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Stealing technology and reverse engineering is never as easy as it sounds, and can be more time consuming than developing technologies from the ground up, especially as the technology becomes more complicated. More often than not a country engages in reverse engineering only if it's so behind technologically that it needs to undergo the process in order to acquire technical know how. There are a lot of reasons why China steals information on US stealth fighters that aren't for the sake of reverse engineering. Sometimes it's to study a solution to assist in the development of their own (which, while extracting benefit from intellectual theft, still involves a lot of independent work), and sometimes it's just good old military espionage to understand what your potential adversaries are using and figure out how to counter them.

That said, wrt to the actual program, we *do* have some anecdotes to go by. Apparently, the reason we saw very little of the J-20 between 2013 and 2014 was because CAC was working to redesign the entire plane from the ground up, from demonstrator to prototype. The internal changes were supposedly extensive enough that, despite outward appearances, the 201X series should be considered a completely different plane from the 200X series. We also have this interview with the mentor of a J-20 test pilot from this year's Zhuhai airshow.

The video is in Chinese, so lllchairmanlll from SDF provided a summary. Make what you will of it.

<blockquote data-quote="latenlazy" data-source="post: 295818" data-attributes="member: 7755">Stealing technology and reverse engineering is never as easy as it sounds, and can be more time consuming than developing technologies from the ground up, especially as the technology becomes more complicated. More often than not a country engages in reverse engineering only if it's so behind technologically that it needs to undergo the process in order to acquire technical know how. There are a lot of reasons why China steals information on US stealth fighters that aren't for the sake of reverse engineering. Sometimes it's to study a solution to assist in the development of their own (which, while extracting benefit from intellectual theft, still involves a lot of independent work), and sometimes it's just good old military espionage to understand what your potential adversaries are using and figure out how to counter them.That said, wrt to the actual program, we *do* have some anecdotes to go by. Apparently, the reason we saw very little of the J-20 between 2013 and 2014 was because CAC was working to redesign the entire plane from the ground up, from demonstrator to prototype. The internal changes were supposedly extensive enough that, despite outward appearances, the 201X series should be considered a completely different plane from the 200X series. We also have this interview with the mentor of a J-20 test pilot from this year's Zhuhai airshow. The video is in Chinese, so lllchairmanlll from SDF provided a summary. Make what you will of it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="latenlazy, post: 295818, member: 7755"] Stealing technology and reverse engineering is never as easy as it sounds, and can be more time consuming than developing technologies from the ground up, especially as the technology becomes more complicated. More often than not a country engages in reverse engineering only if it's so behind technologically that it needs to undergo the process in order to acquire technical know how. There are a lot of reasons why China steals information on US stealth fighters that aren't for the sake of reverse engineering. Sometimes it's to study a solution to assist in the development of their own (which, while extracting benefit from intellectual theft, still involves a lot of independent work), and sometimes it's just good old military espionage to understand what your potential adversaries are using and figure out how to counter them. That said, wrt to the actual program, we *do* have some anecdotes to go by. Apparently, the reason we saw very little of the J-20 between 2013 and 2014 was because CAC was working to redesign the entire plane from the ground up, from demonstrator to prototype. The internal changes were supposedly extensive enough that, despite outward appearances, the 201X series should be considered a completely different plane from the 200X series. We also have this interview with the mentor of a J-20 test pilot from this year's Zhuhai airshow. The video is in Chinese, so lllchairmanlll from SDF provided a summary. Make what you will of it. [/QUOTE]

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