Whether Gates was "concerned" or not about Chinese stealth programmes is not what I'm challenging, it was his quantitative statement about China only possessing a handful of stealth fighters by 2025 which I am challenging as a lie.
I hope there's not a misunderstanding here. Obviously what Gates said then was wrong/a lie (if you think he knew the truth). I'm not disputing this at all. My position is that he knew the likely timelines for the J-20, but lied in that speech (for reasons that I described at length).
If the Chinese Minister of Defence made a statement in 2009 about USAF F-35 quantity that ended up being off by seven years then I would absolutely agree that they were either being fed bad intelligence or there was a significant compromise in the ability to share raw information up the food chain.
That wasn't what I was asking. What I wanted to know is if it's reasonable to think that politicians and military leaders sometimes intentionally make false statements (i.e. lie), such as when the head of the Indian Air Force was dismissive of the J-20 (in 2018). Of the three options (he is right, the J-20 is not that stealthy and not a threat to the IAF; he is wrong and believes what he is saying, because of bad intelligence or other reasons; he is wrong and intentionally lied, in this case probably because it's his job to be reassuring in such cases), which is the most likely?
After writing all that (and the hypotheticals in the previous comments), I realized people's thoughts are already on record.
Bltizo,
November 1, 2016:
Let's be honest though, could he have said anything else of a much different tone?
It isn't like he could say "oh yes, the Chinese have produced a very competitive aircraft that will likely place pressure on our future air combat capabilities"...
It's not like any military would admit something like that whether it was true or not; hell they probably wouldn't admit it especially if it were true, and that goes for everyone, not just the US. So with all respect to the General, I consider his statement to be not only expected, but also dismissable.
Bltizo,
November 1, 2016:
Yeah; I mean this really has nothing to do with "open society" or even "credibility".
In fact, in these sort of situations where high ranking military officers are asked to comment on the capabilities of a potential adversarial nation, and especially a single type of weapon system that is so important and meant to compete with one's own big ticket system, their words are essentially worth nothing.... and like I said, this goes for virtually every nation's military as well.
Because no high ranking military officer would ever make a particularly respectable or well informed comment about an adversarial weapon system to the public, especially if it was meant to directly compete with one's own system, even if they had an accurate grasp on the adversary's weapon system capability to begin with.
So, at minimum you agree that high ranking military officers do lie in public? And that it's necessary to consider the context in which a statement is made and the speakers intent?
Experience is not the same as wisdom.
Regardless, he got his numbers quantitatively wrong, off by seven years.
You can either explain that he was deliberately knowingly lying, in which case
You were a bit cut off here.
See above.
Reading it in 1999 I earnestly believe it would have been unreasonable to assume that they were talking about a 5th generation fighter.
I disagree, for many reasons already stated. What can be next generation when you're currently at the fourth generation?
Clearly derived from the ONI report. "Next generation fighter" -- not 5th generation fighter.
Richard Fisher was definitely one of the better China watchers in the 2000s, but it was only later in the decade that he explicitly described the XXJ/J-XX as a 5th generation aircraft.
If you're now saying that even Fisher wasn't talking about a fifth-generation fighter there, I'd like to remind you that you posted that article, saying
Now, there were a few individuals in the English language/US thinktankland who were able to get an accurate read of J-20, like Richard Fisher (
), [...]
So, first he had an accurate read of the J-20 in 2001 in the article where he described the XXJ from the ONI report as a "next-generation combat aircraft", but now you're trying to reduce his credibility by saying he didn't use the phrase "fifth-generation" until later in the decade? Maybe this shows the phrase isn't important and information should be judged in total.
In that case I maintain that their interpretation of the ONI report was either flawed, or influenced by the illustrations of the "F-22 like" fighters with PLAAF insignias from the Flight Global article or otherwise.
Let's put it this way -- if the original ONI report had also shown a "next generation fighter" image that featured one of the two drawings shown on that page of what was clearly a 5th generation fighter, then I'll happily concede this particular point.
Good news. It's not one of the pictures on that site, but it's just as "clearly a 5th generation fighter". (I don't know if you missed it, but I had linked the report earlier.)
There is a difference between making an emphasis on one point and de-emphasizing another, versus making a prediction that is quantitatively off by seven years.
In my opinion, he was intentionally lying.
Or maybe it only hit the top brass on the head that J-20 was actually real after it was revealed.
By now I think what we are really debating whether the public/declassified reports on the PLA are the standard of intelligence about PLA developments that end up making it to high levels of US govt leaders and military officers.
Let me repeat that I absolutely agree that there would have been US intelligence operatives and groups that would have gotten accurate readings of Chinese weapons developments.
But the reason why I hold such importance on the relationship between what US govt leaders and military officials reveal openly in public/declassified, is because US defence procurement and strategy is one which is debated by elected representatives, and debates would be informed by the basis of what is understood about the developments of US strategic competitors.
When I used the term "declassified reports" I meant reports that were "never classified" or "not classified". (or perhaps "unclassified"? In any case I am not referring to reports that were once "classified" and became "declassified")
AKA the same ones you describe as open source, public etc.
Well, that's a pretty unfortunate source for a misunderstanding. Per
,
In the U.S., information is called "classified" if it has been assigned one of the three levels: Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret. Information that is not so labeled is called "Unclassified information". The term declassified is used for information that has had its classification removed, and downgraded refers to information that has been assigned a lower classification level but is still classified.
And the distinction between what is public and what is classified is crucial. Because if the US had managed to obtain, via hacking, detailed engineering data on the J-20 (like what happened in the other direction), that's not something they'd reveal. Same goes for anything they got from spies. Anyone who needs to know has a sufficiently high clearance, and we can be sure that includes leadership of DOD and USAF.
As for a need for public reports to inform debate by elected representatives, I think this is overstated. If you follow American politics, it's clear Congress is
always eager to confirm/increase the military budget, so there is no particular pressure to convince them with details of competitors advances. The details of acquisitons are decided by the military and the DOD.
