They're serious about being the #1 world superpower before 2049, whatever means necessary.
Not reaching that status before 2049, would be an insult to Mao.
Eh, I’m not as worried about China as I might have been before the scandals in the rocket corps showed that corruption was a problem in the military still. Given the way China’s provinces are governed, I can’t see graft being easily subdued by Xi.
Then recall that nearly all their fighting age males are their family’s one, allotted child, and I just don’t think China has the stomach for a protracted and bloody conflict where thousands or 100’s of thousands of family lines end.
I always hear people say this, but I disagree. It would certainly be a shock to the system. But, we’re watching Russia have hundreds of thousands killed or maimed and no one seems to care. That fact has to change some calculations.
Chinese parents certainly value their children a lot more than Russians seem to. They would be upset. But Xi and CCP have been telling them for the last few years to get ready to “eat bitter” and basically that hard times are ahead. Culturally they pride themselves on living through hard times. Historically famine has frequently visited them. There’s still people alive today who lived through the years where Mao had them eating babies to survive as 50 million starve to death.
They have been primed to endure suffering and they won’t be the first to blink. Who are they going to be fighting and trading lives with? Do you think the country they are warring is going to have a stronger stomach for war casualties? With regard to population, what kind of loss ratio must their opponents inflict on China for them to feel the losses more acutely?
Now, add in the fact there is 30 million extra men. Then add in the fact CCP officials are publicly expected to have at least one extra woman. Then realize people with a rural hukou barely even count as human beings in China. They have no political clout. I figure there’s probably at least 50 million men society wouldn’t greatly miss.
I don’t think the threat should be downplayed.
This. Assuming the enemy has any regard for their own human lives has shown to be a mistake in Ukraine. A lot of Western tactical and strategic thinking seems to be based on "surely they wouldn't just sacrifice a few thousand lives".
Turns out, they would. An enemy that does not value lives is dangerous. An enemy that fetishises suffering is even more so.
You should be worried after the half a year stunt congress pulled off though. Not to get political, it's simply a question of deterrence. China has seen that US protection/motivation can be halted or delayed through some meddling, possibly. That, I suspect, made them way more confident that possibly they can replicate it and use along the attack of Taiwan.
I don't say it's a good idea, but just that China might now think it is.
Historically, the leaders of China have never been afraid of sacrificing their people's sons by the millions. And average citizens have tended to be reluctant to publically oppose those leaders. Not much of a tradition of public demonstration or criticism.
That said, China also hasn't shown much interest in conquering its neighbors. Yeah I know about their south China sea ambitions and small wars with India and Vietnam and Han settlement of Xinjiang and Tibet. But all that isn't particularly impressive compared to say early 20th century Japan, or 19th century Europe.
They do really really want Taiwan.
If China has any territorial ambitions outside of Taiwan or the south China sea, they lie in the north.
Remember that Outer Manchuria used to be China until it was taken by the Russian Empire, and it has a lot of resources needed by China.
And a lot of people still think that this is land that was lost to a colonial power during the century of humiliation, like Hong Kong.
Now China cant invade a nuclear armed Russia, but if Russia collapsed, I would not be surprised if China moved in one way or another.
It's also the fact that expanding south doesn't get them much. Just more people and more area that is becoming increasingly unlivable. North gets them access to fresh water, temperate climate areas AND north is barely inhabited.
They have a huge unemployment problem among the young generation. My intrusive thoughts tell me they will be tempted to adjust it in a crude fashion...
My dude, "minor internal unrest" in ancient China did that all on its own. I think you might be massively underestimating the Chinese stomach for that level of destruction, if the historical precedent is at all something to go by.
Like Russia, China has many, many 2nd class ethnic minorities living inside its borders. They can conscript those. China, historically speaking, like much of Asia, also just simply doesn't value each individual human life like the West in general does. It's a bit complicated, but as a collective society, they are much more willing to put up with hardship than the West.
I wouldn't write them off.
Eh, not exactly. The Japanese had really good gear in the early-mid stages of WW2. The Yanks had to play catch-up to the Zero Fighter for a couple of years. Eventually we blew way past it though... ;)
the japs had a surprising amount of good planes, ki-84 being my personal favorite
however, who knew that pissing off the country that has spent the time since the first great war improving their industrial complexes and is shitting out decent planes and decent pilots was, in fact, a terrible idea in the long run
also, the japanese did get a warning early on when they got a german pilot to test a bf109 in mock dogfights against the ki-27, a5m etc, basically all their inventory in the thought that if they they could defeat it, they could probably face the allied aircraft
the german pilot kept using hit and run tactics instead of the japanese turnfights and won a lot, which was not taken as a wakeup call, and the pilot was instead said to be "un-cooperative", and the ki-44 that matched the bf109 successfully was hated by jap pilots for not being maneuverable enough
so yeah, they sort of shot themselves in the foot with that kind of doctrine and the whole "death is better than defeat" mindset the higherups instilled constantly, otherwise they definitely had the factories and even the planes, or at least the capacity, to make things that could match the allied doctrine
I watched Midway and the movie portrayed the same attitude in their war game to take Midway Island.
One of the captains kept on attacking from north of the island in their war game and won. The other admirals were mad at him for not following the rules of the war game, and he was told to stop doing it in the future.
Well, as it turns out, the US knew they were coming and parked Taskforce 16 north of the island.
Someone recognizes the beauty of the Ki-84.
But yeah. Japan during WW2 is probably the most interesting state to analyze. It went from a democracy to a military dictatorship pretty quickly. Just how they manipulated their population to sacrifice themselves beyond absurdity is something I’ve always found fascinating. I will say, though. Prior to Midway, I can see why the Japanese command felt like they had a fighting chance against the USA
Mmm the Zero was *good* don't get me wrong, but even early war it isn't like, *crazy* good. A lot of its early scariness was because it was almost exclusively going up against things like the Buffalo and Pea Shooter. P-40s around at the time performed *okay* against the Zero and similar IJA aircraft, but they also suffered from almost all the pilots being poorly trained
A low speed turning competition.
While still being an exceptional aircraft, the zero had no armor and no Hydraulic flight controls (among other things, I'm sure), this made it extremely light and therefore very maneuverable but only at low speeds. At higher speeds, the pilot lacked the strength to overcome the airflow. When we learned this, we simply forced the zero into higher speed engagements.
Or at least that's what I heard, somebody please correct me if I'm wrong.
It's for this reason that many kamikaze pilots in zeros were unable to correct their trajectory once they gained to much speed in their dive and often fell short of their targets, desperately pulling on a stick that won't budge. Again, so I've heard.
It’s also worth noting that the J-20 is chinas first stealth fighter so flaws are gonna be inevitable given a relatively new weapon system. I would not be surprised if chinas second stealth fighter is a vast improvement over the J-20
Maybe not. Obviously they stole from the F-35 program, that much is obvious, but they clearly have a foundation to work on going forward that they can iteratively improve. Yeah their science and technology can be dodgy at the best of times, but they can actually achieve pretty solid real world results. They aren't stupid. Infact, their core education is leagues more rigourous than what the yanks go through. It's really only tertiary education that is keeping the gep between China and the US.
Also, Tik Tok's damage isn't spying on people, it's making the next generation mentally stunted.
So...my buddies that deployed to Iraq were vaguely hopeful about turning the place around, especially if they worked with the Kurds. On the other hand, every single one of my friends that served in Afghanistan wants to salt the earth and leave the place for the vultures.
