What we support and defend

[carl]

Protect them from what? From two prototypes using 80s-vintage Russian engines because the Chinese haven't got round to producing an appropriate power plant?

Earlier we spoke of how reflexive paranoia lead the Soviet Union to bankrupt themselves preparing for a hypothetical war. Would you have us do the same?

Have you ever asked yourself why the Chinese chose to release pictures of the J-20 when hey did? I think this guy has it about right on that score:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/MA14Ad02.html

Please Dayuhan, please. I was obviously commenting about the future, the future, years down the road. Things that may happen, not things that are.

The most critical planes in our inventory are the tankers, the big E aircraft and the C planes. They would be very hard to protect out over the open ocean because the open ocean is so far from land. So if, if the mission of the J-20 was to get those airplanes over water, it could do it no matter how far their engine tech lagged ours. It is a great big thing and that often means a lot of range.

Now that isn't a worry today, but in 6-8 years, it could be a big worry. Then you would need something to protect them since there won't be enough F-22s.

The comment was also a just a thought about what might be possible to do quick if the need arose. It was not an argument to go do that right now. And it was also an idea about how a very limited mission, protecting those big planes as they transited over the open ocean, could be done less expensively. Something like the 787 idea I posited wouldn't be good for much if anything else. Making something for a very limited mission can be a lot cheaper.

I have asked myself what the Red Chinese were up to by allowing the aircraft to be photographed when it was. One thing I believe is it was just good fun to stick to the big nosed Yankee. The other thing I, and others, asked is whether those were actually the first flights or just the first time they showed it. Also whether those are actually the only two flying right now. We mostly know what the Red Chinese want us to know, which I would guess isn't much.

I read the article you cited and I judged it to be more sniffing dismissiveness than not. It reminded me a little of an article in Air Progress magazine I read about the MiG-21 in 1964 or 65. That article concluded that the MiG would present little if any problem to our fighters over the DRV. The actual case was rather different. It also reminded me of some of the judgments of Japanese aircraft capabilities prior to WWII. My reading of history makes me a bit nervous when people are so cocksure that the other guy won't be able to do it.

One thing that may have been brought up before about the F-35 but needs to be kept in mind. The original title of the program was JSF, Joint Strike Fighter. Strike Fighter is a gold and silver winged zoomie code word for Light Bomber. They call it that because the zoomies would die of shame if somebody called them bomber pilots. The F-35 is primarily a light bomber, secondarily a fighter. It just doesn't have the performance for 1st class fightering. I don't really mean turn & burn performance, though I've read it doesn't have that either, I mean it isn't all that fast and can't go high. If you were up against something like a really long range MiG-31, it could not do anything about it but watch it go by. If, I say if again, the J-20 is sort of like that, the F-35 can't harm it because it isn't really reasonable to expect a light bomber to do that.