China's new stealth fighter may use US technology

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

SLOBODAN LEKIC and DUSAN STOJANOVIC

BRUSSELS (AP) - Chinese officials recently unveiled a new, high-tech stealth fighter that could pose a significant threat to American air superiority - and some of its technology, it turns out, may well have come from the U.S. itself.

Balkan military officials and other experts have told The Associated Press that in all probability the Chinese gleaned some of their technological know-how from an American F-117 Nighthawk that was shot down over Serbia in 1999.

Nighthawks were the world's first stealth fighters, planes that were very hard for radar to detect. But on March 27, 1999, during NATO's aerial bombing of Serbia in the Kosovo war, a Serbian anti-aircraft missile shot one of the Nighthawks down. The pilot ejected and was rescued.

It was the first time one of the much-touted "invisible" fighters had ever been hit. The Pentagon believed a combination of clever tactics and sheer luck had allowed a Soviet-built SA-3 missile to bring down the jet.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20110123/D9KU0TUG0.html

[cosmicone]

1. Ouch ... n/t

[MikeW]

2. not a big surprise

The chinese for some reason are considered "innovative" but in reality they make a living off of STEALING other people's / countries ideas.

[yourout]

4. And then forcing workers to make things based on the stolen ideas at slave wages.

[ronnie624]

5. They didn't steal anything.

They bought pieces of wreckage, and reverse-engineered the technology. Taking what belongs to another by stealth or force is stealing, like when one country conspires to invade another country and proceeds to exercise control over resources and markets.

[MikeW]

12. just like they reverse engineer software - Its still stealing if you didnt develop it yourself

[Psephos]

24. Taping a torn book back together would not give you copyright.

Intellectual property is protected by moral and legal rules because it is in the interest of all to incentivize invention and research.

[ronnie624]

25. You know what they say:

"All is fair in love and war"

Or as John Lyly, an English poet said, "The rules of fair play do not apply in love and war".

I guess the developers of the stealth technology can sue the Chinese government, if they have a mind to.

[Psephos]

26. Is China at war with the US? I hadn't heard. n/t

[ronnie624]

27. Not that I'm aware of.

But there are many within the U.S government that name China an enemy.

And the fighter bomber was shot down during military operations.

And the U.S. is a global empire that utilizes militarism as an instrument of foreign policy. China, no doubt, feels somewhat threatened by this.

And there is little doubt in my mind that China and the U.S. are jockeying for military preeminence in certain areas of the world.

Further, the US and the USSR were never really at war with each other either, during the Cold War.

[Psephos]

28. ----WAIT----look over there!! Shiny!

When one train of thought is about to run off the rails, just jump tracks.

In response to me noting that intellectual property theft is illegal (as provided in international treaties), you said all is fair in war...another way of saying that, wink wink, what China did was ok, given that they see us as an enemy.

I pointed out that was news to me.

So you flip it around with one deft little movement and say that many within the US government name China as an enemy. (Never mind that your original justification depended on the opposite.)

And then the anti-homing chaff follows like rain follows thunder. A quick trail of evil US empire smoke...then a pod of poor poor threatened China foil...and then a burst of USSR chestnuts...ta-dah! What were talking about? Who remembers? Q.E.D. High fives!

:eyes:

Either it's ok and legal to steal a Most Favored Nation's I.P. - or it's not. Where do you cast your lot?

[ronnie624]

29. Lol. n/t

[DavidDvorkin]

6. History says otherwise

History says that China invented a great deal, indeed.

[JohnyCanuck]

7. You mean like when the US stole the German V2 technology

and brought all those German rocket scientists including von Braun over to work on the US space program,regardless of their past connections to the Nazi party.

[MikeW]

11. we didnt steal anything from Germany, they were a failed state WE OWNED them after the war

[JohnyCanuck]

19. "WE OWNED them after the war"

And the way your economy is structured, it looks more and more like China now owns the USA. :)

[JohnyCanuck]

20. That's right, I forgot that after a war,

what the victor does is called looting which is altogether different than stealing.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. It is a fine distinction

hey at least in the last century looting did not include the other component... for US, Canadian and British troops. On the Russian side, it was a different story.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[plumbob]

16. No big surprise. The F117 was developed using German and Russian

ideas.

In 1964, Pyotr Ya. Ufimtsev, a Soviet/Russian mathematician, published a seminal paper, "Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction", in the Journal of the Moscow Institute for Radio Engineering, in which he showed that the strength of a radar return is related to the edge configuration of an object, not its size.<7>

Ufimtsev was extending theoretical work published by the German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld.<8><9><10> Ufimtsev demonstrated that he could calculate the radar cross-section across a wing's surface and along its edge. The obvious conclusion was that even a large airplane could be made stealthy by exploiting this principle.

However, the airplane's design would make it aerodynamically unstable, and the state of computer technology in the early 1960s could not provide the kinds of flight computers which allow aircraft such as the F-117, and B-2 Spirit to stay airborne. However, by the 1970s, when a Lockheed analyst reviewing foreign literature found Ufimtsev's paper, computers and software had advanced significantly, and the stage was set for the development of a stealthy airplane.<11>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk

The whole world is connected. Putting a fence around something creates theft.

[Joanne98]

3. Of course. Keep shipping those jobs over there assholes!

[itsrobert]

8. So it's Clinton's fault

:sarcasm:

[MikeW]

13. it is ... protocol back then required that the wreck be bombed heavily

to prevent the capture of that technology.

Clinton failed to issue the order.

[plumbob]

14. Protocol doesn't need to be ordered by the CIC. It's what is done.

Now if protocol was not followed, looks like someone needs a little court-martial.

[MikeW]

15. it was not followed becuase Clinton prevented it

He was affraid of rubber neckers on site getting killed.

[plumbob]

17. Any link for that?

Pretty sure any rubber-neckers were killed when the plane fell on them.

[MikeW]

18. it fell out in a field outside of a town

[itsrobert]

21. So no link or evidence

that Clinton ordered the forces not to use protocol. And we believe you why?

[cosmicone]

22. Because he was there ... as were Faux News and probably Rush Limbaugh

:::snickers:::

[leveymg]

9. The airframe is not that hard to duplicate, The ECM and software are the key to stealth.

The hard drives and ECM boxes on board that Nighthawk self-destructed, every effectively and completely, the moment the pilot pulled the ejection handle.

We're not THAT stupid, folks.

[hunter]

30. Stealth is obsolete.

The sky is lit up with a gentle glow of microwave radiation from our cellphones, satellites, etc.

The old radar "searchlight" method of detecting aircraft is past, just as the optical searchlights before them.

Searchlights were used extensively in defense against nighttime aerial bomber raids around the time of World War II. In particular, pairs of searchlights spaced a known distance apart were used to determine (via triangulation) the altitude of enemy bombers, so that the fuses on anti-aircraft flak shells could be set appropriately for maximum effect. In addition, the lights may have blinded bombardiers using optical bombsights. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searchlights

For a long time radar worked in a similar fashion but modern radars are more akin to simple optical sighting. A black spot in the sky is as noticeable as a highly reflective or radiating surface.

The Serbs got the F-117 by passive observation. In wartime opposition radar stations get bombed. The solution to that problem is not to emit radar.

[SOS]

31. The F-117 "Stealth" cost $117 million each

and is shot down with an old Soviet missile.
The US taxpayer gets shafted again.