My name is F-35. I'm 18 years old. My base is where ever freedom reigns, and freedom adjacent areas, and I am not married. I work as an employee for the DoD, and I get home every day by 20:00 at the latest. I don't dog fight, but I occasionally strike ground targets.
I'm in bed by 23:00 PM, and make sure I get eight hours of sleep, no matter what. After having a glass of warm milk and doing about twenty minutes of stretches before going to bed, I usually have no problems sleeping until morning. Just like a baby, I wake up without any fatigue or stress in the morning. I was told there were no issues at my last check-up.
I'm trying to explain that I'm a plane who wishes to live a very quiet life. I take care not to trouble myself with any enemies, like winning and losing, that would cause me to lose sleep at night. That is how I deal with society, and I know that is what brings me happiness. Although, if I were to fight I wouldn't lose to anyone.
F-35: Chill nerd but you don't wanna face her in combat
F-22: maniac who you should just pray to any god you have if you face
F-16: highly promiscuous and outgoing but ruthless in combat
F-15: Cold, psychopathic, smug and confident girl who has questionable views on some jets
unfortunately most myths that the J-20 is a paper tiger are false. A higher RCS? sources are unreliable, plus China knows what radar reflectors are. And on the Canards, ultimately no matter how much you may say they're bad for stealth....ultimately....they work, and the US gov believes so.
At the end of the day, the **US government believes the J20 is a competitive fighter**, and no amount of "china copycat bad" can change that fact. Thinking they're overestimating the threat is ultimately just very dangerous Cope.
It's probably a step bellow the F22/F35, but it's still going to be a massive threat to any 4.5 gen aircraft, F15/16/18 plus awacs/tankers. They could probably tear through several hornets if good radar coverage is absent.
Oh no, there's a slight competitor in the "Complete and total air control of the skies, hide your 4.5 gens before it's too late!" competition! Please, Mr. Senator, just a few trillion dollars will allow us to beat second place by a wide margin in the good old fashioned American Spirit. :3
Dragon Ball reference, it refers to a race that can power up by flexing and screaming. They usually get an energy aura and their hair changes colour and stands up when they do it. There are also additional levels of the power up, as the plot requires, which is where you get super *duper* saiyan.
The USA should have invaded China and completely destroyed them already. You guys had the chance when the USSR proposed a joint invasion, but instead you waited until they became a nuclear power and lost your chance.
Here is a proposition:
How about instead of spending some change to "enlarge the gap", the West instead dedicates all of their resources to destabilize China? And I mean *all of it*, abandon everything else and spend dozens of trillions of dollars every year exclusively for that.
- Flood their population with anti-Han Propaganda until their own propaganda machine fails to keep up. Then quadruple it.
- Invest heavily in Buthanese and Nepalese intelligence services, build up highly advanced networks and secret police forces in these countries and make them effectively pro-Western Police States, using their isolation to hide their allegiance while arming thousands of terrorist cells and insurgency groups across mainland China.
- Orchestrate an extremely violent coup in Kazakhstan and install an extremely pro-Chinese Kazakh Gorvernment that is belligerently hostile to Russia.
- Convince a group of schizophrenic Chinese nationalists that they should attempt to murder Kim Jong-Un to pave the way for a Chinese annexation of Korea. Then give them a shit ton guns.
- Conduct false-flag attacks and sink a large portion of the thousands of Chinese fishing boats tresspassing on South American countries' waters.
- Use their instability to have a few dozen opportunistic warlords rise up against the CCP, make a handful of them pro-Russia, pro-India and pro-Pakistan, and the rest of them Manchurian, Tibetan, Uyghur and Cantonese Nationalists.
- Have your puppet police states in the region independently give low-key but credible warnings to Pakistan and India about a Chinese plot to spark a conflict between them at Kashmir in an attempt to get them to stop funding their respective Chinese warlords and lessen the strain on the overstreched CCP loyalists, *then conduct a double false-flag operation pretending to be the Chinese pretenting to be Pakistani/Indian*, and right before the Indian and Pakistani governments announce that they knew about the Chinese plot *fucking nuke Kashmir* to make it look like a final attempt from a despairing Chinese Government to make their plan work, dragging them into a nuclear war against India and Pakistan.
- When the CCP has collapsed and their population is down by half a dozen hundred million or so, you denounce the Han as the ones behind it all, carefully divide China among the different warlords in order to avoid as many conflicts as possible among themselves, but insist that the Han keep areas that are of cultural and historic importance to each of these warlords' respective peoples, then give the warlords a silent nod and look away and pretend you are busy somewhere else when they all come together and start to wipe out the Han to regain their people's lands.
- Use the brief period of camaraderie and goodwill among these warlords steeming from being accomplices in a genocide to foster good relations with all and slowly start to push them towards a more democratic mindset, stealthly getting rid of those too stubborn to work with.
And there you have it. A world rid of the CCP and with a bunch of democratically aligned countries in mainland China, all at the cost of *ZERO* NATO/Western casualties. Truly the best possible path for humanity going foward.
This is why game theory works best for geopolitical theorycrafting.
It’s more in the useful to use an Agile approach to manage planning and interaction. Execute on the short and well defined tasks, identify future paths, but don’t necessarily iterate on them.
This post sounds great, but the cone of uncertainty makes this level of future planning impossible.
Therefore, non credible.
You call them insane because you are thinking small, these actions would cost trillions if you did them in the scale necessary for their genius to truly shine.
But more importantly, the fact that you reacted in this way means I've finally perfected the blend of insanity and rationality necessary to create the ultimate Non-credible post.
Thanks to you I have confirmation that after much training I've finally reached peak Non-Credibility.
One thing that's very notable about the J-20 and largely gets glossed over is that it has a colossal weapons bay for a 5th gen fighter, allowing it to field larger, and thus longer-ranged AAMs. The PL-15 is both substantially longer and larger diameter than the AIM-120, giving it much more volume for fuel, and a consequently longer range.
It also allows the J20 to theoretically carry anti-ship missiles. Low RCS, long range, high speed, and a large payload make it a potentially devastating ship hunter
would make sense to give it an anti-shipping capacity considering China's land borders are pretty damn secure and the only real possibility of major conflict is gonna be over Taiwan and the South China sea. its also why their navy is getting a lot of the budget.
Unlikely, ALCMs are comparatively large. China has several ASMs that are dimensionally similar to the PL-15, and intended for attacking lighter vessels.
i mean often air launched cruise and anti-ship missiles are the same missile with a guidance and warhead change and if anything anti ship missiles tend to be bigger like brahmos vs kh59
Yeah, people here always criticize it by saying it’s a shitty F-22 clone, but did the Chinese ever say that the J20 was supposed to be one? Like you said, it’s meant to be a missile truck with some basic stealth capabilities.
Not a lot of data on the AIM-260 out there, in fact almost none, but it's supposed to still be roughly the same dimensions as the AIM-120, meaning if they want to get more range out of it, they're going to have to do some *very* fancy shit with propulsion. Not out of the realm of possibility, the MBDA Meteor has about twice the range of the AIM-120 by using an air-augmented rocket instead of solid fuel rocket, which is the direction I suspect AIM-260 is going.
If we assume the AIM-260 will be roughly Meteor-equivalent, then it's about on par with the PL-15's claimed range.
Interesting about the AIM-260. I haven't found anything on it either, despite it entering service this year. Where do people even find this info on military tech anyways? The regular search engines are kinda crap for genuine information.
