Not Top Gun Yet: China Struggles With Warplane Engine Technology

Reuters ^ | January 29, 2016

[piytar]

Oh they could steal one, but replicating it is simply beyond their manufacturing capabilities. The tech involved is very sophisticated. Kind of like if we stole a true starship from some alien and tried to replicate its warp drive en masse...

[nascarnation]

You’re certainly correct on the grad students and brainpower.

I believe the biggest problem the Chinese have is not design talent but process and manufacturing talent.

They have not (yet) developed consistent quality programs at the very high level needed for these applications.

But that day will come.

[factoryrat]

Not to worry, government electric (AKA: GE) will probably be relocating their turbine operations to beijing here in the near future, to go along side all of the other crap they make over there.

[Regulator]

But that day will come

A-yup.

And that's a matter of practice. Which we conveniently handed over to them by transferring massive factories and business over the last 25 years.

Won't be long now.

[meatloaf]

Do they utilize the exhaust heat in marine applications?

[bkopto]

Only a matter of time before they get on par between free trade, free immigration, and the decline of American manufacturing and education at the hands of the trash that opened our borders and holds Americans in contempt.

When I look at important research being published out of the US these days, the VAST majority have chinese authors. There a very few anglo/western names attached to this research.

I attribute this to (1) the ongoing war on white men by schools at all levels and (2) the universities need for full-pay international students.

There will come a day when these researchers will go home to China and the R&D leadership will have moved to China. US students will then have to go to China for the cutting edge in science and engineering.

Our leaders want to destroy this country and its people.

[Psalm 73]

All gas turbines work on the same principle: "Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow" -

Outside air is sucked into the inlet, squeezed by the compressor stages, ignited in the combustor section which, as it expands, turns the power turbine which is attached to the turbine shaft which turns the drive shaft.

Without hot expanding gases, nothing works - not even marine industrial turbines (like those that power the Navy's LCACs)

[DoughtyOne]

[Ozark Tom]

Can we say ‘materials science’???

[clearcarbon]

"I wonder if the engines they get from Russia are monkey models."

Factory seconds? They'll probably do OK so long as they don't have to chase any planes not of their own design.

[sparklite2]

Monkey models aren't necessarily factory seconds.