China Rolls Out Its First Stealth Aircraft

[Pole]

The 'Chinese takeover' is happening very quickly...

NY TIMES LINK

BEIJING — China’s first radar-evading stealth fighter staged a runway test at an airbase in central China on Wednesday and could make its first flight as early as Thursday afternoon, the Hong Kong editor of a Canadian military journal said.

But the nation’s state-run media, which called news of the tests “rumors” in Wednesday’s newspapers, sought to play down reports about the aircraft’s capabilities. And comments about the new jet’s test regimen abruptly disappeared from blogs run by Chinese military enthusiasts.

The American magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology first reported on tests of the new plane, designated the J-20, in an article released on Monday. Military analysts say that photographs of the new jet on the tarmac at an airfield near Chengdu, have been appearing on blogs since mid-December.

Andrei Chang, the editor of Kanwa Defense Weekly in Hong Kong, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that he had been authoritatively told that the jet will make its first test flight on Thursday, weather permitting.

He said Chinese officials appeared to have deliberately allowed word of the tests to become public, even to the point of bringing the jet to a Chengdu airfield, Factory 132 of the city’s aircraft design institute, which is commonly watched by military hobbyists, in a bid to display the nation’s growing military sophistication.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is set to arrive in Beijing on Sunday to meet his Chinese counterpart, resuming top-level military consultations that have been all but frozen since the White House announced a $6 billion arms sale to Taiwan last Jan. 29.

“They want to show the U.S., show Mr. Gates, their muscle,” Mr. Chang said.

Although the growth of China’s officially disclosed military budget slowed in 2010, the country remains in the middle of a swift expansion and modernization, much of it centered on improving air, sea and space capabilities.

Chinese military officials say their buildup is entirely defensive. Most analysts say the military’s expansion is part of a long-range strategy to transform the armed forces from a domestic power to a regional one, and ultimately to a force with global reach like that of the United States.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy is reported to be building an aircraft carrier, the first of several that the Pentagon says could be deployed by 2020. The head of the United States Pacific Command, Adm. Robert Willard, told a Japanese newspaper last month that a long-anticipated anti-ship ballistic missile, intended to strike other aircraft carriers, had reached an “initial operational capability.”

Navy officials later amended that, saying that the Chinese have a workable design but that it has yet to be tested.

In news reports, military analysts have suggested that the J-20 remains well behind both Russia’s T-50 jet and the two American stealth aircraft, the F-22 and F-35, in technical sophistication and radar-evading ability. Mr. Chang said the jet’s shortcomings probably include a Chinese-manufactured engine that is substantially inferior to those of its competitors.

Photographs of the jet, taken at the airfield and posted on Chinese Web sites, show an aircraft that mimics the design of the American F-22 Raptor. Aviation Week said that the plane appeared designed to carry larger weapons than the F-22, and analysts said it would be capable of launching cruise missiles and being refueled in midair.

Military analysts quoted in Wednesday’s South China Morning Post said that it would probably take the Chinese a decade to produce the J-20 in large numbers. Mr. Chang said that the military would probably need another 10 to 15 years to develop a stealth fighter equivalent to the advanced models in the United States and Russia.

Benjamin Haas and Xiyun Yang contributed research.

[DotBomb]

Looks the part. I wonder what the avionics, weapons systems etc are like. Also wonder what the maintenance on the engines are like. I recently looked at the Sukoys on wikipedia, and it was saying their great at acrobatics, but the maintenance overheads are so high that its hard keeping them in the air. It will take 10 years to get to F22 grade. Where will the west military be by then? Unmanned? Space weapons that work on visual plane not radar plane? This technology might be out of date in 15 years time.

Probably just to put the wind up us.

[SomethingHasToGive]

Looks the part. I wonder what the avionics, weapons systems etc are like. Also wonder what the maintenance on the engines are like. I recently looked at the Sukoys on wikipedia, and it was saying their great at acrobatics, but the maintenance overheads are so high that its hard keeping them in the air. It will take 10 years to get to F22 grade. Where will the west military be by then? Unmanned? Space weapons that work on visual plane not radar plane? This technology might be out of date in 15 years time.

Or maybe the West will just be unfunded...

[erranta]

Looks the part. I wonder what the avionics, weapons systems etc are like. Also wonder what the maintenance on the engines are like. I recently looked at the Sukoys on wikipedia, and it was saying their great at acrobatics, but the maintenance overheads are so high that its hard keeping them in the air. It will take 10 years to get to F22 grade. Where will the west military be by then? Unmanned? Space weapons that work on visual plane not radar plane? This technology might be out of date in 15 years time.