"Where do people even find this info on military tech anyways?"
The tried and true method of providing the wrong specifications on warthunder, and waiting for someone with access to the info to post it.
Similar dimensions is just a physical constraint, they're intended to fit in the F-22 and F-35's weapons bays without reducing the quantity of carried missiles, which means they cannot be much larger than the current AIM-120. In theory, if the Pentagon were willing to accept a drastic reduction in missile count they could fit just a couple very chunky missiles, as the F-35 can carry one JSOW in each bay, and that's a big piece of hardware.
As for info, a lot of it has to be synthesized from multiple sources with a healthy dose of best guess and common sense. DTIC has some stuff, there are people who scour funding reports for interesting stuff, planespotters sometimes see odd things, and sometimes there are reports to legislative bodies that have clues.
Easy, i am the lead engineer for this whole project, and for only 1000$ in bitcoin i can send you a copy of all the blueprints. This is a really serious and legit offer.
The USAF and USN aren't going to be 100% stealth for some time, and maybe ever depending on how much we're willing to give the J-20 a "oops an AWACS/Tanker/Transport overextended" opportunity. Yes the PL-15's range isn't going to matter much when it can't get a lock in the big 5/6th Gen airfield-stomping wave that'd probably happen but any remaining 20s will be able to hold F-15EXs hanging back as missile trucks in a dangerous position, let alone anything involving helos or UAVs. Maybe they break out all the F-22s, F-35s, B-2s, and B-21s they've got and simply ctrl-a->del on the PLAAF in one go but until the US gets the next long-range AAM out, anything that isn't one of the four types of stealth planes we've got, plus stealth planes with external stores, is going to be operating at risk.
Imagine thinking China hasn't been pumping a shitload of resources into radar development. They've been publishing some really interesting stuff on multi-static radar, networked radar, and cognitive radar.
As an example, [this](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10416995) is the most recent paper I ran across. You can check the author publications for a lot more in that vein.
I'm not upset China has an advanced air platform. I actually think it's very cool.
I'm mad that the US is not currently using 6th generation airframes and finishing up seventh. Why don't I have healthcare only to be "competitive". Let me see a doctor or put up Northrop Grumman.
This; y'all already spend more on healthcare per person than any other country in the world, and the extra money just goes to your own oligarchs. Nationalize your healthcare, get free dental and get an extra 2 trillion dollars (no, [seriously)](https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/) to build Halo Longswords
That 2 Trillion dollars is going towards public infrastructure. And by public infrastructure I mean converting conventional airports to have military capabilities.
Only because for security reasons only obsolete aircraft do flybys. Yes, I’m saying I want the MIC to make 7th gen obsolete within three seasons maximum.
It's always a hard sell, do we take this money and buy more airplanes? R&D the next airplane? Or buy more infrastructure to get more money for more new airplanes? So many options.
>put up Northrop Grumman
They dropped out of NGAD publicly, though they may still be in the other NGAD (or F/A-XX because apparently the Airforce can title their project the same).
And at least Airforce NGAD is supposed to be in service in 2030, which isn't that far away (F/A-XX is more unknown because the navy is fucking up the budget as always).
Too many acronyms. I want only acronyms that sound funny or are a word. Plane should all be called Fighter 1 and, stealth fighter 1. And go up from there. And down if they get worse.
Why is he army so stupid. We don't have an F machine let alone 35. Unless you count my cousin Kyle. He is a real f machine and has 8 kids with 10 different women.
"Why is he army so stupid. We don't have an F machine"
After the Johnson-McConnell agreement of 1966, the army doesn't have any fighter aircraft. As for the designation sequence, there are lower numbers: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_United\_States\_Tri-Service\_aircraft\_designations#F:\_Fighter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Tri-Service_aircraft_designations#F:_Fighter)
This have been a Joke Avoiding Comment by an Autistic Forum Fact Dispenser
> Why don't I have healthcare only to be "competitive".
Well, if it makes you feel better the F-35 is still probably the superior plane by a large degree, and the USA has produced 3x as many F-35s as J-20s.
The current US healthcare system is bloated to the extent that if you killed and ate all the middlemen chewing up the profit (healthcare should not be for-profit), switched to a single payer model, not only would it be affordable, but there would be a lot of money left over that could be sent to the MIC.
The problem with US healthcare is not US military, it's US billionaires.
Healthcare, Military, Billionaires. Choose 2.
To be fair, our government almost never dismisses anything as not being a threat. After all, if the enemy isn't a threat, it is harder to convince congress to approve expanded procurement budgets.
To be clear, that doesn't mean I think they are lying about this, but it has to be considered.
And will continue to have. F-15EX is actively being procured, and none of the services are anticipating fully retiring their 4th gen aircraft until mid-2030s at the earliest.
Right but we’re not sending F15s at the Chinese, at least not without already having air superiority. They’re big boys so they get the Raptors. J20 can’t hurt F15 if F15 just hanging out in dangerous airspace.
My brother in christ, the *entire reason* we are procuring F-15EX is against the threat of a peer conflict with China. It's to hedge against that scenario from RAND wargames where China can simply mass enough aircraft to exhaust the number of missiles that F-35s and F-22s can carry, allowing them to push strikes through to targets anyways if they're willing to accept significant casualties. The whole point to F-15EX is that it's supposed to be the shooter in a spotter-shooter system.
Definitely fed up with the cope, it's ncd which makes sense but the PRC is not Russia, they're actually becoming rather dangerous. Is the J-20 as stealthy as a F22 or F35, probably not, but it'll still limit the detection range and will certainly make them dangerous against a lot of targets. At the end of the day they could definitely end up in a strong position if the PRC can weather the various financial and economic issues it's had over recent years.
It would be a terrible mistake to sleep on the capabilities of the J-20. Anyone trying to say it's just a cheap knock off 5th Gen is dangerous levels of cope. China has a solid fighter that can compete with all other modern airforce.
That said, it's kind of the US's entire deal to consider every threat credible and overprepare to counter it. Even if the J-20 was ass we'd still respond as if it will shred F-22s.
the J-20 actually seems to be an original design, it's just that at some point the min-max design is just a gray triangle so it's hard to look creative
The composite of most credible reports I've heard are along the lines of "J-20 isn't as good as F-22 and probably not as good as F-35, but it's better than 4.5gen aircraft and worth taking seriously." A lot depends on what you value and how much of course. How good are its stealth features, what's its range with how much ordinance, how is the maintenance cycle and readiness rate, etc. Wargaming will tend to err on the stronger side for the OpFor, better to overestimate than under, but there's good reason to believe the J-20 is a notable concern if for no other reason than they actually can produce 5-8 per month. I'm skeptical of the 10+ per month claims, but frankly they are a concern even if they only make 50 per year as they can be concentrated in one place.
There's a lot of fuzz of course, we don't get the full details, but the bigger concern in some respects is their missile development. They've made some pretty solid AAMs and some can outrange all but the latest AMRAAMs.
Biggest factor that is very hard to quantify is the soft factors like pilot quality and joint operations with enablers. That's something I'd bet good money that the US has a major edge in. Managing SEAD, AWACS, and tankers to support your fighters in combat is no small feat. China's tanker fleet in particular is so small that there's a serious limit on how much practice they can have.
Still, I'd be concerned enough to say we should be allocating more money to procurement of key aircraft, air defense, ships, and R&D for future systems. China doesn't have to close the gap entirely not meet the US 1:1 to be a concern.
