China's J-20

[Dr Mordrid]

So....SecDef Gates says China won't have a stealth fighter until 2020, and uses that "fact" to limit production of the F-22. Now China proves him the jackass he is....

Aviation Week....

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China’s first known stealth aircraft just emerged from a secret development program and was undergoing high-speed taxi tests late last week at Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute’s airfield. Said to be designated J-20, it is larger than most observers expected—pointing to long range and heavy weapon loads.

Its timing, Chengdu’s development record and official statements cast doubt on U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s 2009 prediction (in support of his decision to stop production of the Lockheed Martin F-22) that China would not have an operational stealth aircraft before 2020.
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[Jammrock]

It looks odd. I mix between the F-22 and the old F-14. I wonder if the F-35 is going to get more production because of this.

[Umfriend]

If the Chinese had nothing in development then 2020 would be hugely conservative, now it just seems reasonable? From the article alone:
"The production version will require yet-to-mature indigenous engines."
"the J-20 may not match the all-aspect stealth of the F-22."
"The major open question at this point is whether the J-20 is a true prototype, like the T-50, or a technology demonstrator, with a status similar to the YF-22 flown in 1990." etc etc.

Gates has not been proved wrong. I'm ready to bet China will not have 100 J-20's combat ready (that is what they need to be to be "operational", no?) by 2020 or will be inferior to the F-22 to such an extent that they'd make 10:1 kills at least.

[MultimediaMan]

The fighter itself is useless without C^3... our fighters use AWACS for tactical management of the battle area. Even without radar, Optical Recognition sensors on the fighters themselves can be piped to an AWACS and provide the location of enemy fighters with a high degree of accuracy. The more friendly fighters you have up there, the better picture of the battle you will have.

There are also some serious looks at satellite-based "look down" Radar and Optical sensors, which will eliminate the traditional AWACS-centric BARCAP requirements, and observe targets from a direction that defeats low reflectivity technologies with a high degree of reliability.

The Chinese fighters built to date are still years behind an early 80's fighters in terms of engine technology and range. That counts for a great deal. They may have the specs on paper, but if they require 40 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight operations, you'd better get your objective in a hurry. Eisenhower said it: amateurs talk tactics and weapons, professionals talk logistics.

Then there comes our tendency to over-respond to a perceived problem...when the MiG25 Foxbat was introduced, the GRU deliberately leaked some false performance data on the Foxbat...about the only thing truthful about the leak was the top speed of the fighter. Much to the dismay of the GRU three years later, we responded with the F-15, which DID meet or exceed all of the leaked parameters save for speed. Sometimes you have to be careful when baiting Americans.

[Dr Mordrid]

Re: 80's tech - the article states that this program started after spybots were found mining major US defense contractors & suppliers, so we don't know if they have reverse engineered/copied F-23/F-35 systems and designs incorporated in the J-20 or not. We could have a leapfrog deal akin to when Clinton allowed precision ball bearing machines to be sold to China & they used them to build MIRV warhead buses.

As far as AWACS go, they have at least 2 types & counting. One is the Beriev A-50, which is based on the big Il-76 transport. We barely stopped them from buying Israeli Phalcon phased-array radars several years ago, but God knows what they have now.

[MultimediaMan]

They are basically the old Russian May AWACs...their radars are good, but don't do much against even as something as old as a B-1B.

Again, there isn't much to the magic as far as the actual materials and building of a airplane. The knowledge of how to apply that technology and design the same airplane correctly is very different.

I'm not softpedaling the asinine decision-making abilities of the SecDef: we should still be building F-22s. If for no other reasons than to keep the development pipeline running and the production lines alive for the day where we really need to have air supremacy somewhere. We do the same thing with our nuclear submarines: if you don't keep building them, you forget how.

[Dr Mordrid]

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We do the same thing with our nuclear submarines: if you don't keep building them, you forget how.

Not unlike NASA & real real spacecraft vs. the shuttle - it's taken outsiders to rediscover the "art."

[TransformX]

China does have something we don't. That is dirt cheap mass production.
So while the west has top of the range, state of the art machines, the Chinese have four to eight times as many machines. Yes, many will be older 'low tech' jets being used as decoy UAV, but what are your odds of survival when approached by 4 hostiles, 3 dumb and one not so, tough all 4 are capable of taking you down with missiles?
Check the war game scenarios the U.S has for a Chinese attack on Taiwan (was published in Popular Mechanics, December or November issue of 2010).

[Dr Mordrid]

That and their new anti-ship missile (which can take out supercarriers) are why we're on a tear to field high-powered microwave (HPM) and other directed energy weapons on our newer warships, the F-22, F-35 and F-18's.

[Dr Mordrid]

Opinions are that the bottom pic is a ground image photo-chopped to look airborn, but the same sources say a real flight was recently rained out and could come in days. Estimates are it's ~70 feet long, large for a fighter (F-22 = 62 ft 1"/18.90 meters). Doesn't look like a dogfighter because of its size and no obvious signs of vectored thrust. This could mean its more of a long-range strike aircraft or intended to go after an enemy's AWACS - or both.

UPDATE: AP wire is reporting it flew this morning, the 2nd day of a visit to Beijing by SecDef Gates

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_354086&v=u9J9sWOCe-E&feature=iv