> Can you clarify what are you talking about? The US has been developing 6th-gen fighter since the mid mid-2010s - not that I'd consider it as an important new original invention.

So you think that, as an advanced military project that should have been kept under the strictest secrecy, the Chinese somehow obtained it and, based on that, developed their own sixth-generation fighter—and even managed a successful test flight while the U.S. is still at the PowerPoint stage? I don’t know which scenario would be worse for the United States.

▲

gpt5 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Well, if we compare what we know about China's NGAD, which is almost nothing, with what we know about US NGAD, which is also almost nothing, we can safely conclude almost nothing.

▲

foldr 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

China doesn’t yet have the jet engine technology to compete with American 5th gen fighters. I certainly don’t think the US or anyone else should be complacent, but the US has a substantial lead for now.

	▲	DrScientist an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Not sure fighters matter as much these days - Russia has air superiority in terms of jets over Ukraine - but it uses them infrequently - appears the problem is the ground based counter measures are quite effective and much cheaper. If they want to attack by air - drones and missiles rather than planes appear to be the way to go. Similarly aircraft carriers - they can only really be used now to bully small countries. To anybody with significant missile/drone tech they are just massive, slow, sitting ducks. What matters is drones and missiles etc and how fast you can churn them out. Who would win that? The US is going to have to find a way to live with countries like China and India, rather than trying to suppress them. The current US policy of trying to dismant all the organisations that were set up post world war II in order to keep the peace is madness.