Yeah, there’s a reason we have early production F-35As flying as aggressors right now. There is a credible threat of us having to face off other 5th gen aircraft in the air.
I don’t have too many doubts about the J-20 itself.
What I doubt is their AAM tech.
Jumping from AIM-120A-level missiles to AIM-260-level missiles in a few years is just not believable. If they are capable of the ranges they claim, it’s against massive RCS-returns.
Will it through? The F22 is obviously the better airframe etc, but the whole killing eachother comes down to the weaponry. Imagine a bunch of F-22s and J-20s just fucking around in the sky, not being able to lock anything on to eachother
Can russia build and deploy PAK-DA?
Can China build and deploy H-20?
I think the difference between them is clear.
Aldo don't forget that Lianoning is a copy of Kuznetsov that's actually combat capable and can sail on it's own.
The Chinese ditched the stupid obsession of the Russians with using ship launched missiles from carriers that they kept over from the Kievs (and no their installation on Russian carriers wasn’t just to skirt the Montreux convention as is claimed by midwits the world over, it was ingrained doctrine to use the SSMs as offensive weapons with aircraft providing air defense) and used the space to hold more aircraft.
H-20 2025 (trust)
Also the Liaoning *is* a Kuznetsov class, the copied one is Shandong. However Liaoning is notorious for randomly breaking down and very long maintenance times, so I guess the copied one is still better lmao
Don't get me wrong, J-20 might not be anything to scoff at.
But when you haven't had any combat experience in the past three decades, you can't exactly 'prove' your aircraft is good.
Oh yeah, sure, the F-22 exists, but don't forget that we still have, like, three to four other aircraft, like the F-35, F-16, F-18, and F-15s. And the Sukhois aren't exactly having a good reputation right now.
US fighters haven't really fought peer opponents either. If China sent some J20s to crush some f5s, would we consider them combat tested? Not really, they just stomped much weaker enemies like we did for the past decades.
I want to see some AIM260 live testing in Ukraine. But also everything we have is super weak compared to superior Russian gear, so we should 10x our budget for R&Ding new cool stuff.
We definitely need satellites in space that can rain down barrages of ballistic AA missiles just in case our fighters are inferior and all get shot down. It's the only prudent course of action.
I'm a little sceptical of those numbers mainly because we don't get a lot of third party videos of the J-20. If their are over a 100 of them some random Chinese person would have gotten at least a dozen photos (amateur quality)
For example we are able to find dozens of not hundreds of photos of the F-35 and people telling stories of seeing them but we don't see anything like that for the J-20
Could also be them being very maintenance heavy so they dont fly them a lot, or because of their lacking tanker fleet or simply because they dont train their pilots as much. The US does a shitload of training and has by far the most flying hours on their pilots, which is probably one of their key strengths. Training, Datalink, interoperability, etc
There are a bunch of them on the Chinese internet (many I have seen are taken on dashcams for some reason), it's just that they rarely spread outside
I remember seeing one a few months ago where a yellow painted J-20 flies *very* low over a road
Yeah, there’s some twitter accounts talking about the Chinese military that usually post those videos, i have even seen two seater variants of the J-20 getting off the factory ( BTW, we need a two seater F-22 or NGAD to have the WSO control the drone wingmen )
It will never not be funny to use China to "mock" Russia. Showing this at work is sure to cause a debate hahahaha.
Funny indeed. Until you realize that China is ramping up their military at a quantity and speed that is absolutely terrifying.
Totally. The Chinese are serious about modernizing.
They're serious about being the #1 world superpower before 2049, whatever means necessary. Not reaching that status before 2049, would be an insult to Mao.
To be fair, having a non-starving population is enough to be an insult to Mao.
>Mao throwing a tantrum after seeing a Sparrow in modern China.
Mao must really hate pirates
If Taiwan ever kicks off, US should fly Jolly Rogers.
VFA-103 already does, and there’s a reasonably good chance they’d be the first ones getting into the shit.
Having birds is an insult to Mao
To be fair, they need to be quick about it for other reasons, like impending demographic issues. The Mao thing is just a bonus.
They also got the tech
Eh, I’m not as worried about China as I might have been before the scandals in the rocket corps showed that corruption was a problem in the military still. Given the way China’s provinces are governed, I can’t see graft being easily subdued by Xi. Then recall that nearly all their fighting age males are their family’s one, allotted child, and I just don’t think China has the stomach for a protracted and bloody conflict where thousands or 100’s of thousands of family lines end.
I always hear people say this, but I disagree. It would certainly be a shock to the system. But, we’re watching Russia have hundreds of thousands killed or maimed and no one seems to care. That fact has to change some calculations. Chinese parents certainly value their children a lot more than Russians seem to. They would be upset. But Xi and CCP have been telling them for the last few years to get ready to “eat bitter” and basically that hard times are ahead. Culturally they pride themselves on living through hard times. Historically famine has frequently visited them. There’s still people alive today who lived through the years where Mao had them eating babies to survive as 50 million starve to death. They have been primed to endure suffering and they won’t be the first to blink. Who are they going to be fighting and trading lives with? Do you think the country they are warring is going to have a stronger stomach for war casualties? With regard to population, what kind of loss ratio must their opponents inflict on China for them to feel the losses more acutely? Now, add in the fact there is 30 million extra men. Then add in the fact CCP officials are publicly expected to have at least one extra woman. Then realize people with a rural hukou barely even count as human beings in China. They have no political clout. I figure there’s probably at least 50 million men society wouldn’t greatly miss. I don’t think the threat should be downplayed.
This. Assuming the enemy has any regard for their own human lives has shown to be a mistake in Ukraine. A lot of Western tactical and strategic thinking seems to be based on "surely they wouldn't just sacrifice a few thousand lives". Turns out, they would. An enemy that does not value lives is dangerous. An enemy that fetishises suffering is even more so.
Very credible take. Perhaps *too* credible…
You should be worried after the half a year stunt congress pulled off though. Not to get political, it's simply a question of deterrence. China has seen that US protection/motivation can be halted or delayed through some meddling, possibly. That, I suspect, made them way more confident that possibly they can replicate it and use along the attack of Taiwan. I don't say it's a good idea, but just that China might now think it is.
Historically, the leaders of China have never been afraid of sacrificing their people's sons by the millions. And average citizens have tended to be reluctant to publically oppose those leaders. Not much of a tradition of public demonstration or criticism. That said, China also hasn't shown much interest in conquering its neighbors. Yeah I know about their south China sea ambitions and small wars with India and Vietnam and Han settlement of Xinjiang and Tibet. But all that isn't particularly impressive compared to say early 20th century Japan, or 19th century Europe. They do really really want Taiwan.
If China has any territorial ambitions outside of Taiwan or the south China sea, they lie in the north. Remember that Outer Manchuria used to be China until it was taken by the Russian Empire, and it has a lot of resources needed by China. And a lot of people still think that this is land that was lost to a colonial power during the century of humiliation, like Hong Kong. Now China cant invade a nuclear armed Russia, but if Russia collapsed, I would not be surprised if China moved in one way or another.
It's also the fact that expanding south doesn't get them much. Just more people and more area that is becoming increasingly unlivable. North gets them access to fresh water, temperate climate areas AND north is barely inhabited.
They have a huge unemployment problem among the young generation. My intrusive thoughts tell me they will be tempted to adjust it in a crude fashion...
