Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Really? Where is the evidence? One photograph of the plane?

It is entirely possible that the J-20 may have abysmal manoeuvring characteristics, may not be that stealthy and have a wealth of serious systems issues. ....and it may not. One good airplane type, does not a serious threat make.
The engineers and the fellows in the trade press are pretty good at determining general performance from the configuration and size of the airplanes, not perfect but pretty good. The air molecules are only going to act one way and gravity is a constant. Besides, they have a lot of photos to work with so I tend to believe them when they say this thing looks like a high altitude, long range, missile toting supercruiser.

It is true that the J-20 may be a flop. It is probably not prudent to base your planning on that assumption. It is more prudent to assume they will get it right and assume that the airplane will do what it appears capable of. In that case we have big problem, and depending upon what we have to fight with, maybe one that can't be solved.

One good airplane type does a serious problem make. The MiG-15 was very serious problem for the west. The only thing that helped with that problem was the F-86. If for some reason or other the F-86 hadn't been there, we would had exactly zero airplanes that could have kept the MiGs from killing everything.

Conversely, the F-15 couldn't be matched by the MiG-21 and 27. Big problem for the Russians until they made the SU-27 and MiG-29. But there was a span of years there they were quite vulnerable.

The point of the above two paragraphs is the threat airplanes were matched and the problem reduced. By our refusal to make more than that mighty 187 or so F-22s, we have consciously chosen not to match the threat. When those 187 are used up we will have big trouble.