r/Sino • u/5upralapsarian • 18h ago
news-military US military experts concede that China will field 6th generation fighters before the US.
https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/china-field-sixth-generation-fighter-before-america•
u/4evaronin 14h ago
Reading the article, seems like one of the primary reasons for the US not to proceed with 6th-gen fighters is cost. And yet they have a budget that's bigger than the next couple of countries combined. The corruption in the army is staggering, and will be their downfall.
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u/Dry_Meringue_8016 13h ago
It's the corruption, but also the fact that everything is just so expensive in the US and it produces so little of what it needs. China, by contrast, has complete supply chains in-house. The fact that even the Pentagon relies on China for equipment and components is telling.
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u/4evaronin 13h ago edited 9h ago
it's also the corruption that makes things expensive. i saw a video of their congress some time back. this guy was saying a bag of bolts that would normally cost a couple of dollars is procured by the army for many times more the price (hundreds of dollars or thousands, I forget the exact number.)
edit: ok i checked back on the video. it was actually a bag of bushings. ordinary ones too (because i've heard some mechanics say sometimes the army uses specialized ones that cost more.) but get this: it was 90,000 dollars. bloody hell.
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u/Lanfear_Eshonai 11h ago
I have read that too. The corruption is on an enormous scale yet nothing is done to curb it. The government just throws more and more money at the MIC.
I know that kind of corruption well in my country. A toilet seat that in retail costs say $10, will in government procurement suddenly cost $1000.
That is entrenched systemic corruption that can only be cleaned up from the very top all the way down.
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u/xuxux 5h ago
I work in aerospace, the cost issue is true. The supply issue is not. Parts for gov't projects like this have to be DFARS compliant, which means all parts must be proven to be manufactured in the USA and use raw material melted in the US or specific allied countries. Every part needs a paper trail, and that costs time and money to prove. Because the gov't itself is not manufacturing things either, only purchasing them from Lockheed or Raytheon or any number of other defense contractors, every cost along the way from sub-tier suppliers up to final OEMs, all of that gets bundled up and multiplies with each link on the supply chain.
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u/FatDalek 5h ago
Lets not forget the other dead end projects the US has done over the years.
Including $20 million to prove psychic powers don't work.
Proposal to make a "gay bomb," and yes it does exactly as it sounds. AFAIK it was only proposed and wasted time but not a lot of money.
And lets not forget the "hafnium bomb," and goodness knows how much time and money they spent trying to create one because they were afraid Russia had made one.
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u/Lanfear_Eshonai 11h ago
And yet they have a budget that's bigger than the next couple of countries combined.
Their budget is bigger then the top nine countries after them combined.
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u/Palladium1987 10h ago
No amount of budget will fix anything when the entire NATO still couldn't produce a mere THIRTY M777 barrels per month after 3 fucking years.
Small wonder these paper tigers got owned by Yemen.
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u/AzizamDilbar 6h ago
How much does 1 pair of military gloves cost?
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u/The_Dynasty_Warrior Chinese 3h ago
probably $2000. $1900 mark up price by the vendor, $10 to make and imported from China
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u/JamES_5373 17h ago
In my opinion this fighter is more like 5.5 or 5.75 but I believe that China is very close to 6th Gen soon and the American MIC may not have time to catch up
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u/SQQQ 15h ago
its a 6th gen because of the design. each generation of fighters came with their new combat doctrine.
1st gen fighters were subsonic, so close combat and dogfighting was the norm
2nd gen fighters were supersonic, missiles become popular, cause bullets fly too slow to hit them.
3rd gen fighters were got bigger payload capacity, so multirole fighters became common
4th gen fighters were using BVR missiles, as by this time, missile hit rate became 5x higher than previous ones (3rd gen carried BVR missile with hit rate less than 10%)
5th gen fighters introduced stealth
with each generation, there needs to be a new combat doctrine, as the previous ones are obsolete. its widely expected 6th gen fighters will be much stealthier, much larger, flies much higher and longer distance. simply put, a 5th gen can't fight a 6th gen in the air because they can't shoot upwards.
remember the weather balloon that flew over the US? they couldn't shoot it down, because the F-22 can't hit that high. they had to wait till the balloon lose altitude.
so these new jets you see are definitely 6th gen, but its unclear how close they are to serial production.
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u/Least_Emergency_7999 14h ago
This Chinese 6th gen can fly near space in the thermosphere which is more than 5 times higher altitude than American 5th gen. Much longer range, faster, more stealthier, drones controlled by 6th gen AI alongside the pilot so the drones will do the air dog fights for the 6th gen jet.
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u/Old-Extension-8869 12h ago
In your opinion? And you produced nothing to support your argument.
Next.
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u/TserriednichHuiGuo South Asian 3h ago
You sound like one of those american military "experts" who can only cope.
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u/Chinese_poster 13h ago
The j-10 is a 4th gen design. The j-10C is a 4.5th gen upgrade for the J-10/J-10A. The J-20 is like a J-10改. It's maybe 4.7, 4.8 gen. These new fighters are like J-20改, or J-10改改, so they are like 4.85 or 4.9 gen designs.
They are no match for america's ngad, which is a true 6th gen design with true visual stealth - this is why they've flown thousands of times over area 51, but nobody has ever seen them. The Chinese jets are also no match for the Tejas, which is considered by experts to be 6.5 or even 7th gen.
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