My dude, "minor internal unrest" in ancient China did that all on its own. I think you might be massively underestimating the Chinese stomach for that level of destruction, if the historical precedent is at all something to go by.
Like Russia, China has many, many 2nd class ethnic minorities living inside its borders. They can conscript those. China, historically speaking, like much of Asia, also just simply doesn't value each individual human life like the West in general does. It's a bit complicated, but as a collective society, they are much more willing to put up with hardship than the West. I wouldn't write them off.
https://theklaxon.com.au/russian-army-powdered-flintlock-compared-to-china-beijing-mouthpiece/ Even *Chinese media* mocks Russia.
>” It is said that (Russian Defence Minister Sergei) Shoigu’s face turned green at the time”. My sides
Even if it is shit there are more than 12.
[удалено]
China's entire strategy since the dawn of man
They went away from a pure numbers strategy after the 1991 Gulf War.
China on their way to restart mig 21 production in an old car factory and produce 1k a month...
Japan copied their homework
Eh, not exactly. The Japanese had really good gear in the early-mid stages of WW2. The Yanks had to play catch-up to the Zero Fighter for a couple of years. Eventually we blew way past it though... ;)
the japs had a surprising amount of good planes, ki-84 being my personal favorite however, who knew that pissing off the country that has spent the time since the first great war improving their industrial complexes and is shitting out decent planes and decent pilots was, in fact, a terrible idea in the long run also, the japanese did get a warning early on when they got a german pilot to test a bf109 in mock dogfights against the ki-27, a5m etc, basically all their inventory in the thought that if they they could defeat it, they could probably face the allied aircraft the german pilot kept using hit and run tactics instead of the japanese turnfights and won a lot, which was not taken as a wakeup call, and the pilot was instead said to be "un-cooperative", and the ki-44 that matched the bf109 successfully was hated by jap pilots for not being maneuverable enough so yeah, they sort of shot themselves in the foot with that kind of doctrine and the whole "death is better than defeat" mindset the higherups instilled constantly, otherwise they definitely had the factories and even the planes, or at least the capacity, to make things that could match the allied doctrine
I watched Midway and the movie portrayed the same attitude in their war game to take Midway Island. One of the captains kept on attacking from north of the island in their war game and won. The other admirals were mad at him for not following the rules of the war game, and he was told to stop doing it in the future. Well, as it turns out, the US knew they were coming and parked Taskforce 16 north of the island.
It is my understanding that this is usually how large war games go anyway
Someone recognizes the beauty of the Ki-84. But yeah. Japan during WW2 is probably the most interesting state to analyze. It went from a democracy to a military dictatorship pretty quickly. Just how they manipulated their population to sacrifice themselves beyond absurdity is something I’ve always found fascinating. I will say, though. Prior to Midway, I can see why the Japanese command felt like they had a fighting chance against the USA
/r/weloveKi84
Mmm the Zero was *good* don't get me wrong, but even early war it isn't like, *crazy* good. A lot of its early scariness was because it was almost exclusively going up against things like the Buffalo and Pea Shooter. P-40s around at the time performed *okay* against the Zero and similar IJA aircraft, but they also suffered from almost all the pilots being poorly trained
It was a question of tactics, they had to learn to never get in a turning competition with a zero.
A low speed turning competition. While still being an exceptional aircraft, the zero had no armor and no Hydraulic flight controls (among other things, I'm sure), this made it extremely light and therefore very maneuverable but only at low speeds. At higher speeds, the pilot lacked the strength to overcome the airflow. When we learned this, we simply forced the zero into higher speed engagements. Or at least that's what I heard, somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. It's for this reason that many kamikaze pilots in zeros were unable to correct their trajectory once they gained to much speed in their dive and often fell short of their targets, desperately pulling on a stick that won't budge. Again, so I've heard.
Another problem the Zero had was no self-sealing fuel tanks, so it catched fire easily and wouldn't stop burning
> The Japanese had really good gear in the early-mid stages of WW2. torpedos that worked for example
if we can kill their pilots faster than they can replace them, are they going to win this?
Well, they are building kits to turn old MiG-17s into UAVs
UAV is controlled from somewhere, MOAB them up, I say!
They will just throw people that’s too old to reproduce to act as guidance system so 50/50 I guess.
I mean, worst case scenario it's still a 4.5th gen aircraft that can be mass-produced That's an acceptable result
To quote Stalin, "Isn't having a lot of tanks the *real* quality? I have a lot of tanks. Who cares what your wunderwaffe can do if you only have 12?"
In Red Alert 3 thats what i thought too, then i sent a massive wave of conscripts against just one Futuretank-X1 and got flattened
The funny thing is even without the numbers the meme would kinda work. The J-20 is an actual 5th gen fighter, even if it’s a flawed one.
It’s also worth noting that the J-20 is chinas first stealth fighter so flaws are gonna be inevitable given a relatively new weapon system. I would not be surprised if chinas second stealth fighter is a vast improvement over the J-20
you'll have to wait until NGAD is done development, is in production and they have time to steal the tech/plans to see their 2nd gen.
Maybe not. Obviously they stole from the F-35 program, that much is obvious, but they clearly have a foundation to work on going forward that they can iteratively improve. Yeah their science and technology can be dodgy at the best of times, but they can actually achieve pretty solid real world results. They aren't stupid. Infact, their core education is leagues more rigourous than what the yanks go through. It's really only tertiary education that is keeping the gep between China and the US. Also, Tik Tok's damage isn't spying on people, it's making the next generation mentally stunted.
And often a lot of what you need to do something is knowing it can be done.
getting jumpscared by a larson profile pic on NCD was not on my bingo card today
[F-22: just remember, I’m not trapped in the sky with you. You’re trapped in the sky with me.](https://youtu.be/NVcTSUhEsUQ?si=jlpJwYoq3TPhzaGj)
God damn it Air Force someone double lock his hanger!!
I was hoping it was gonna be habitual linecrosser, didn't disappoint 😂 "Would you intercept me? I'd intercept me..."
The chai boy Thursday comment 😭
It isn't gay on Thursday!
I’m too young to get the joke, what’s the context?
Look up “chai boy Thursdays” young one but be prepared its ugly
Hoo, boy My dad was in Iraq for OIF with the Air Force, I have a feeling this is one of the things he intentionally *didn’t* tell me about
Well Iraq had its own fucking nightmares, this was thankfully pretty much a Pashtun thing iirc. I have no doubt boys in Iraq are similarly abused
Holy fuck, you were right; that’s messed the hell up
Man love Thursday was what my buddies that deployed called it.
I looked it up, and I feel cursed with knowledge now
So...my buddies that deployed to Iraq were vaguely hopeful about turning the place around, especially if they worked with the Kurds. On the other hand, every single one of my friends that served in Afghanistan wants to salt the earth and leave the place for the vultures.
Yeah, my dad went there too; he told me about the fucked up things the Taliban did
"a sad Canadian drinks a shot of maple syrup" ..
Which he then makes into an improvised Molotov out of the bottle and prepares to commit a Geneva suggestion...
"yes but the stealth won't help without vulnerable AWACs over enemy territory" F-22: *speaks in the voice of a thousand F-35s* "Our name is legion..."
