People that pooh-pooh "cheap Chinese goods" or Chinese "copies" are either missing the point, misinformed or jealous. The reality is that China is now uniquely positioned in the world for having massive investment in research, while also having the world's largest manufacturing capability at the same time. Indicators of the extent of research are things like the development of the Tianhe interconnect which operates twice as fast as Infiniband, or the development of the Loongson multi-core processors and the fact that the largest number of research publications in materials sciences came from China last year. The J-20 is another example of a development which has clearly surprised western analysts. Much has been written and said about it and it is now becoming evident that the design of the aircraft is actually more sophisticated than the T-50 in terms of its stealth characteristics. This can't happen when you lack excellence in basic research... The SD-10B is possibly the world's first dual-mode AAM. The list goes on and on.
As China continues to eclipse other nations - especially western countries - at a time when western economies are in trouble, the research gap will first be addressed and then China will tear away. This is already happening in certain areas, and will start to happen across the board.
Although the design looks impressive one needs to have an intimate knowledge of 'stealth' theory make such claims, does Koop or any other arm chair general know anything about creeping waves, edge diffraction, specular reflection, or corner reflectors to make such claims? Have they studied both aircraft's geometry and somehow calculated the effect of radar waves on both aircraft? The simple answer is no, only the designers know just how 'stealthy' each aircraft is. Lastly, the PAK-FA prototype that we know today is not a low observability platform but an aerodynamics platform, remember there are at least six more prototypes, a dedicated low abservability platform is yet to be disclosed so when people make the above claims it just shows how ill informed they are.
If you still want to make an argument about what 'looks stealthy' look at the F-15 silent eagle, even with inline engines and the intake compressors exposed it matched the F-35 in frontal RCS! So much for looking 'stealthy'.
By the way why no mention of the J-20's canards? What about the engines? Before Pakistani's were claiming the PAK-FA-s engines weren't 'stealthy' and that the SU-30MKI's canards were detrimental to radar. Now the same laws don't apply to the J-20? 
HongWu said:
There is no exaggeration. T-50 does not even shield its engine fan blades. The big gap between engines is also not stealthy at all. T-50 is at best 4.5 in terms of stealth but with very good kinematics.
Stop, just stop, it's evident you don't know what your talking about. Firstly all aircraft have its engines shielded by nozzles. Secondly there is no aircraft on earth, not one that has it's fan blades shielded, from the rear even the F-22's engines are visible, and that is why the rear part of any aircraft poses the biggest problems in terms of IR and RCS.
Now please do explain how having a 'gap' between the engines isn't 'stealthy'? Last time I checked radar waves travel along surface areas, and when they come in contact with something like an engines 'hump' they often tend to follow the circumference of that 'hump' (called creeping waves) and then dissipate off of saw tooth corners on the wings and even tail boom. The PAK-FA has these corners and a tail boom designed to dissipate the effects, something referred to as edge diffraction.
scuthan said:
In no field Russia can compete with China outside military industry. Actually even Singarpore is far more influential than Russia in terms of civilian tech. Russia makes no difference from Mexico and Brazil today, every east asia country has superior civilian tech and industry than Russia. Russia imports huge amount of digit machine tool, electric products, machinery, generation facility, ships, telecom equipment and service, etc from China every year, what they can export is oil, mine, lumber, gas, fish, and whores.
You are like all the others, a simple minded racist that is naive about the world, keep reading I will destroy some of your misconceptions.
below_freezing said:
Russia is ahead in 1 very tiny specific area of metallurgy: single crystal turbine blades, which is completely useless in every other area of application except military jet engines. Hopefully they can be replaced by ceramic coatings or even a pure ceramic engine.
you don't know the first thing about military engines, nor do you know the applications and process behind their construction and how it correlates to various fields that you so blatantly ignored, quick what is the TBO of Chinese engines? What about service life or reliability? Why did the WS-10 take so long to spool? What about the FADEC? How efficient are Chinese engines, or do Chinese engines use plasma ignition?
