Posted on 03/30/2002 7:29:39 PM PST by milestogo
The good news is that the Pakistan Air Force has finally phased out its 36-year-old U.S.-supplied F-6 aircraft and inducted a fleet of 22 F-7PG jets, newly acquired from China over the past three months. The bad news is that China's F-7 (although much modernized, and beefed up with a MiG-29 engine) is basically a venerable Soviet-era MiG-21 Fishbed, which first flew in 1955. With more than 8,000 produced, the MiG-21 remains by far the most popular combat aircraft of the jet age. China has been producing the F-7 for even longer than the Pakistanis have had the old F-6 jets. The problem was that the F-6s were simply wearing out. Pakistan has just 40 left of the original order of 180 -- and only China was prepared to replace them. "We owe a debt of abiding gratitude to the government of the People's Republic of China for keeping the Pakistan Air Force flying fit in difficult times," Pakistan's Chief Air Marshal, Mushar Ali Mir, told the ceremony at Quetta. What he did not say was that the new jet's weapon stations are patterned after those on the American-built F-16s Pakistan bought before they were hit with U.S. sanctions in 1990. How did the Chinese know how to match the F-16 fittings? Because Pakistan secretly transferred one to China for reverse engineering.
I highly doubt it, because the Su-27 design was pretty much finalized by around 1979. However, the missiles used on the MiG-31 Foxhound may have been copied from the AIM-54A, though, which means an effective range of around 120-140 km or so.
One thing that still kind of surprises me is that the Tupolev Tu-28 Fiddler was phased out of service during the 1980's. Given that the Tu-28 had a top speed of over 1,000 mph and big enough to carry quite a lot of fuel for long-range operations, the Tu-28--had the Russians modernized it and fitted it with the AA-9 Amos missile that the MiG-31 used--would have been a potent anti-bomber platform and would have posed a very serious threat to our B-52's and B-1B's.
Thought the Skyrays were designated F-4D's, called "Fords" by Navy airdales. They were replaced by the F-4 Phantom II.
In nmost cases this was done by dropping the manufacturers code
North American FJ Fury becoming F-1
McDonnell F2H Banshee, F3H Demon, F4H Phantom II becoming F-2, F-3, F-4 respectively.
Vought F8U Crusader becoming F-8.
Grumman F9F Cougar, F11 Tiger becoming F-9 and F-11.
But for a couple this couldn't be done
. So the Douglas F3D Skynight becsme the F-10, and the F4D Skyray became the F-6.
But, in my opinion, the Koreans will never buy the Rafaele, for many many reasons, not the least of which has to do with local politics and allegations of bribery which are not going to go away.
Also, I didn't mean to imply that you might have thought that the Su-27 was in any way equivalent to the Mig-2l, and I apologize if I left that impression. You are obviously someone who knows his way around the aircraft of the world.
In any case, China is rapidly modernizing its military and, if they don't have viable fighters now, they will likely have them at some future time because all of China is industrializing and modernizing. Give it a few decades, and China will come close to filling the industrialization gap, just as Japan has.
Like all less advanced nations, China will not try to re-invent the wheel but borrow technologies from those who already have it to close the technological gap sooner than it otherwise could, much like Japan did with its "borrow and improve" strategy. Along its own process of development, every culture borrows things from other superior cultures. Romans borrowed from Greeks, N. Europeans borrowed from Romans, Japanese borrowed from Americans, etc. This is a normal occurrence in world history.
I read recently that Israel's arms industry is about the only part of Israel's economy that is still doing well -- thanks to China because China is the biggest customer of Israel's arms industry. The rest of Israel's economy is in shambles (stock market and real estate values plunging, tourism down, etc.). Arms are the only bright spot.
Americans don't like Israel's selling weapons to China, but they need to understand that Israel has its own national economic interests independent of those of the U.S. In actuality, Israel's trade with China is quite comprehensive and accelerating quickly, covering not only arms but all sorts of other technology, industrial goods, agricultural technology, financials, etc. Israelis are smart and know China's economy will be big in the future and, by nurturing its own trade relations with China independent of America's, Israel is ensuring good, comprehensive economic and political relations with China in the future as China's economy continues to grow.
Likewise, Russia is also fostering economic ties with China, especially in regard to arms as China accounts for 60% of the Russian arms industry's revenues. But more broadly, Russia and China are the perfect economic pair in the future, because Russia has many of the resources that China needs as its economy grows (oil, gas, timber, metals, etc.) and China has the big market that can absorb and consume all of those resources and, thereby, make Russian businessmen and the Russian economy gloriously rich.
In the end, economics shapes history and the relations between countries. America itself does a great deal of business with China, more than either Israel or Russia. China has replaced Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc. as the source of cheap goods for American consumers for the next several decades to come. The ability to buy low-priced goods made in China will ensure Americans enjoy their high standard of living for the next 1-2 generations of Americans at least. No one forces American consumers to buy Chinese-made goods. They choose to voluntarily because they derive concrete economic benefits (such as keeping their household expenses low) from the purchase of cheap Chinese goods. So economics helps both Americans and Chinese. China's per-capita GDP has risen faster than in the past 20 years of capitalism than anything seen before in history, resulting in the lifting of hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty. According to the CIA World Fact Book, China's poverty rate today is just 16%.
China's economy, though, is rather unique in Asia in that exports account for only about 20% of China's GDP, compared to 40-70% for most other places in Asia like Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, etc. In other words, China's economy most resembles, of all countries in the world, America's because both America and China are giant domestic markets in themselves. This gives China relative immunity to slowing exports compared to most other Asian nations, whose economies are driven significantly by exports alone. What all this means is that, unlike most Asian nations, China truly has the capacity to become a self-sufficient, relatively stand-alone economy in the heart of the Asian landmass. The economic development of the Asian landmass was really inevitable, given the economic growth of the countries like Japan and Korea lying on the periphery of the Asian landmass over the past 50 years. Economic development was bound to travel westward.
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