China's even ripping off the F-22 Raptor
 

Just catching up on some reading at work since our internet was down for a little while.

Anyways, just read that late last month China somewhat allowed the world to see the fifth generation fighter they've been working on. It's only done high speed taxi runs, but they say in the coming months, maybe even by the end of this month they will have it officially take flight.

Here's my problem with this situation right now. Does anybody know what the YF23 is? It was the jet competing against the F-22 for the contract to be te next generation stealth fighter, and although it displayed impressive results, the Raptor got picked. And what did Mcdonell Douglas do with the super computer, data, and plans of the YF23? They sold it to China....way to give them a jumpstart on allowing them to build up their ability for stealth fighters :rollseye: Now not 100% of it is because of Douglas, they say when the project for the J-20 was announce, Lockheed Martin was seriously hit for a while with email and computer hacking, with alot of them containing information on the development of the F-22, since they are still trying to correct some problems, like ejection seat pieces rusting.

Now Russia has the T50 prototype in testing as well, and unlike America, they are going to sell this to other countries, they believe around 1,000 will be produced, compared to the F-22 wit less then 200 made. Why is this a problem? Two reasons, strength in numbers. China says they may be able to build the J-20 as cheap as 50%-70% less then it takes to manufacture the F-22. ( I will say though you get what you pay for, the J-20 is using Russian engines, China can't seem to build a reliable engine that can create enough thrust to be comeptative lol.) And that this technology and fighter may be passed on to North Korea, as well as Iran.

Unfortunately this administration in Washington dropped the ball on this one (and rarely have I had much beef with the Obama administration so far) by ending the production of the F-22, having Robert Gates back it up by saying that China won't have a stealth fighter in the line up by 2020....but they are 9 years ahead of the date ( which comes back to Douglas selling the stuff to China, otherwise the statement may have been true) and not allowing it to be purchased by other countries, ones who were seriously interested like South Korea, India, Taiwan (who desperatly need new fighters, and now ones capable of handling this new type of craft) etc. Taiwan alone wanted to give us 6bil. in military hardware and supplies( America is draggin their feet on that since China has such an influence on America) And I'm sure they would of doubled that for the F-22 since their fleet of F16's are aging dramatically, and are still going to be outdated if they ecieve the F16C/D compared to the J-20. Now we are blowing tons more money on the F-35 that IMO is already outdated, and is continuing to have delays and problems and funding, just end that program. The F-35 is like GT5, stop delaying it and trying to update it, bring it out already, it's already outdated.

Okay, rant done, had to get it off my chest, what do you guys think, will this new Chinese fighter be a threat to us? Should Douglas be in trouble for giving China the necessary information to build a copy of America's work? Should we restart the F-22 program, and scrap that heap of **** known as the F-35? I want to know, because this is a serious problem.

Unless we are selling them American Pilots I wouldnt be so worried.

chinese manufacturing is unreliable in general. They are just cheap....

dont we always have some top class air force technology in developement? i'm not to worried, our airforce is still untouchable

F22 is a lot of money spent for no reason. Air superiority fighter, sure, but its going to be outclassed. Its too much money spent IMO. 100 million bucks per plane? Do we need more then 200 of them to shoot down 4 cheap knockoffs, reverse engineered and built in china?
Stealth is just a PART of what makes the F22 a great plane.

The worlds one big happy place and everyone loves America, why should we be worried? :?:

It's not so much of do WE need 200 of them, but why couldn't we sell them to other countries, it brings money in, having the planes international would make finding, building, and replacing parts alot easier instead of having to ship parts from here.

Though I will say they say the F-22 takes 30 hours of maintenance for every hour it flies!

None the less, were seriously slacking here, and also this internet espionage is pissing me off from them, how can we not have a proper defense to counter act or prevent it from China...

During the Korean War we flew our F-86 Sabre against the Mig-15 and we shot them down at around a 10-1 ratio if I do remember correctly. Those are some of the most closely matched up planes to be flown against each other and we dominated not because of the aircraft but because of our pilots and their training. Quality and quantity can come into play but not as importantly as pilots and training.

Fighter pilots make movies, bomber pilots win wars. Strike that.

Fighter pilots make movies, ballistic missiles win wars where you are actually engaging a country.

There was also no stealth technology, electronic guidance, guided missiles, jet engines were being refined, hitting mach 1 was only a dream, and onboard radar jammers were no around. today its a different ball game, and were slipping into minor league material.

Wait until the F-35 actually starts getting delivered. From what I understand, the F-22 was a test bed for a lot of the stuff on the F-35. No thrust vectoring, but still one bad ass fighter.

I didnt see any turn signals on it and no made in china tag.I say go for it they will mass produce these and sell them to us at a discounted price.

Guys also , dont think that we are slacking in the arms race. Remeber the sr71 blackbird put out of service in 1971 and we learned about it in the late 80's early 90's. There is a ton of crap out there that outr govt doesnt tell us.
Let those chinese make knockoff of our raptor. The design is 10 years old (going by what the govt telsl us the first flight was) They claim production started in 2001 which really means these planes have been around since the late 90's.

Ther eis a reason why many air and space museums will have instact aircraft but any one showing a stealth has its cockpit blacked out , its engines removed and its surface sanded.
I had teh opportunity to climb abord the AWAC aircraft in 1998 and then my buddy had just enough clearance to allow me to open a door and view the stealth fighter we all know. He looked at me and said this is it. I dont have clearance to get close the the aircraft and if you try you will be shot.This was 100 yards away in a hangar at tinker airforce base in Oklahoma city. And before 9-11 crap

Exactly, in the Maranas Turkey Shoot we pitted Avengers vs. Mitsubishi's and blew them out of the skies. Some of the zeros were out dated but the up to date ones we shot down were supposed to be better than the Avengers.

you're all foolish if you think that you're keeping up with whats being developed. Manned Aircraft are quickly becoming a thing of the past. I'm not getting any more involved in the thread unless someone has some information from somewhere other than the internet.

There's been lots of news stories, magazine articles and the like about drones

thats exactly what i was gonna say... fighter planes are almost obselete entirely. Even besides drones UAVs and what not, for every airplane in the sky there are probably 2000 surface to air missles. Thats what made planes like the sr71, u2, and other high speed/altitude planes worthless in the first place. now its all about flexing the muscles

***COUGH***

Avengers was not a fighter. Hellcat and Corsair were the main fighters at the end of the war.

Your right. I always confuse hellcat with avenger.

Try almost 20 years the F-22 has been around. I remember building a model of it when I was in grade school (90-93)

the news stories, magazine articles, and the like are about 10 years behind the times.