If you knew anything at all you would know that many military applications have a direct connection to civil applications. For instance something like an aircraft has dozens sometimes thousands of companies that contribute sometimes these are defense companies sometimes they are civil. For instance, an aircrafts engines are made by one company while the radar and mission computer is made by others, while other parts of the aircraft such as canopy may be made by I civil company, the same holds true for jet engines, software and various other components can come from subcontractors.
At the end of the day the engine that requires less TBO's, that has greater reliability, greater thrust, faster spool time, longer service life, better efficiency ect ect is the engine that was built using better machining, build by better engineers, has better software, uses more advanced methods of metallurgy and on the list goes.
below_freezing said:
There is 1 steel company from Russia in the top 10. There are 3 in the top 10 for China. In chemicals, there are 2 in the top 10 from China (one from Taiwan). There are ZERO from Russia in the top 50.
This is complete ignorance, since when did having the largest steel companies prove anything? Am I supposed to believe that Chinese steel is super duper advanced because 3 out of 10 Chinese companies made that list?
below_freezing said:
Do you even know what optronics and LEDs are... you think they're limited to light bulbs?
i specifically wrote "LED display" so that the lightbulbs get filtered out. it shows even more dominance. What specific area of optronics are we talking about? LED, OLED, liquid crystals, quantum dots, plasma? in which of these specific areas is Russia better than China? My cousin has actually assembled cell phones before and even built his own from spare parts, he has never heard of a single display from Russia but plenty of displays are from China. Lasers? China leads the world in laser technology by 15 years. Laser welding is so routine in china even tiny noname companies can provide top of the line laser welding equipment:
Firstly quantum dots were discover by a Russian named Alexey I. Ekimov, this was like two decades ago. LED can also be credited or partially credited to a Russian by the name of Oleg Vladimirovich Losev which apparently did this in 1927, and areas of plasma have long been studied in Russia. I'm quite sure that cheap Chinese televisions and cell phones are not more advanced than something like Russian rockets, Soyuz capsules, and parts of the international space station built by Russia, especially when American often depend on these rockets and capsules to get to and from space. And the international space station has stringent requirements as well as quality quid lines, in other words do you think the Americans would be happy if Russian liquid crystal monitors failed while they were in space? Or that it would ever be certified?
below_freezing said:
What a joke that you think that heavy industry depends on being at an early stage of development. Africa is also at an early stage of development, where is their heavy industry? Why does India have to import its machine tools from China? Why does Russia have to shamefully import construction equipment while China doesn't? Why is Russia not a top leading shipbuilder and China is? Shanghai Shipyards makes billions USD per year building ships with 100,000 tons, larger than carriers, you think it is because of technical reasons we don't make carriers? you think we can't make 30 year old Russian carriers with half the displacement?
You’re going to eat those words:
Caterpillar digs into China | Manufacturing | Crain's Chicago Business
It took Caterpillar Inc. three decades to reach $1.5 billion in annual sales in China. The Peoria-based construction-equipment maker now aims to more than double that in the next three years.
Not only were you wrong but now according to you China is shameful. Your argument about Russia not being a top civil ship builder is just sad, the United States is also not a top civil ship builder, and that means what? The United States has more experience building ships than anyone.
scuthan said:
Well, it's easy to gain confidence compared with Chinese aviation. but I think russian aviation is rest in yesterday's laureate. I know Iran, North Korea, and some former soviet union republics are using Tu154 today. but can you name a single modern russian plane succeed to obtain international certificate of airworthiness and have a standing in international market today? though Brazil doesn't produce fighter and bomber, it has a very successful civilian avation company - Embraer. i saw lots of them in the US. it's alot ahead of China and Russia.
Why don’t you do a little research next time instead of making assumptions?
The superjest 100 has received multiple international certificates including its engines. Sokhoi has partnered with multiple foreign companies in order to meet international requirements companies such as:
Alenia Aeronautica
Snecma
Boeing
Thales
and many more international companies. As for orders there are
268 this includes orders from the US and Italy.
and if you were smart you would know that both Russia and the US has accidents mostly because both countries pushed technology to the limit but also because they conducted so many space flights.
