U.S. F-22s versus Chinese F-35s

Aviation Week ^ | 11/12/2009 | David A. Fulghum

[Eye of Unk]

I will say this friend, there are some things you really do NOT want to know about when it comes to “skunk works”.

The US has never relied upon a sole fighter aircraft, bomber or ship ever, as soon as it in production its already obsolete. We will make the best fighter aircraft but we will also make something that can defeat it in the case it falls into enemy hands.

[LibWhacker]

Zero will hand them the technology on a silver platter. No doubt his hatred of America is great enough to do that.

[Sequoyah101]

“But many remain unconvinced about China’s timelines for an advanced design.

“But we’ve yet to see a real organic design [emerge] from China. So far they’ve leveraged Russian or Israeli technology. They don’t have a lot of radar engineering capability, nor experience in integrating a complete structure.””

This is valiant effort to assuage one’s fears. They can build lots of good enough stuff. With their capture of strategic materials around the world they will also have the resources to do it with.

I don’t think we can pull off another Spartan like effort of the 300 with 187 dispersed F-22s. Even the Spartans were wiped out in their defensive action.

Don’t get me wrong, we are good and have really good stuff but you can’t turn a tidal wave when it comes ashore no matter how hard you try. Even though outnumbered by 8:1 the Marines and remnants of the army escaped from Chosin but all they could do was escape.

Even the Pakis will eventually outnumber our F-22s by 2:1 with aircraft that are probably good enough though we should overwhelm those numbers with other factors but what about the Chicoms? What if they field 2,000 of these good enough airplanes?

[saganite]

Not what I asked. Read the post I responded to.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> This is valiant effort to assuage one’s fears. They can build lots of good enough stuff. With their capture of strategic materials around the world they will also have the resources to do it with

I agree. Here in New Zealand we see alot of China’s exports before most places do. India’s stuff as well.

(I hasten to add, no F-35’s Nothing that hi-tech... yet!)

The quality of their machine tools is superb — I own several, and they cost me a tiny fraction of what I would have paid for similar Japanese or US branded tools. For without a doubt, these are probably also built in China and re-badged for foreign consumption.

One silly-but-telling example: I have a Ryobi drill press — except it isn’t branded Ryobi, and it is painted red not blue-green. It’s made in China, and it is bolt-for-bolt, casting-for-casting identical to and compatible with its Ryobi counterpart. I paid next-to-nothing for it, brand-new. It is a superb machine tool.

The Indians are doing the same thing. I have a Record engineer’s vise, made in Sheffield England. I have an identical, unbranded engineer’s vise, made in India. Except for where “Record — Made in England” would be cast into the steel, the two vises are identical, and of equal quality.

OK, so two dumb examples that are hardly hi-tech but they are telling: there is no quality issue there when the Chinese want to make good stuff. They can do it, cheaply and in massive quantities.

The United States and Britain have both mostly lost their manufacturing strength. Can either country mass-produce anything of quality anymore?

Maybe they can — but not nearly as well as they used to.

What you say is spot-on: “Good Enough” stuff, made in massive quantities, may well be decisive. It worked a treat for the Japanese in WW-II.

[Condor51]

'U.S. F-22s versus Chinese F-35s'

'Chinese' F-35s. Oh really?

Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Chinese Hackers Steal F-35 Data
Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jet Project -- Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON -- Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project -- the Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever -- according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks.

So these aren't Chinese there really ours due to stealing the data then they built them. And how many times since Clinton does this make that Chinese spies have stolen our secrets..20, 30? And Gates's DoD really's keeping us safe isn't he. (This pc diversity crap WILL KILL US ALL.)

That being said, why did China even have to 'steal it'? Hell they own it outright with all the money we owe them thanks to Dubya and Barry selling us out. China should have just demanded them as payment on the BILLIONS & BILLIONS in loans that WE OWE them.

[The Duke]

25 years ago I was heavily involved in aerospace, and I recall an interesting incident that myself and my colleagues found most amusing.

This was in the days when the stealth bomber's existence had just been made public, yet the existence of any "stealth fighter" was still not public.

The particular incident was a speech given by an Air Force General who had just been given a personal tour of the stealth bomber. He got on stage and started his speech by saying..."I have just seen the stealth fighter and ...."

At which point two serious looking gentlemen promptly took him by each arm and escorted him quickly from the stage.

