China Practices Intercepting U.S. Stealth Fighters

**Ryan Ruck** · October 16th, 2010, 16:46

China Practices Intercepting U.S. Stealth Fighters

October 15, 2010

The Chinese People's Liberation Army recently staged an intercept exercise targeting the U.S.' latest stealth fighter jet, the F-22 Raptor, Hong Kong's Apple Daily reported Thursday.

Japanese media on Oct. 3 reported that the Japanese and U.S. militaries will carry out a joint exercise to practice recapturing the disputed Senkaku or Diaoyutai Islands in November, in case the Chinese capture them in a surprise attack. It said the U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington and F-22 Raptors will take part in the exercise.

On Oct. 8, five days after the report, a Chinese Air Force brigade in the Chengdu military district practiced firing a Hong Qi No. 9 missile, China's newest ground-to-air missile, to hit a target assumed to be an F-22, the Apple Daily said.

The Science and Technology Daily, published in Beijing, wrote a story about the drill. "Right after the radar sent the information on the location of the stealth fighter to the missile launch team, the Hong Qi No. 9 missile flew into the clouds and an explosion was heard only 40 seconds later. There was loud applause for the success of the exercise," it said.

Good thing we are planning on building less than 200 F-22s!

**Ryan Ruck** · October 16th, 2010, 16:50

Also interesting...

F-117A Mock-up In China

October 14, 2010

The image above, captured in March of 2010, depicts an F-117A mockup. Normally, a mockup of the F-117A wouldn't be a very big deal, but this one is in the middle of Luoyang, China. First spotted by the intrepid members of the China Defense Forum, the mockup appears to be partially completed, apparently missing the forward fuselage. This could however simply be an abberation in the image given that the color applied to the mockup does not appear to stand out against the pavement a great deal. It is a full-scale mockup, with the wingspan matching the "real" F-117A at roughly 43 feet.

Why is there an F-117A mockup sitting inside of Luoyang? There could be a completely benign purpose, such as use in some sort of media. However, Luoyang is home to the Luoyang Electro-Optical Technology Development Center, who is responsible for developing the current air-to-air missiles fielded by the Chinese military. A facility such as this would certainly be able to make use of an accurate model of a VLO aircraft for missile seeker evaluation, particularly in the case of seekers for active radar homing weapons like the current PL-12. In such a case replicating an F-117A would be far less complex than accurately replicating a non-faceted VLO shape like the B-2A.

Or, hey, if we're bored we could always assume that this is the prototype JH-8, a VTOL capable F-117A derivative using captured Martian technology. But that would just be ridiculous.

By the way, in case anyone can't see that picture, that Lat/Lon location on the mock-up is Lat = 34.662363, Lon = 112.429356

**Luke** · October 16th, 2010, 18:14

I didn't realize the F-22 was considered a stealth fighter. I guess I am just used to F117's and B2's as stealthy. I live fairly close to Whiteman AFB and so far I haven't noticed any F22's. Maybe they are "stealthier" than I thought.

By the way, the Coast to Coast website had a cool photo of a F22 surrounded by a vapor cloud. Todays photo was of the Blue Angels flying in an Echelon Parade. Pretty cool photo. It is my understanding that the formations flown by the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds are standard military maneuvers. I have never seen A10's fly that close.

I figure all the Chinese have to do is purchase a model at Hobby Lobby for dimensional mock ups.

**Ryan Ruck** · October 16th, 2010, 20:33

Yep. F-22 is supposed to be all aspect stealth and the F-35 is supposed to be frontal aspect stealth with reduced RCS for the rest.

**vector7** · October 18th, 2010, 16:37

China Trains To Shoot Down F-22s

October 18, 2010: Chinese news sources recently reported an anti-aircraft exercise where HQ-9 missiles were fired at a "stealth" aircraft. Not much in the way of details. This is typical. There has been much written about how potential "anti-stealth" radars might work.

But no one is selling such a beast, even though some of the technologies proposed are sound. There's heat detection, as F-22s and B-2s still put out a lot of heat. Then there's using a radar that will not be as easily defeated by the radar absorbing materials used on American stealth aircraft. And so on.

The U.S. is not providing stealth aircraft for testing any of these proposed methods, and if China had developed something in this area, they would probably keep details secret (lest the U.S. tweak their stealth tech to better handle the Chinese device.)