Probably just to put the wind up us.

All they have to do is concentrate on & take out the refuelling tankers with a few satellite laser systems, the fighter jets would never reach destination if more than a full fuel tank away.

[R K]

I'd keep the receipt.

[DotBomb]

I honestly dont know why the chinese are doing this. All it does is put the wind up the American population. Scare them enough and there is the political will to jettison the Medicare/social security aid which is causing alot of the fiscal problems and start a new arms race that will create loads of work for us citizens and probably make america a really strong adversary. Really dont get it. What would the us army be like if you redirected that money into weapons?

[General Congreve]

I honestly dont know why the chinese are doing this. All it does is put the wind up the American population. Scare them enough and there is the political will to jettison the Medicare/social security aid which is causing alot of the fiscal problems and start a new arms race that will create loads of work for us citizens and probably make america a really strong adversary. Really dont get it. What would the us army be like if you redirected that money into weapons?

I once read an article in 2006 in an American magazine panicking about China's growing navy as if it was some Pacific crushing behemoth ready to eat up the US's western seaboard.

At the end of the article it had some figures, all the world's navies combined including China, but excluding the US, came to 3.06 billion tonnes of shipping. Just pipping the US Navy to the post, they only have 2.94 billion tonnes of naval shipping!

The Chinese want this because America is broke, but with the most advanced and powerful military in the world, a very dangerous combination.

[Realistbear]

Stealth planes have one rather large problem: sonar detection devices.

There is always a fly in the ointment for any cunning plan that comes up.

[Bloo Loo]

another product unexpected that we didnt see coming.

[Realistbear]

I once read an article in 2006 in an American magazine panicking about China's growing navy as if it was some Pacific crushing behemoth ready to eat up the US's western seaboard.

At the end of the article it had some figures, all the world's navies combined including China, but excluding the US, came to 3.06 billion tonnes of shipping. Just pipping the US Navy to the post, they only have 2.94 billion tonnes of naval shipping!

The Chinese want this because America is broke, but with the most advanced and powerful military in the world, a very dangerous combination.

When Russia went broke they looked Westward and invaded Poland and the rest is history.

When Germany felt skint after WW1 they decided to invade Poland and the rest is history.

The US have never gone broke and they, along with every other major power throughout history, have dicovered that war depletes the coffers rather than filling them.

[frenchy]

Looks the part. I wonder what the avionics, weapons systems etc are like. Also wonder what the maintenance on the engines are like. I recently looked at the Sukoys on wikipedia, and it was saying their great at acrobatics, but the maintenance overheads are so high that its hard keeping them in the air. It will take 10 years to get to F22 grade. Where will the west military be by then? Unmanned? Space weapons that work on visual plane not radar plane? This technology might be out of date in 15 years time.

Probably just to put the wind up us.

You sound very arrogant and optimistic...

China has achieved in years what the West took decades, what makes you think that:

a. The West will be able to design better and faster than China - are we more clever?

b. The West will be able to pay for it?

c. China is showing everything they have rather than everything they want to?

I wouldn't under-estimate China's ability, manpower and resources.

[cybernoid]

You sound very arrogant and optimistic...

China has achieved in years what the West took decades, what makes you think that:

a. The West will be able to design better and faster than China - are we more clever?

b. The West will be able to pay for it?

c. China is showing everything they have rather than everything they want to?

I wouldn't under-estimate China's ability, manpower and resources.

Ah, but can they reach the pedals?

[frenchy]

Ah, but can they reach the pedals?

didn't think of that actually...

[tahoma]

Russia managed to get complete plans for Concorde before it went into production.

This looks an awful lot like an F22. Imagine just being able to crib the plans without needing all that costly, time consuming R&D...

IIRC Russia got the Concorde plans bit by bit... by fax. The digitisation of the design process makes this sort of espionage an awful lot easier.

[ExecutiveSlaveBox]

You sound very arrogant and optimistic...

China has achieved in years what the West took decades, what makes you think that:

a. The West will be able to design better and faster than China - are we more clever?

b. The West will be able to pay for it?

c. China is showing everything they have rather than everything they want to?

I wouldn't under-estimate China's ability, manpower and resources.

Have you ever heard of industrial espionage ? That's what China really leads the world in.

Edited January 5, 2011 by ExecutiveSlaveBox

[DotBomb]

Have you ever heard of industrial espionage ? That's what China really leads the world in.