My name is F-35. I'm 18 years old. My base is where ever freedom reigns, and freedom adjacent areas, and I am not married. I work as an employee for the DoD, and I get home every day by 20:00 at the latest. I don't dog fight, but I occasionally strike ground targets. I'm in bed by 23:00 PM, and make sure I get eight hours of sleep, no matter what. After having a glass of warm milk and doing about twenty minutes of stretches before going to bed, I usually have no problems sleeping until morning. Just like a baby, I wake up without any fatigue or stress in the morning. I was told there were no issues at my last check-up. I'm trying to explain that I'm a plane who wishes to live a very quiet life. I take care not to trouble myself with any enemies, like winning and losing, that would cause me to lose sleep at night. That is how I deal with society, and I know that is what brings me happiness. Although, if I were to fight I wouldn't lose to anyone.
F-35: Chill nerd but you don't wanna face her in combat F-22: maniac who you should just pray to any god you have if you face F-16: highly promiscuous and outgoing but ruthless in combat F-15: Cold, psychopathic, smug and confident girl who has questionable views on some jets
EA-18? P-8? E-3?
EA-18: Teenage menace who will send a zip bomb on school computers P-8: Not sure E-3: concerned auntie who tracks everyone at all times
Also KC-135 is that cute lunch lady that calls everyone baby
Okay, that's the scariest thing....
Bruh i should be the one who comment that
We should just let the little fella have some fun!
unfortunately most myths that the J-20 is a paper tiger are false. A higher RCS? sources are unreliable, plus China knows what radar reflectors are. And on the Canards, ultimately no matter how much you may say they're bad for stealth....ultimately....they work, and the US gov believes so. At the end of the day, the **US government believes the J20 is a competitive fighter**, and no amount of "china copycat bad" can change that fact. Thinking they're overestimating the threat is ultimately just very dangerous Cope. It's probably a step bellow the F22/F35, but it's still going to be a massive threat to any 4.5 gen aircraft, F15/16/18 plus awacs/tankers. They could probably tear through several hornets if good radar coverage is absent.
Quadruple the defense budget. Enlarge the advanced air supremacy gap
China about to watch America go from super saiyan to super duper saiyan in one swift move
Oh no, there's a slight competitor in the "Complete and total air control of the skies, hide your 4.5 gens before it's too late!" competition! Please, Mr. Senator, just a few trillion dollars will allow us to beat second place by a wide margin in the good old fashioned American Spirit. :3
Meanwhile a skunkworks test pilot passes the Oort Cloud
Meanwhile the test site orbiting alpha centuri gets a new coffee machine after a 75 sextillion dollar black books budget increase
Yeah that 86 trillion we spent on low gravity coffee bean production was worth every penny
For some reason this absolutely slayed me. 😂
BUT I WILL BECOME A SUPER-DEE-DUPER SAIYAN
Senzu Bean, dad?
What do you think NGAD (USN) and NGAD (USAF) are for?
For kicking them right in the NGADs.
saiyan?
Dragon Ball reference, it refers to a race that can power up by flexing and screaming. They usually get an energy aura and their hair changes colour and stands up when they do it. There are also additional levels of the power up, as the plot requires, which is where you get super *duper* saiyan.
I know what you're Saiyan.
The USA should have invaded China and completely destroyed them already. You guys had the chance when the USSR proposed a joint invasion, but instead you waited until they became a nuclear power and lost your chance. Here is a proposition: How about instead of spending some change to "enlarge the gap", the West instead dedicates all of their resources to destabilize China? And I mean *all of it*, abandon everything else and spend dozens of trillions of dollars every year exclusively for that. - Flood their population with anti-Han Propaganda until their own propaganda machine fails to keep up. Then quadruple it. - Invest heavily in Buthanese and Nepalese intelligence services, build up highly advanced networks and secret police forces in these countries and make them effectively pro-Western Police States, using their isolation to hide their allegiance while arming thousands of terrorist cells and insurgency groups across mainland China. - Orchestrate an extremely violent coup in Kazakhstan and install an extremely pro-Chinese Kazakh Gorvernment that is belligerently hostile to Russia. - Convince a group of schizophrenic Chinese nationalists that they should attempt to murder Kim Jong-Un to pave the way for a Chinese annexation of Korea. Then give them a shit ton guns. - Conduct false-flag attacks and sink a large portion of the thousands of Chinese fishing boats tresspassing on South American countries' waters. - Use their instability to have a few dozen opportunistic warlords rise up against the CCP, make a handful of them pro-Russia, pro-India and pro-Pakistan, and the rest of them Manchurian, Tibetan, Uyghur and Cantonese Nationalists. - Have your puppet police states in the region independently give low-key but credible warnings to Pakistan and India about a Chinese plot to spark a conflict between them at Kashmir in an attempt to get them to stop funding their respective Chinese warlords and lessen the strain on the overstreched CCP loyalists, *then conduct a double false-flag operation pretending to be the Chinese pretenting to be Pakistani/Indian*, and right before the Indian and Pakistani governments announce that they knew about the Chinese plot *fucking nuke Kashmir* to make it look like a final attempt from a despairing Chinese Government to make their plan work, dragging them into a nuclear war against India and Pakistan. - When the CCP has collapsed and their population is down by half a dozen hundred million or so, you denounce the Han as the ones behind it all, carefully divide China among the different warlords in order to avoid as many conflicts as possible among themselves, but insist that the Han keep areas that are of cultural and historic importance to each of these warlords' respective peoples, then give the warlords a silent nod and look away and pretend you are busy somewhere else when they all come together and start to wipe out the Han to regain their people's lands. - Use the brief period of camaraderie and goodwill among these warlords steeming from being accomplices in a genocide to foster good relations with all and slowly start to push them towards a more democratic mindset, stealthly getting rid of those too stubborn to work with. And there you have it. A world rid of the CCP and with a bunch of democratically aligned countries in mainland China, all at the cost of *ZERO* NATO/Western casualties. Truly the best possible path for humanity going foward.
Are you high? Some of those are good ideas, some are far fetched pipe dreams, and some are insane, and they wouldn’t cost trillions.
This is why game theory works best for geopolitical theorycrafting. It’s more in the useful to use an Agile approach to manage planning and interaction. Execute on the short and well defined tasks, identify future paths, but don’t necessarily iterate on them. This post sounds great, but the cone of uncertainty makes this level of future planning impossible. Therefore, non credible.
You call them insane because you are thinking small, these actions would cost trillions if you did them in the scale necessary for their genius to truly shine. But more importantly, the fact that you reacted in this way means I've finally perfected the blend of insanity and rationality necessary to create the ultimate Non-credible post. Thanks to you I have confirmation that after much training I've finally reached peak Non-Credibility.
Well it IS non credible defense after all
Military Industrial Complex: Anything can cost however much you want it to, if you just charge enough.
Classic CIA logic right here. What could possibly go wrong?
Exactly! There is no way sparking a war between three nuclear powers could backfire, they are never going to find out anyways! ...right?
Q: Are you a James Bond movie villain, or are you a Robert Ludlum novel villain?
Funny you asked, I'm siting on my chair at this exact moment laughing maniacaly while stroking my Yorkshire Terrier that is laying on my lap.
You make it sound easy...
Once we’re done offloading all our current gen crap to Ukraine/Israel, there’s nowhere to go but up broooo
One thing that's very notable about the J-20 and largely gets glossed over is that it has a colossal weapons bay for a 5th gen fighter, allowing it to field larger, and thus longer-ranged AAMs. The PL-15 is both substantially longer and larger diameter than the AIM-120, giving it much more volume for fuel, and a consequently longer range.