We engineers were ROTF. :)

[Zhang Fei]

The quality of their machine tools is superb — I own several, and they cost me a tiny fraction of what I would have paid for similar Japanese or US branded tools.

The reason they're able to do this is because the manufacturing technology is established and entire assembly lines can be bought from Western firms. To my knowledge, the production technology for leading edge Western fighters hasn't been sold to any non-Western country.

[Tallguy]

“Even 4th generation fighters, when pitted in large numbers against 187 F-22s, will eventually wear [the stealth fighters] down,” an aerospace industry official says. “They only carry eight air-to-air missiles. They don’t have to match Raptor capabilities if they build an advanced fighter in F-35 numbers.”

Yes, but do enemy pilots have the discipline to press home the attack and take their losses? In Iraq, during the Gulf War, Iraqi tank crews began to bailout of their tanks when the first shots from the M1A1's started hitting home. Similarly the Iraqi airforce pretty much stayed on the ground after the first hours of the war, then bolted to Iran. Are PLAF pilots willing to do the equivalent of marching across a minefield in hopes that somebody makes it through?

[DieHard the Hunter]

> To my knowledge, the production technology for leading edge Western fighters hasn’t been sold to any non-Western country.

It won’t be long before the Chinese will be able to devise their own production technology without the help of the West.

Their political ideology is thoroughly morally bankrupt, but the Chinese are no fools. They have a bloody-minded cleverness that is one day going to bump into the West really, really hard.

And they can do stuff really quickly when they need to.

Dumb example: did you know that nearly all of those little hook assemblies that hold brassieres together are made in China? As are nearly all zippers, and nearly all buttons, and nearly all sewing needles?

Sure, those are only small goods — but the Chinese didn’t used to dominate small goods. This is all relatively new.

I wonder how long it will be before they make most of the bullets in the world? Cheap? I can’t see any reason why they wouldn’t.

The hi-tech stuff? I’d say they are already well on their way.

[Zhang Fei]

It won’t be long before the Chinese will be able to devise their own production technology without the help of the West.

Well, what we've seen so far is that everything they make that's any good, they've imported the production line from the West. Another problem is that there's no real evidence the Chinese are able to come with completely new stuff on their own. In this respect, they're like the Taiwanese, the Japanese and the Koreans. There's a lot of incremental improvements, but nothing that is a generational leap vis-a-vis the existing state of the art. I'm sure the Chinese will eventually make fine cars, and so on. But truly revolutionary technology (and science) is likely to be the province of the West for a while yet.

[DieHard the Hunter]

I do hope you’re right — statistically there are alot of Chinese, and a huge number of them are bright enough to attend the very best schools in the world. There are huge numbers of them attending our universities in New Zealand, for example.

And many of them are scoring at the very top of the class.

It would be a blessing if none of them — not even one — were smart enough to be able to innovate and devise new ideas in the near-or-not-too-distant future. If so, that would be a statistical improbability, and a lovely piece of luck for Western Civilization.

Should we count on it?

[mountn man]

I really hope you're not talking about the F-37 Talon

[holden]

They have thus been grandly compensated, but somehow the debt notes don't seem to be have been cancelled. Hmmm.

HF

[Tallguy]

Another problem is that there's no real evidence the Chinese are able to come with completely new stuff on their own. In this respect, they're like the Taiwanese, the Japanese and the Koreans.

Ever look around a US college campus to see how many asians are in the Engineering & Mathematics departments? I'd be a little bit careful making a broad statement about creativeness. All that China needs to do is train AND keep the talent and they too will be cutting edge.

Besides, how do we know that the Chinese are not already working on "game changing" technology? If I want to defeat an F22, probably the least effective way to go about it is to try to build a better version of it & hope that you can match the pilot training. Any failure in that chain-of-events and you've just chucked 10's of Billions of dollars down a rathole.

[RightOnline]

Actually, let’s hope they’re on par......... :)

[Thunder90]

Another thing to consider is the Russian Sukhoi SU-50 Pak Fa.

[Kozak]

Quantity has a quality all its own

Josef Stalin

[Hulka]

“Only American superiority in numbers made victory possible.”

Only?

I’d say it was the skills of the Americans that counted for a heck of a lot, as well.

[Hulka]

It's not just the outside of the jet that makes the jet, it is the inside that does. Making a copy of a jet is easy, as you have the dimensions and aerodynamics sorted, but it is the composite materials and the avionics/electronics, C2ISR that make quite a difference. . .and they are not even close to “matching” the F-22 in those regards.