It’s damned embarrassing and maddening, but ya gotta hand it to the Chinese–they know the stuff of which the POTUS is made (hot air and ego) and they how to time leaks for maximum impact.

I wonder if any of the press pool traveling will inquire of the Commander in Chief if he would re-evaluate the decision on the F-22 (assuming there’s any hope of reconstituting the program in a reversal)…

Russia is in the final stages of developing their own 5th generation fighter. Built by Sukhoi and known internally as the T-50, it is expected to begin flying by the end of the year. This fighter will join the the SU-35’s which are already in service that the russians themselves refer to as generation 4 ++ fighters.

Erick,

So do you want the original 360+ F22’s originally planed or the 180 that Congresscritters want, instead of the 140 that Gates is calling for?

How about tankers? Are you not concerned that the KC135R feet was built in the late 50’s and there is still no contract to build new ones? It’s hung up in Congresscritter stupidity and a President who is not putting pressure on the AF to get a contract done by the way.

What about the inconvenient fact that President Bush was calling for the cap of the F22 build out before he left office and the plan for 360 F22’s was ended by President Bush?

Plenty to be mad at Gates and Obama about when it comes to defense acquisition policies, but the F22 debate is more about a a jobs program than a threat by the Chinese.

The best answer to keep the F 22 lines going would be to allow sales to Israel by the way, but Obama is not exactly big on Israel is he?

Just as BHo does not appear to be much of a respectful and admiring U.S. constitutional scholar, his comprehension of U.S. military doctrine is so off the charts it makes no difference whether he destroys us benignly or with a most malignant intent. Perhaps after he got stoned, if he spent time watching “The World at War” on TV instead of trying to perfect his lame game he would understand that in war the ultimate victor has overwhelming superiority in numbers, technology, strategy -and the resources to maintain them continuously.

Also, there are anecdotal reports amongst aviators that Russia has deployed aircraft for testing to challenge and defeat our F22. In a world with very few capable and willing U.S. allies BHo and his tool Gates are doing an admirable job of Red Celling and defeating their own. Unless we can turn this around quickly, they will take our Nation down, along with heretofore the world’s best armed forces -and a foundation for our very survival as a great republic.

It sounds like Obama just told China they can have Taiwan:

http://www.reuters.com/article/hotStocksNews/idUSBJB00358120091117

so the next question for all of you complainers of the price tag is? What are you willing to pay for the next generation air superiority weapon? 100 million? Good luck, 2-3 Billion maybe. China and Russia will kick us out of the sky, you better build up your surface to air technologies and radar/lidar networks. Oh wait, thats what the Soviets did and how’d that work out?

At the risk of being repetitive, here is Obama before being elected, explaining his virulent anti-defense stand:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtwRcZXrz0k

There is no excuse for anyone to be surprised at his actions since January 20th.

Obama is a clear and present danger to this country.

Just think, Obama, his buds Rahm and David are making the decisions which will influence this country for at least a generation. We are already weaker in the eyes of the world, especially China and Russia and frankly, I don’t know anyone who has any respect for Obama. We are in a bad situation that will take us years to overcome. This is what you get when you let a community organizer get elected president. This is definitely above his pay-grade. (to steal a phrase)

This reminds me of the movie Firefox. Underestimate the enemy and rely on the hero to rescue us from bad decisions from our great leader. The problem is the CIA is getting gutted and Clint Eastwood is not available.

The most capable fighter the US has EVER put out, killed by Obama and Gates.

One day, we’ll be at war with China, wishing we had more of these.

Remember Rumsfelds words “You go to war with the Army you have…”

I obviously have no evidence, but given that the Chinese are notorious for stealing industrial secrets in the non-defense areas, and that copyrights and patents mean nothing to them either, I would wager that they are “unexpectedly” testing this fighter because of successful espionage.

“Unexpected” has become the verbal symbol of this disastrous administration.

Remember how we licked Germany and Japan? We destroyed their oil facilitys denying them fuel for their war machines! Look carefully—–the communists in their eco guise are denying us oil! The environmentalists are destroying our power generating dams and shutting down coal fired electricty plants and denying us drilling ANYWHERE for oil. Denying us Nuclear energy and now any refining of oil! Gosh do you think they might have an ulterior motive???given that most of the eco leaders are long time communists! Noooooo they only want to save the salmon!!!

We have had an ecology of military aircraft. Different birds fit into differnt niches. each designed for a very specific role, evolved to do that role extremely well.

Now we are moving to two “species” of aircraft — an advanced tactical air supriority fighter and a much less expensive multi-role fighter/attack bird.

The justification for the F-35 is it’s cheap (and therefore plentiful) and can do the job of many. Cheaper because we only need to maintain this single aircraft, as opposed to many different (and non-interchangeable) aircraft.

But can it do the job of many previous widely different species of aircraft, as effectively?

Likewise, we’re phasing out the F-16, F-15, F-14, F-5 — in favor of a single platform. Granted, the F-22 is better than all of those one-on-one. How about combined?

I for one think having fewer kinds of aircraft is less flexible. Where there are gaps incapability, there’s no easy way to fill the gap — we only have the two kinds.

In the first Persian Gulf war, we saw the effective use of a wide range of aircraft. Now we are limiting our resources.

The F-35 might be a suitable bird for our European and Middle East allies. For ourselves, we should have a wider variety to choose from.

The money quotes, from the original article, come from the PLAAF’s deputy commander: “[The J-XX] is currently under development . . . [it] may soon undertake its first flight, quickly enter flight testing and then quickly equip the forces . . . according to the current situation, [the entry into service] may take another eight to 10 years[.]”

Given the immense technical complexity of the task at hand, eight years from maiden flight to entry into service is probably being exceedingly generous: The Eurofighter had a nine-and-a-half year run between maiden flight and inception, while the Rafale had a fourteen year run. Both are substantive less complex than the F-22, which itself had a fifteen year gap between the maiden flight of the YF-22 and the introduction of the F-22A. And China’s had a turbulent design history, with both the J-8 and J-10 having considerable teething problems as they have grown-up. Given the size of the task, ten years seems a bit optimistic, but let’s spot the PLAAF as much and call it ten years from maiden flight to final production model.

Assuming that it had its maiden flight tomorrow, at a ten year gestation cycle, that would give the PLAAF a fifth-generation fighter in squadron service on November 18, 2019. Which…well, that’s fairly close to Secretary Gates’s claim that no other power would have a fifth-generation fighter prior to 2020, being off by a whole six weeks. Given the nature of things, it would take another two or three years to achieve presence in significant enough numbers to be an effective combat force, which puts us into late 2022, which is reasonably close to Gates’s claim that prior to 2025, no power would have more than a few fifth-generation fighters. Assuming DoD adopted a more pessimistic outlook on the J-XX’s development timeline, it’s not at all hard to get where Gates did.

The point? There’s no need to panic: The Red Chinese are not going to be rolling out their own aircraft capable of competing with the F-22 any time soon. (Assuming that the J-XX will ever be able to compete with the F-22: Chinese avionics and their imported Russian engines have always been of dubious quality.) Rumors of a Chinese fifth-generation fighter have existed for years and this simply confirms what the Pentagon and other observers have long suspected. Whatever the merits of the F-22, of which there are many, we don’t need to go refighting that battle just yet. And, just as there’re plenty of cudgels that can be used to beat up on Obama in the realm of defense policy, I just don’t think this quite warrants being used just yet.

… and how is that scored on Recovery.org?