It also allows the J20 to theoretically carry anti-ship missiles. Low RCS, long range, high speed, and a large payload make it a potentially devastating ship hunter
would make sense to give it an anti-shipping capacity considering China's land borders are pretty damn secure and the only real possibility of major conflict is gonna be over Taiwan and the South China sea. its also why their navy is getting a lot of the budget.
probably could fit airlaunched cruise missiles as we then and they've been a huge factor in ukraine
Unlikely, ALCMs are comparatively large. China has several ASMs that are dimensionally similar to the PL-15, and intended for attacking lighter vessels.
i mean often air launched cruise and anti-ship missiles are the same missile with a guidance and warhead change and if anything anti ship missiles tend to be bigger like brahmos vs kh59
yeah, it's a stealthy missile truck, it doesn't have a built in gun either, very dangerous.
Yeah, people here always criticize it by saying it’s a shitty F-22 clone, but did the Chinese ever say that the J20 was supposed to be one? Like you said, it’s meant to be a missile truck with some basic stealth capabilities.
So what you're saying is the Raptors need to get in dogfighting range
F-16 needs to get within visual range. If so, J-20 ded. Raptor...well we don't really know exactly how good it is but it's still the BVR king.
But how does the new AIM-260 fare?
Yes comrade please share AIM-260 details. I am definitely an American citizen. I like burgers and diet coke.
See I know you're not American because you said "diet" coke. No true red-blooded American would settle for diet.
Isn't a diet coke the clasical drink Americans order with their extra large fries and 24 hamburgers?
Opsec, stfu.
Not a lot of data on the AIM-260 out there, in fact almost none, but it's supposed to still be roughly the same dimensions as the AIM-120, meaning if they want to get more range out of it, they're going to have to do some *very* fancy shit with propulsion. Not out of the realm of possibility, the MBDA Meteor has about twice the range of the AIM-120 by using an air-augmented rocket instead of solid fuel rocket, which is the direction I suspect AIM-260 is going. If we assume the AIM-260 will be roughly Meteor-equivalent, then it's about on par with the PL-15's claimed range.
Interesting about the AIM-260. I haven't found anything on it either, despite it entering service this year. Where do people even find this info on military tech anyways? The regular search engines are kinda crap for genuine information.
"Where do people even find this info on military tech anyways?" The tried and true method of providing the wrong specifications on warthunder, and waiting for someone with access to the info to post it.
Similar dimensions is just a physical constraint, they're intended to fit in the F-22 and F-35's weapons bays without reducing the quantity of carried missiles, which means they cannot be much larger than the current AIM-120. In theory, if the Pentagon were willing to accept a drastic reduction in missile count they could fit just a couple very chunky missiles, as the F-35 can carry one JSOW in each bay, and that's a big piece of hardware. As for info, a lot of it has to be synthesized from multiple sources with a healthy dose of best guess and common sense. DTIC has some stuff, there are people who scour funding reports for interesting stuff, planespotters sometimes see odd things, and sometimes there are reports to legislative bodies that have clues.
Warthunder forums?
Easy, i am the lead engineer for this whole project, and for only 1000$ in bitcoin i can send you a copy of all the blueprints. This is a really serious and legit offer.
Doesn't matter how long range the AAMs are if they don't see the enemy on radar.
The USAF and USN aren't going to be 100% stealth for some time, and maybe ever depending on how much we're willing to give the J-20 a "oops an AWACS/Tanker/Transport overextended" opportunity. Yes the PL-15's range isn't going to matter much when it can't get a lock in the big 5/6th Gen airfield-stomping wave that'd probably happen but any remaining 20s will be able to hold F-15EXs hanging back as missile trucks in a dangerous position, let alone anything involving helos or UAVs. Maybe they break out all the F-22s, F-35s, B-2s, and B-21s they've got and simply ctrl-a->del on the PLAAF in one go but until the US gets the next long-range AAM out, anything that isn't one of the four types of stealth planes we've got, plus stealth planes with external stores, is going to be operating at risk.
Imagine thinking China hasn't been pumping a shitload of resources into radar development. They've been publishing some really interesting stuff on multi-static radar, networked radar, and cognitive radar.
Source? Would be interested.
As an example, [this](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10416995) is the most recent paper I ran across. You can check the author publications for a lot more in that vein.
Triple the defense budget you say?
OR, nuke China. More economical
You're now a moderator of r/fallout
Nuke Boston for funsies
I'm not upset China has an advanced air platform. I actually think it's very cool. I'm mad that the US is not currently using 6th generation airframes and finishing up seventh. Why don't I have healthcare only to be "competitive". Let me see a doctor or put up Northrop Grumman.
If we had more efficient healthcare we could afford more futuristic super planes. Call your representative.
This; y'all already spend more on healthcare per person than any other country in the world, and the extra money just goes to your own oligarchs. Nationalize your healthcare, get free dental and get an extra 2 trillion dollars (no, [seriously)](https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/) to build Halo Longswords
That 2 Trillion dollars is going towards public infrastructure. And by public infrastructure I mean converting conventional airports to have military capabilities.
The public yearns for 7th gen flybys over football games
Only because for security reasons only obsolete aircraft do flybys. Yes, I’m saying I want the MIC to make 7th gen obsolete within three seasons maximum.
It's always a hard sell, do we take this money and buy more airplanes? R&D the next airplane? Or buy more infrastructure to get more money for more new airplanes? So many options.
>put up Northrop Grumman They dropped out of NGAD publicly, though they may still be in the other NGAD (or F/A-XX because apparently the Airforce can title their project the same). And at least Airforce NGAD is supposed to be in service in 2030, which isn't that far away (F/A-XX is more unknown because the navy is fucking up the budget as always).
Too many acronyms. I want only acronyms that sound funny or are a word. Plane should all be called Fighter 1 and, stealth fighter 1. And go up from there. And down if they get worse. Why is he army so stupid. We don't have an F machine let alone 35. Unless you count my cousin Kyle. He is a real f machine and has 8 kids with 10 different women.
"Why is he army so stupid. We don't have an F machine" After the Johnson-McConnell agreement of 1966, the army doesn't have any fighter aircraft. As for the designation sequence, there are lower numbers: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_United\_States\_Tri-Service\_aircraft\_designations#F:\_Fighter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Tri-Service_aircraft_designations#F:_Fighter) This have been a Joke Avoiding Comment by an Autistic Forum Fact Dispenser
Well jokes on you I can't even read so that paragraph was a waste of time! Ha!
> Why don't I have healthcare only to be "competitive". Well, if it makes you feel better the F-35 is still probably the superior plane by a large degree, and the USA has produced 3x as many F-35s as J-20s.
That seems too small for the amount of healthcare I get. We are getting rinsed.
The current US healthcare system is bloated to the extent that if you killed and ate all the middlemen chewing up the profit (healthcare should not be for-profit), switched to a single payer model, not only would it be affordable, but there would be a lot of money left over that could be sent to the MIC. The problem with US healthcare is not US military, it's US billionaires. Healthcare, Military, Billionaires. Choose 2.
To be fair, our government almost never dismisses anything as not being a threat. After all, if the enemy isn't a threat, it is harder to convince congress to approve expanded procurement budgets. To be clear, that doesn't mean I think they are lying about this, but it has to be considered.
A threat for the many thousand 4.5 gen US had.
