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To: PIF

[I can assure you that the Chinese would love the tech, but never place the plane in the PLAAF failing so many critical tests.]


They’d love this plane for living up to original mission specs. The Chinese way is get something out quickly, then MacGyver new requirements as needed. The (peacetime) American way is to let new requirements be injected every step of the way, to the point that development slows down to a crawl, like ornaments hanging off a Christmas tree, whereupon the project is canceled, and the old platform is MacGyvered to learn new tricks that never quite match the promise of the built from scratch new platform that was scuppered. What will cure us of this malady? The likely avenue is to get kicked in the nuts through a Pearl Harbor-style attack by a peer/near-peer competitor. Then we’ll get back to the basics that had us churning out simultaneously half-assed but revolutionary and good enough new platforms the way we did during WWII at a war-winning pace.


10 posted on 01/01/2021 7:10:36 AM PST by Zhang Fei (My dad had a Delta 88. That was a car. It was like driving your living room.)
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To: Zhang Fei

They’d love this plane for living up to original mission specs.

But it cannot ever meet the original specs! Which is most of the point of the test requirements. They might use the tech in some new jet, but they have mostly gotten all they need in that area. What they need is to figure out how to manufacture crystalline jet engine turbine blades.


The likely avenue is to get kicked in the nuts through a Pearl Harbor-style attack by a peer/near-peer competitor.

One that takes out the Pentagon brass where most of the problems lie. Low cost, survivable, effective are not words permitted in the planning rooms.


14 posted on 01/01/2021 7:25:46 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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