[grey_whiskers]

My serious, but unspoken point, is that the Chinese raised every possibility EXCEPT pilot error.

Was the piiot connected to very high party officials (like the surgeon in Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October ; or was the pilot a a left-handed lesbian camel with a sinus condition?

[texas booster]

I would suspect that the son of a party leader would never take on a task this dangerous.

The wealthier a nation gets, the more perfumed princes are created.

Happened in Troy, in the US and probably in China as well.

IMO, it seems harder to replace a qualified test pilot than a jet, or even a series of jets.