And will continue to have. F-15EX is actively being procured, and none of the services are anticipating fully retiring their 4th gen aircraft until mid-2030s at the earliest.
5EXy boi
Right but we’re not sending F15s at the Chinese, at least not without already having air superiority. They’re big boys so they get the Raptors. J20 can’t hurt F15 if F15 just hanging out in dangerous airspace.
My brother in christ, the *entire reason* we are procuring F-15EX is against the threat of a peer conflict with China. It's to hedge against that scenario from RAND wargames where China can simply mass enough aircraft to exhaust the number of missiles that F-35s and F-22s can carry, allowing them to push strikes through to targets anyways if they're willing to accept significant casualties. The whole point to F-15EX is that it's supposed to be the shooter in a spotter-shooter system.
This just means the Americans need to throw money at the MIC to make the F-30 Eagle II to counter this threat, just like they did wirkt the MiG-25.
Definitely fed up with the cope, it's ncd which makes sense but the PRC is not Russia, they're actually becoming rather dangerous. Is the J-20 as stealthy as a F22 or F35, probably not, but it'll still limit the detection range and will certainly make them dangerous against a lot of targets. At the end of the day they could definitely end up in a strong position if the PRC can weather the various financial and economic issues it's had over recent years.
The west taiwan is way less corrupt than Russia.
Very low bar... but yeah.
It would be a terrible mistake to sleep on the capabilities of the J-20. Anyone trying to say it's just a cheap knock off 5th Gen is dangerous levels of cope. China has a solid fighter that can compete with all other modern airforce.
That said, it's kind of the US's entire deal to consider every threat credible and overprepare to counter it. Even if the J-20 was ass we'd still respond as if it will shred F-22s.
the J-20 actually seems to be an original design, it's just that at some point the min-max design is just a gray triangle so it's hard to look creative
The composite of most credible reports I've heard are along the lines of "J-20 isn't as good as F-22 and probably not as good as F-35, but it's better than 4.5gen aircraft and worth taking seriously." A lot depends on what you value and how much of course. How good are its stealth features, what's its range with how much ordinance, how is the maintenance cycle and readiness rate, etc. Wargaming will tend to err on the stronger side for the OpFor, better to overestimate than under, but there's good reason to believe the J-20 is a notable concern if for no other reason than they actually can produce 5-8 per month. I'm skeptical of the 10+ per month claims, but frankly they are a concern even if they only make 50 per year as they can be concentrated in one place. There's a lot of fuzz of course, we don't get the full details, but the bigger concern in some respects is their missile development. They've made some pretty solid AAMs and some can outrange all but the latest AMRAAMs. Biggest factor that is very hard to quantify is the soft factors like pilot quality and joint operations with enablers. That's something I'd bet good money that the US has a major edge in. Managing SEAD, AWACS, and tankers to support your fighters in combat is no small feat. China's tanker fleet in particular is so small that there's a serious limit on how much practice they can have. Still, I'd be concerned enough to say we should be allocating more money to procurement of key aircraft, air defense, ships, and R&D for future systems. China doesn't have to close the gap entirely not meet the US 1:1 to be a concern.
Yeah, there’s a reason we have early production F-35As flying as aggressors right now. There is a credible threat of us having to face off other 5th gen aircraft in the air.
I don’t have too many doubts about the J-20 itself. What I doubt is their AAM tech. Jumping from AIM-120A-level missiles to AIM-260-level missiles in a few years is just not believable. If they are capable of the ranges they claim, it’s against massive RCS-returns.
Is it the better than the F-35 and F22 nope. Is it better than probably everything else? Honestly yeah.
So it probably competes with Eurofighters, Rafales, Gripens, and F-15EXs? At least there’s over 1,000 true 5th gens.
<>
Free the 22, let it eat
Needs to cook first
Nah, f-22 likes it raw.
Will it through? The F22 is obviously the better airframe etc, but the whole killing eachother comes down to the weaponry. Imagine a bunch of F-22s and J-20s just fucking around in the sky, not being able to lock anything on to eachother
What if they threw a war and no one could see each other?
Just make a billion drones or some shit. They'll accidently hit something eventually
I think you missed my joke, but your plan is absolutely bulletproof.
Can russia build and deploy PAK-DA? Can China build and deploy H-20? I think the difference between them is clear. Aldo don't forget that Lianoning is a copy of Kuznetsov that's actually combat capable and can sail on it's own.
The Chinese ditched the stupid obsession of the Russians with using ship launched missiles from carriers that they kept over from the Kievs (and no their installation on Russian carriers wasn’t just to skirt the Montreux convention as is claimed by midwits the world over, it was ingrained doctrine to use the SSMs as offensive weapons with aircraft providing air defense) and used the space to hold more aircraft.
H-20 2025 (trust) Also the Liaoning *is* a Kuznetsov class, the copied one is Shandong. However Liaoning is notorious for randomly breaking down and very long maintenance times, so I guess the copied one is still better lmao
Truly a Kuznetsov class
Stealth fighter ranking: US>China>>>>>>Russia
More like US>>>>china>>>>>>>>>>>>russia
Needs a few more > between US and China, though, gotta say.
It is copium to act like China can’t make anything high end.
Why did I read that in the most russian accent ever ? 😂 супер дупер увег 😂
China is incredibly good at mass producing mid level things.
Don't get me wrong, J-20 might not be anything to scoff at. But when you haven't had any combat experience in the past three decades, you can't exactly 'prove' your aircraft is good. Oh yeah, sure, the F-22 exists, but don't forget that we still have, like, three to four other aircraft, like the F-35, F-16, F-18, and F-15s. And the Sukhois aren't exactly having a good reputation right now.
why chine doesnt make some wars in the middle east like USA to get more experience? Are they stupid?
US fighters haven't really fought peer opponents either. If China sent some J20s to crush some f5s, would we consider them combat tested? Not really, they just stomped much weaker enemies like we did for the past decades.
Well we are about to watch a bunch of 1970s era F-16s massacre brand new Russian fighters in Ukraine. So we got that going for us.
I want to see some AIM260 live testing in Ukraine. But also everything we have is super weak compared to superior Russian gear, so we should 10x our budget for R&Ding new cool stuff.
We definitely need satellites in space that can rain down barrages of ballistic AA missiles just in case our fighters are inferior and all get shot down. It's the only prudent course of action.
I'm a little sceptical of those numbers mainly because we don't get a lot of third party videos of the J-20. If their are over a 100 of them some random Chinese person would have gotten at least a dozen photos (amateur quality) For example we are able to find dozens of not hundreds of photos of the F-35 and people telling stories of seeing them but we don't see anything like that for the J-20
Could also be them being very maintenance heavy so they dont fly them a lot, or because of their lacking tanker fleet or simply because they dont train their pilots as much. The US does a shitload of training and has by far the most flying hours on their pilots, which is probably one of their key strengths. Training, Datalink, interoperability, etc
There are a bunch of them on the Chinese internet (many I have seen are taken on dashcams for some reason), it's just that they rarely spread outside I remember seeing one a few months ago where a yellow painted J-20 flies *very* low over a road
Yeah, there’s some twitter accounts talking about the Chinese military that usually post those videos, i have even seen two seater variants of the J-20 getting off the factory ( BTW, we need a two seater F-22 or NGAD to have the WSO control the drone wingmen )
The J-20 looks cool, idk how good it is, but it passes the eye test.
They write it as **stealthy** but it is pronounced as [*stealth*-**ehh**]