Correct! If you read the original article it points to large numbers of F22 subcontractors being hacked and compromised. The chinese stole all the specs.

In the end anyone with an engineering background knows you cant easily catch an industrial/military complex as advanced as the US in a decade or 2. The amount of programs and hardware that the us went through is massive. Look at the X program in the fifties that lead to the blackbird. Right through to stealth which started in the seventies. The us invented this stuff. They may have taken all the best brains in the world including nazi germany. Can China claim to do this? No. So im not arrogant. Im only telling it like i see it.

China will not catch the US easily. If at all. Watch the technology barriers go up, everything get hardened. Cyber security really will be a growth industry. Celanti is right on that.

Edited January 5, 2011 by DotBomb

[DotBomb]

You sound very arrogant and optimistic...

China has achieved in years what the West took decades, what makes you think that:

a. The West will be able to design better and faster than China - are we more clever?

b. The West will be able to pay for it?

c. China is showing everything they have rather than everything they want to?

I wouldn't under-estimate China's ability, manpower and resources.

Neither arrogant or optimistic. Im not a yank. I just call it like i see it. In the end China will be old before it will be rich. They have a one chilld policy which will play havoc with their demographics. The US just needs to go back to the gym and lose the gut. Thats all they have to do. China is a different story

[ken_ichikawa]

They may have taken all the best brains in the world including nazi germany. Can China claim to do this? No. So im not arrogant. Im only telling it like i see it.

Erm the USA did not invent stealth. The Nazis did in 1944 to counteract the British Radar systems. It never went into major production. So in effect the US also used stolen technology as well. So why are you complaining when MOST US military technology is an offshoot of stolen NAZI technology?

Bazooka? Panzafaust.

Jet Engine - The ME262 (Frank Whittle was ignored)

Homing missiles? Nazi technology

Machine guns? - Oops Nazi technology too.

Also the China will never catch up is just wishful thinking. I forget the war, but it was the first war when the US used copied Nazi missiles. The first generation sidewider missile or something. A US pilot fired it, it hit a Mig and failed to detonate. They reverse engineered it and within a few years they were massively ahead on infrared missile tech for decades and are still ahead.

Btw the F-22 has pretty much been killed by congress, they aren't building anymore.

NATO is going to be flying the piece of scrap called the F35.

[ken_ichikawa]

Neither arrogant or optimistic. Im not a yank. I just call it like i see it. In the end China will be old before it will be rich. They have a one chilld policy which will play havoc with their demographics. The US just needs to go back to the gym and lose the gut. Thats all they have to do. China is a different story

The one child policy can be revoked at any time. It has been revoked in several areas of Shanghai as an experiment. Also the one child policy only applies in the cities. It is largely ignored in the rural areas where most of the population still live. The state just doesn't pay for the education of the child. You too can visit cities like Pingyau (a few hours out of Beijing) and see families with 4-5 children.

[kagiso]

I honestly dont know why the chinese are doing this. All it does is put the wind up the American population. Scare them enough and there is the political will to jettison the Medicare/social security aid which is causing alot of the fiscal problems and start a new arms race that will create loads of work for us citizens and probably make america a really strong adversary. Really dont get it. What would the us army be like if you redirected that money into weapons?

Until just a few years ago the US could safely sail their carrier forces within miles of the Chinese coast. They could still easily impose a full scale blocade of the Chinese coast stopping all merchant shipping. And if the US is happy to impose stringent sanctions on Iran, currently causing major domestic problems there, why wouldn't they do so to China if the mood took them?

In the last few years China has become an importer of both oil and coal, it used to export both. Never mind incresing amounts of food and all their exports.

Like any aspiring commercial superpower the Chinese want the ability to ensure that they can protect their trade routes.

Much like the Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, British and Americans before them. The Germans were the only emerging superpower that failed to emerge, because the British and US successfully blockaded them in two world wars, a big factor in them losing both of the wars.

I can't say I'm thrilled about Chinese military expansion, but I can't blame them for the route they are taking.

[hayder]

Russia managed to get complete plans for Concorde before it went into production.

This looks an awful lot like an F22. Imagine just being able to crib the plans without needing all that costly, time consuming R&D...

IIRC Russia got the Concorde plans bit by bit... by fax. The digitisation of the design process makes this sort of espionage an awful lot easier.

actually the Tu-144 flew BEFORE the first concorde prototype.

[Guest The Relaxation Suite]

The 'Chinese takeover' is happening very quickly...

