Comments on: China Tests Its New Stealth Plane–But Don't Freak Out About It

By: amphiox

amphiox — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 00:07:12 +0000

Ian, you’re absolutely right when the comparison is directly jet to jet, but in the context of these Chinese jets’ potential to be a threat to American jets in actual real-life confrontations, the disparity you pointed out is just another facet of my original contention. America is as far ahead of China in all of these support aspects of combined air combat currently, as America was ahead of Iraq in 1991. In the near future it would be highly unlikely that these Chinese jets would fare any better against American F-22′s and F-35′s in any foreseeable combat situation than Iraq’s Mig-29′s fared against the F-15, until such time that China catches up with America in all these other areas of expertise (and on the highly unlikely circumstance in which America will stand completely still).

And until (or even if) the Chinese actually finish development of this jet and test its capabilities in realistic situations, there’s no telling how it will stack up against American jets. Many aspects of America’s stealth fighters are top secret, and while some things such as the shape of the plane and the angles of the wings/tail fins, etc are relatively easy to copy, other things are not so easy to duplicate, such as the radar-absorbing surface paint and the avionics, or the quality of the weapons the jet will carry. Unless the Chinese manage to steal these secrets through espionage, they’re going to have to develop their own versions and there’s no way to know if they’ll succeed in coming up with equivalently effective solutions.

By: ChH

ChH — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 13:07:13 +0000

1. amphiox – exactly right.
2. this plane won’t be invisible to RADAR … just less visible / only visible from a shorter range.
3. I’m sure the Chinese are rapidly ramping up on a program to supply their own engines, should relations with the Russions sour.
4. At universities here in the USA I bet we train more chinese-born students on advanced RADAR technology at the PhD level than we do american-born students.

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 02:56:37 +0000

The gulf war saw those f-15s backed by awacs, superior electronics and crew. It’s not a valid comparison.

Given equivalent skill a modern mig is a formidable dogfighter. It all depends on how the chinese train their pilots. If it’s the soviet style regimented silliness, then all the tech in the world won’t matter.

By: amphiox

amphiox — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:45:42 +0000

“From what we can see, I conclude that this aircraft does have great potential to be superior in some respects to the American F-22, and could be decisively superior to the F-35 [joint strike fighter],”

You know, this statement is so reminiscent of the old cold war rhetoric where practically every single MIG model coming out of the old USSR was talked up as being so much superior to whatever the American mainstay was at the time, and the good old USA was in such peril of losing air superiority, etc, etc…

And yet every single time, every single time, that the actual planes actually had to face one another in actual combat, the American plane kicked ass. The most recent example I think being the F-15 vs the MIG-29 during the Gulf War.