons unilaterally under the current administration. Also I kept getting chain emails over the years about the outgoing administration's purge of Admirals, and Generals, particularly the ones over our strategic nuclear forces, subs, bombers, missiles. Both seem plausible, but I have not thoroughly researched those assertions, but wonder what that means if true. Certainly it does not jive with what Putin was saying, unless we have effectively or largely countered ICBM threats. I certainly do not want to come off as a total idiot, and jump the shark here, but I keep wondering what missile defense is being referred to. There is a lot of conspiracy about HAARP, chemtrails, and cell towers out there. All crazy stuff. Far fetched stuff that is entertaining, but complete ridiculousness. (I should have better things to do with my time, but the youtube rabbit hole right? When boredom strikes, and I don't have enough mental energy to read non fiction, that conspiracy stuff is like crack rock. It's always like 2-3 degrees of separation away from tuning carburators or whatnot. You can search for lawn care tips, get to glysphosphate being implicated in brain cancer, to monsanto gmo stuff, to transgenic nano particles being sprayed onto you by the illuminati, to miley cyrus is a reptile, and celebrity clones. Then you are like it's 0300... how the heck did I get here, I just wanted eco friendly weed killer, and its like I went on an acid trip, and woke up in the tree house.) Anyways, the thing is the power going to the towers is disproportionate to the stated purpose. The Japanese, the Russians all have HAARP like arrays, and the original HAARP patent acknowledges weather modification, so some of the conspiracy talk is not unwarranted. There was this Thomas Bearden dude, an engineer for the defense establishment that kept talking about scalar electromagnetics, and scalar weapons. Crazy Tesla stuff. I can't make a judgement regarding these technologies, as I am waaay out of my depth, basically physics illiterate, but I always had this curiosity after seeing Bearden's ideas if it is a system for missile defense. I remember a youtube vid from like 6-7 years ago where some German weatherbug kept picking up wierd geometric cloud patterns. He ended up correlating it with aerial spraying. According to him the stuff they release is highly conductive, and supposedly had to do with helping to mask radar signatures for stealth applications. I know it may seem far fetched, and I cannot advance with any technical authority an argument for the above, but I wonder if it is a wierd science missile shield, lol??? Gotta start looking for russian cell towers, and chemtrails next acid trip. I almost feel stupid writing that, but...The only other thing I can think of is like those COIL laser systems, and that Airborne Laser program. It looked like ABL had issues with atmospheric turbulence, but I'm hoping it just went black. Whatever we got there is a media blackout in the West on it. I guess I mention all that not just to projectile vomit insanity, but basically to ask is MAD still in effect? I agree. The EMP thing would probably be the best approach for taking us out. Especially if it is the unattributed cargo ship. It is hard to justify full on retaliation along nuclear lines for that. If successful it would pretty much get rid of us on the world stage. To take us otherwise, non nuclear the Russians, and Chinese would have to do it together. Not to be genocidal, as I don't believe in that stuff, but damn, MacArthur was right. We should have rolled the Chinese up when we had an excuse. So the West is weak right now with this brexit, the euro turning to trash. I mean if we keep seeing more of Greece, then the EU just turns to crap. Germans will be like screw this, no more. I mean everything in the West is stretched thin. Our long term economic prognosis is crap here in the US. Everyone has an endgame, and it's like the West is going for broke, but overextending. Globalism. Make them join us. At some point the dollar is going to go away, and if we are still pressing hard, especially on Russia, that's probably going to be when they plan on taking us. I'm not for them, past the common humanity aspect of things, but we have done too good a job of encircling them. I mean if Canada, and Mexico were communist or strongly aligned against us how would we feel? From the perspective of security, probably pretty uncomfortable. Because of this, not ideology or economic competition, I feel like Russia, and China from their perspective would have every incentive for WW3 if given the chance. The good thing is everyone likes the party. As long as the global economy is functional, it is like a disincentive for major war. I think that will keep the South China Sea thing from being a flashpoint. It's likely saber rattling to keep tension. We are spread thin, resource allocation, where? Plus like all of Asia has been historically violated by either China or Japan. Japan's our little toy poodle, and hence neutralized in terms of posture towards the region, so it's almost like the wary semi cooperation to straight out wariness of the Chinese makes those non aligned Asian countries soft buffer zones. Nobody there likes the Chinese aggression. Everybody there profits from selling us stuff, and it's like our intervention is confined to the other side of the world. The Chinese profit from us too. Asia does not worry me too much. I wish we could consolidate the Asians against China, under Japanese leadership, get India to come to that orbit (Japanese tech transfer?), and pretty much wall China off. But, with an indeterminate timer to the global economy can we do it in time even if everything lined up? The sad thing is the party is going to end with currency collapse, and not a market correction. Sooner or later. I think when that happens, then after a little seasoning of the West, some social breakdown, and anti government clashes, they will be like now or never. That's why HRC scared me. She was gonna go for broke, and push harder. Force their hand. It seems like a race against time for the entrenched insiders. The Iran thing, gosh, what is going to happen there? I feel like it was safer in the neocon sort of way like lets slam em while everything is still holding together, but then again the tinder box, or even if it didn't get lit, it would probably be enough to push the Russians over the edge. As much as I am against our extensive intervention, and think neocons are trash, it really would have been better to have done it then before the cracks started appearing all over. Now we are all in with no turning back, and shaky as heck. So I guess it really boils down to us pushing Russia, and China pushing us or pretending to. They got us by the balls though when it comes to treasuries, and that whole BRIC thing, buying up gold, maybe they are just trying to keep the party going, and make us go away peacefully when the dollar dies. Russia is in a much weaker position overall than China, and being as they probably view China as being an effective buffer, they are more worried about the stuff on their doorstep. I just worry about our way forward, it's like we bit off more than we can chew, and it's not evident to us yet. Our doctrinal exposure militarywise, our BS immigration policy, and open society (Not against our traditional values here), I think this will blow up in our face. If we can't fight airpower wars, we can't stage jack on their land. Even if we got troops to over there it's a war of attrition. Take SOCOM, yeah they are the best, but they don't grow like mushrooms on the lawn. It's not like they are Audie Murphy clones either. Sooner or later you don't have enough of them left. Same with ground pounders. Not to be a xenophobe because it is not about that, but I have the feeling they already have their boys in place all over. We have been letting them in. That uber tolerant liberalism got us bad. This is why isolationism is preferable in my mind. Everything is all wound up, so many layers of tangles. Big mess. Ugh. It's like history forked after HW. We gave Saddam the green light, then we went after him. Leaving him there, letting him suck generous foreign aid teet to keep him on a leash, that would have been the best. That, isolationism, and robust commerce. What a bitch. Steering our way out of this mess is gonna be tough. To be blunt we need to stop pressing up on them, because there may be no way out of this, and if we don't the Russians with their grease pens, and the Chinese with their legions, they will probably jack us up unless we have some trick stuff up our sleeve. That is my fear anyway.