NY TIMES LINK

BEIJING — China’s first radar-evading stealth fighter staged a runway test at an airbase in central China on Wednesday and could make its first flight as early as Thursday afternoon, the Hong Kong editor of a Canadian military journal said.

But the nation’s state-run media, which called news of the tests “rumors” in Wednesday’s newspapers, sought to play down reports about the aircraft’s capabilities. And comments about the new jet’s test regimen abruptly disappeared from blogs run by Chinese military enthusiasts.

The American magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology first reported on tests of the new plane, designated the J-20, in an article released on Monday. Military analysts say that photographs of the new jet on the tarmac at an airfield near Chengdu, have been appearing on blogs since mid-December.

Andrei Chang, the editor of Kanwa Defense Weekly in Hong Kong, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that he had been authoritatively told that the jet will make its first test flight on Thursday, weather permitting.

He said Chinese officials appeared to have deliberately allowed word of the tests to become public, even to the point of bringing the jet to a Chengdu airfield, Factory 132 of the city’s aircraft design institute, which is commonly watched by military hobbyists, in a bid to display the nation’s growing military sophistication.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is set to arrive in Beijing on Sunday to meet his Chinese counterpart, resuming top-level military consultations that have been all but frozen since the White House announced a $6 billion arms sale to Taiwan last Jan. 29.

“They want to show the U.S., show Mr. Gates, their muscle,” Mr. Chang said.

Although the growth of China’s officially disclosed military budget slowed in 2010, the country remains in the middle of a swift expansion and modernization, much of it centered on improving air, sea and space capabilities.

Chinese military officials say their buildup is entirely defensive. Most analysts say the military’s expansion is part of a long-range strategy to transform the armed forces from a domestic power to a regional one, and ultimately to a force with global reach like that of the United States.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy is reported to be building an aircraft carrier, the first of several that the Pentagon says could be deployed by 2020. The head of the United States Pacific Command, Adm. Robert Willard, told a Japanese newspaper last month that a long-anticipated anti-ship ballistic missile, intended to strike other aircraft carriers, had reached an “initial operational capability.”

Navy officials later amended that, saying that the Chinese have a workable design but that it has yet to be tested.

In news reports, military analysts have suggested that the J-20 remains well behind both Russia’s T-50 jet and the two American stealth aircraft, the F-22 and F-35, in technical sophistication and radar-evading ability. Mr. Chang said the jet’s shortcomings probably include a Chinese-manufactured engine that is substantially inferior to those of its competitors.

Photographs of the jet, taken at the airfield and posted on Chinese Web sites, show an aircraft that mimics the design of the American F-22 Raptor. Aviation Week said that the plane appeared designed to carry larger weapons than the F-22, and analysts said it would be capable of launching cruise missiles and being refueled in midair.

Military analysts quoted in Wednesday’s South China Morning Post said that it would probably take the Chinese a decade to produce the J-20 in large numbers. Mr. Chang said that the military would probably need another 10 to 15 years to develop a stealth fighter equivalent to the advanced models in the United States and Russia.

Benjamin Haas and Xiyun Yang contributed research.

1. Presumably all of this technology came out of the massive espionage program the Chinese have running in the US, aided and abetted by William J. Clinton. It will be several stages behind current US stealth-tech.

2. Beijing has no serious potential to win a war against the West under any circumstances for several decades at least. It can barely feed the bulk of its population and the country is really best seen as lots of separate nations united by fear of a totalitarian government.

3. The PLA's development of a bluewater navy is the primary concern, as it tries to push the US out of the Asia-Pacific region in order to maintina a dominant presence over several critical sea lanes there. This is being planned so it can achieve hegemony in the region.

4. The US has a clear track-record when it comes to dealing with potential peer competitors in other regions: Germany in WWI and WWII, Soviet Russia and Imperial Japan - it doesn't allow it, and it will not allow Beijing to do this either.

[Krackersdave]

Whoa - thats just too damn big to be a fighter - it's HUGE and probably handles like a brick.

Bomber?

Technology demonstrator...??

Just can't see it as a serious aircraft tbh..

Looks like it's been designed by someone with serious ***** envy...

[Tiger Woods?]

Ah, but can they reach the pedals?

Have you seen some of these northern chinese blokes. 6'+ and built - too big for jet fighters.

In any case, I thought pilots had to be reasonably small?

[hayder]

Have you seen some of these northern chinese blokes. 6'+ and built - too big for jet fighters.

In any case, I thought pilots had to be reasonably small?

tallest man in the world is chinese AFAIK. there's no limits on choice in China! LOL.