British newspaper The Guardian is reporting today, that the Chinese stealth fighter Chengdu J-20 may be built using US technology. Balkan military officials said China may have gleaned knowledge from a US F-117 Nighthawk that was shot down over Serbia in 1999.
“At the time, our intelligence reports told of Chinese agents crisscrossing the region where the F-117 disintegrated, buying up parts of the plane from local farmers,” said Admiral Davor Domazet-Loso, Croatia’s military chief of staff during the Kosovo war. “We believe the Chinese used those materials to gain an insight into secret stealth technologies and to reverse-engineer them.”
A senior Serbian military official confirmed that pieces of the wreckage were removed by souvenir collectors, and that some ended up “in the hands of foreign military attaches”.
Continue at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/china-stealth-fighter-us-technology
Related:
Video – Chengdu J-20 First Flight
Spotted: China’s Chengdu J-20 Stealth Fighter
It will still have “Made in China” stamped all over it and the F-117 (which the J-20 is getting most of its tech from) is first generation stealth while the B-2 is second gen and the F-22 and F-35 are third gen.
I wonder where China is going to be in 20 years with the jet fighter development.
But already now the Chinese military jet fighter are obviously further developed than the fighter aircraft we use for our Jet fighter flight
Our MiG-29 Fulcrum in Russia is a nice aircraft but it doesn’t have stealth
I wonder if the Chinese are able to develop anything by themselves (such as an aircraft) instead of copying foreign technology.
I don’t have a problem with China using foreign technology with Aviation. Why not? Maybe we are friends. Why not help a friend out? I do have a problem with all the other goods. The copying of specific brands. Like fake apple ipods or fake jordans. That doesn’t seem right. But technology. That is just knowledge.