Posted on 11/04/2010 4:21:36 AM PDT by Dundee
The image above, captured in March of 2010, depicts an F-117A mockup. Normally, a mockup of the F-117A wouldn't be a very big deal, but this one is in the middle of Luoyang, China. First spotted by the intrepid members of the China Defense Forum, the mockup appears to be partially completed, apparently missing the forward fuselage. This could however simply be an abberation in the image given that the color applied to the mockup does not appear to stand out against the pavement a great deal. It is a full-scale mockup, with the wingspan matching the "real" F-117A at roughly 43 feet.
Why is there an F-117A mockup sitting inside of Luoyang? There could be a completely benign purpose, such as use in some sort of media. However, Luoyang is home to the Luoyang Electro-Optical Technology Development Center, who is responsible for developing the current air-to-air missiles fielded by the Chinese military. A facility such as this would certainly be able to make use of an accurate model of a VLO aircraft for missile seeker evaluation, particularly in the case of seekers for active radar homing weapons like the current PL-12. In such a case replicating an F-117A would be far less complex than accurately replicating a non-faceted VLO shape like the B-2A.
(Excerpt) Read more at geimint.blogspot.com ...
Well, Obama had to promise certain things for China buying our debt. Remember Loral? Clinton deal of some sort.
Considering how long the jet has been around, I would be more surprised if they didn’t have one or at least a reasonable copy.
I don't want them to have our military tech, but that seems to be the more likely trade.
You’re gonna have to point it out to me, I don’t see anything that looks like any part of an F-117.
Immediately under the text “F-117A” you will see the fighter’s silhouette...
This could be built from the pieces of the 117 ‘toon allowed to be shot down in Serbia.
LLS
“Considering how long the jet has been around, I would be more surprised if they didn’t have one or at least a reasonable copy.”
Exactly, and the fact that they’ve left it out in the weather means something too.
They’ve moved on to other models and mock-ups, as they should have, since the platform is retired.
Still, they’ll have a hard time replicating the coatings and intake/exhaust geometry. It would be useful for visual/EO/IR testing. The fact that they had to do a full scale mockup tells you something about the state of their testing.
If you are building a missile system and do not have a means of testing against a likely threat, you are wasting your time.
That crash site should have been turned into a scale model of the moon by a lot of ordinance as soon as humanly possible if retrieval was out of the question.
A mock up doesn’t help much when you need to know the inner workings. The passive radar deflection and absorbtion capabilities of the plane are only part of how it works. There’s plenty of electronic magic on the inside.
and as we all know, any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic...
The Chinese bought a Russian Jump Carrier a while back and have been fooling around with it ever since.
They may in time finnish outfitting it and making it more or less operational but the real purpose IMO was to provide something our Admirals and Military Industrial Complex folk could point to and say “See, See.. we need X Super Carriers to be ready for them.
When in truth Super Carriers are just Super targets waiting for any First Tier Nation State to flurry standard and hyper-velocity Cruise missiles at and sink..
What better way to defeat your enemy than to get him to burn thru money as we have been doing for “Defense”.
The F 117 thing could be made from Plywood for all we know.. Probably is. The Chineese if they are doing things right are more likely building 100 conventional aircraft for every F117, F35 or B1 Bomber the US Has.
Why should they worry about US Stealth Craft.. If there stuff began dissapearing and they did not see cruise missles they would assume it was Steath Aircraft and simply detonate small yield nuclear weapons from 10k to say 40,000 feet over and around the position attacked blinding and burning our Pilots and Crews destroying electronic gizmos and knocking our billion dollars Stealth Craft from the skies. They are not a Saddam shooting 12.7mm MG blind into the sky.
Just because our tacticians and senior Military leaders would not do such a thing over the US or our allies there is no reason the Chinese would hesitate to do so.. Radiation would be limited to the .1 maybe .2 KT actual remaining missile debris, plus our craft, that might survive the blast falling from the sky.
The Chinese stick pretty close to Sun Tzu’s doctrine and that means they intend to follow much of US Doctrine used against the Germans of WWII.. Where the German Super Tiger Tank could kill 25 Sherman Tanks in a Fight the US insured there was 26 Shermans around and killed them.
The Chinese will do the same to US unless US Flag Officers get their heads out of the Penultimate Weapons Platform Clouds and back on their jobs.
W
from wikpedia-
“Tonopah Test Range Airfield in Nevada, the site of the F-117’s first flight.[34] The F-117 was retired during ceremonies at Palmdale and Tonopah on 22 April 2008.[2] Four aircraft were kept flying beyond April by the 410th Flight Test Squadron at Palmdale for flight test. By the beginning of August, two were remaining, and the last F-117 left Palmdale to fly to Tonopah on 11 August 2008.[54] With the last aircraft leaving for retirement, the 410th was deactivated in a ceremony on 1 August 2008”
Guess what?- if an aircraft has been deactivated- I believe it is easier to release/sell- use as a bribe! this is probably one of ours- given to the Chinese- they would need
this type of technology to invade Taiwan.- another Country
the O’bummer admin hates.
Throw in New Orleans and Portland Oregon too.
This of course means we needed to know how many Tiger tanks there were. Which brings me to a recent article where it was revealed that we had deciphered the Tiger tank serial number system. From it we could get actual production numbers so we could have sufficient forces on hand to defeat them.
“Immediately under the text “F-117A” you will see the fighter’s silhouette...”
You mean those three vertical structures and their shadows ?
We think alike!
LLS
“There’s plenty of electronic magic on the inside.”
Not really. Most of the “magic” is in the shape, planform alignment - and knowing where threats are (and mission planning around them).
The F-117 was actually devoid of a lot of complex electronics, because it’s mission was fairly limited, relying on passive measures by design.
In LO (at least in the radar realm), the “magic” is first the shape, second coatings & edge treatments, and other systems (including active ones) are less relevant generally - but highly relevant to specific threats.
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