Interesting how similar the two airplanes are in external appearance.
This in no way indicates that the two airplanes have the same capabilities. They won’t even necessarily have the same “stealth” cross sections. The Chinese didn’t bother to mess with thrust vectoring. Their avionics and weapons capabilities might not be close to each other. And then you have the pilots and their training to consider. But China builds some good stuff.
And the Chinese will mass produce them, they will be a match if quality and engineering are at a high standard, someone on another sight said their engine program is lacking and they have a tendency to fail. Time will tell. Pretty airplane though.
hardly a coincidence. Just goes to show how piss poor our country protects its secrets.
http://breakingdefense.com/2013/06/top-official-admits-f-35-stealth-fighter-secrets-stolen/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-cyber-theft-jet-fighter-1415838777
hardly a coincidence. Just goes to show how piss poor our country protects its secrets.
http://breakingdefense.com/...hter-secrets-stolen/
http://www.wsj.com/...t-fighter-1415838777
The first link just says that the Chinese stole unclassified data on the F-35.
The second article requires you to subscribe to the WSJ to view, so no idea what it says.
However, no doubt it is not a coincidence the planes look the same.
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Here’s what I want to know: what is the money spent on the F-35 really funding? I’ve always speculated that at least of portion of defense over-runs went to fund black projects. Hell, when we went to kill OBL we had stealth helicopters just “sitting” in hangers in Groom Lake… and supposedly even had even stealthier helicopters that were deemed too important to use on that mission. A lot of the tech in the F-35 already existed… and it sure doesn’t appear that all the excess made it to LM’s bottom line… so what did they build?
The last girl I dated was an aerospace engineer (at LM coincidentally but low-level as far as I knew) and she told me there was a lot of chatter about “survivability” and highly-advanced countermeasures. The idea being that the enemy could lob a couple of air-to-air or surface-to-air missiles at you with no ill effect.
“The Chinese didn’t bother to mess with thrust vectoring. Their avionics and weapons capabilities might not be close to each other. And then you have the pilots and their training to consider. But China builds some good stuff.”
My brother picked up a pair of really nice imitation $5000. Rolex watches for $100. on his last business trip to China. Can’t tell the difference unless you start taking them apart.
What’s inside them a small mouse and a couple rubber bands?
Interesting how similar the two airplanes are in external appearance.
This in no way indicates that the two airplanes have the same capabilities. They won’t even necessarily have the same “stealth” cross sections. The Chinese didn’t bother to mess with thrust vectoring. Their avionics and weapons capabilities might not be close to each other. And then you have the pilots and their training to consider. But China builds some good stuff.
Where China has real difficulties is in designing and building jet engines. They haven’t even been able to reliably copy/reverse engineer the AL-31 series from the SU-27, and Russia won’t sell them any more advanced motors because China will just attempt to copy those and sell them without a license from Russia. My guess is that the F-22 has a rather large advantage in unaugmented thrust over the J-31, and, as you note, probably quite a bit better avionics and weapons.
Spot
What kind of chatter are you referring to? I used to work in survivability.
Not a coincidence. They hacked into defense contractors and the military networks. They do it shamelessly, every day, all the time, and don’t even need to bother hiding behind TOR or VPN or by attacking from 3rd party systems, because they don’t need to hide. Their hackers aren’t particularly skilled. They mostly use off the shelf exploits they got from other hackers. It’s just the Chinese hackers are numerous, they are persistent, and they hack with impunity because not only would China never extradite them, but in fact they are sanctioned if not employed by their government and military. Everyone knows this.
Russian hackers OTOH are fewer, more careful, far more skilled, and if they got you you’d likely never even know.
Anyway yes their fighter may look like the F22 but they simply aren’t skilled enough (yet) for things like thrust vectoring, super cruise, integrated avionics, electronic countermeasures, or proper low observable radar cross section. However, if they make a few thousand of these jets, and they clearly can, it would be a problem. Best example of this I think: Germans had the best tanks in WW2. It took on average about 10 allied tanks to knock out one of theirs. Well Russians made 85,000 good-enough tanks. Game over.
Nice post!
What kind of chatter are you referring to? I used to work in survivability.
It’s been a while since we’ve dated. I just recall her saying there was a lot of talk about the subject but I don’t recall her citing any strategies/technologies.
Survivability, in general, merely refers to the vehicle’s ability to take a hit and still complete its mission. Survivability can be increased with counter measures, but the great bulk of survivability comes simply from how the components are laid out within the vehicle.
A simple example is the tail of a black hawk. Its very thick compared to the earlier Huey models. The only thing back there is the tail rotor shaft, while the rest is just a big hollow compartment. Hit a Huey in the tail, you’ve got something like a 60% chance of hitting the drive shaft. Hit the tail of a black hawk and now you’ve got more like an 8% chance.
Other examples would include going to double engine Huey’s. Take out an engine, you’ve still got a back up. Now go from the Cobra to the Apache. The engines on the Apache have a lot of space between them, so now its more difficult to take out two engines with one shot.
Anyway, there is a bit of funding done on counter measures, but I think its pretty tiny when compared to the total cost of something like the F35. I can’t speak specifically to that program, but i know from a program that I was on that typically what happens is the large defense contractor simply tries to secure the bid, and promises whatever they can promise, and then the next thing you know, they end up going way over budget. Well, what are you going to do? You need a jet, and it would be even more expensive to start from scratch. In the case of the program I was on, they simply ran way over budget and the program was deemed not important enough, so they canned it after blowing millions. FWIW, the defense contractor didn’t lose millions….they tax payers did.
It really is a sick game that is played with the military industrial complex.
Anyway, the here being that I don’t doubt that some money gets hidden in these black programs, but there is also definitely just a matter of embarking on really expensive projects. In the end, the defense contractor wins out no matter how much it costs, and the politicians/military aren’t paying out of their own pockets.
Our problems go beyond China hacking. US cannot survive currently without importing critical infrastructure - microchips, raw materials.
On the hacking side, hope our hackers are better than theirs, however I doubt it since we are outsourcing our computer science technologists to India and China.