Saturday, May 19, 2012

Chinese Stealth Fighter

Flying over the skies of Chengdu in southwest China, the Chinese's latest stealth plane - the J-20 Might Dragon - is a testament to China's growing prowess in military technology.

The debut flight of the plane may serve as a warning to the U.S. air force, which has been plagued by a list of problems in their jets - including the revelation that some of their jets have a faulty oxygen system which have slowly been poisoning their pilots.

Sightings of the black plane taking off have again led to claims that the plane was developed off the back of stolen U.S. or Russian plans, a claim strongly denied by China.


The Chinese J-20 stealth fighters take too the air for test runs: The planes mark China's entry as the third nation to have stealth technology vehind the U.S. and Russia


See anything familiar? The F-22 Raptor has similar canted tail-fins, a similar bubble canopy and nose section, and both have no flat surfaces to help avoid radar detection

Wired claims that the current batch of U.S. fighter jets are struggling due to labour disputes, cost over-runs, and lethal design flaws.

First off, the U.S.'s Lockheed’s F-22 Raptor - the latest stealth fighter which cost $66.7 billion to develop - have been poisoning its pilots owing to a faulty oxygen system. Meanwhile, workers at Lockheed’s F-35 factory have gone on strike, with no end in sight.

The F-35 has also been delayed by several years due to design costs - and the delay means that the cost of building thousands of new jets has risen by hundreds of billions of dollars.

China originally claimed the J-20 would not be ready until 2017 at the earliest, and the U.S, countered and said it would likely be 2020 or later.

However, the test flight shows how close to completion the first models are, and Wired points out that China eschews the U.S. system of carefully testing new jets over a decade.

Instead, China holds preliminary tests and then passes the jets over to the military, and reply on feedback to improve the next generation.

The U.S. tried to emulate this model with the F-35 - but encountered design flaws which ended up costing the military billions of dollars.

Wired said the Chinese were using imported Russian engines to power the the J-20, and said this could lead to future issues and delays in rolling out the stealth jets.


And Russia makes three: The MiG jet was built to rival the U.S. stealth programme

Last year China was caught in an international row after the U.S. charged and jailed Indian-American Noshir Gowadia, a former B-2 stealth bomber engineer, for leaking secrets to China. He was jailed for 32 years.

And when the J-20 was unveiled, other nations - incredulous how quickly the Chinese has developed and tested the stealth fighter aircraft - said the technology must have been stolen.

One of the more extraordinary claims was that it had gained invaluable information from parts of an American F-117 Nighthawk stealth bomber that had been shot down over Serbia during the Kosovo War – the only F-117 ever shot down.

The Chinese insist that the country's J-20 stealth fighter jet was the work of the country's own designers and engineers.

An unnamed official was quoted as saying: 'It's not the first time foreign media has smeared newly unveiled Chinese military technologies. It's meaningless to respond to such a speculation.'

Chinese pilot Xu Yongling said that the J-20 possesses an advanced supersonic cruise ability and powerful air mobility that are technological breakthroughs for the country.

He added it would have been impossible for China to glean technology from the F-117 as the 'outdated' technology was behind the current generation of fighters.





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