Spark

Chengdu, 611 test flight field.

Liu Chuanwu had just completed the test flight of the J-20B. Even for an experienced test pilot like him, the experience brought by this aircraft was extremely novel.

Take off vertically like a helicopter!

Moreover, its maneuverability in the air has reached an unimaginable height.

Not to mention that the Cobra is maneuvering, it can even change from high-speed flight to lift and then to hover in just a few seconds.

It can be said that this is an invincible fighter.

Although modern warfare has entered the field of beyond visual range, but with this aircraft in hand, bullying the second-generation and third-generation aircraft is really like playing.

Even against a heavy fourth-generation fighter like the J-22, its odds of winning have not decreased much.

If it taxis and takes off with full fuel and full bombs, its range can also reach 2200 kilometers.

Although it is far less than the terrifying 3,400-kilometer range of the J-22, it is enough to fight a local war.

——

Wait a minute, why did I use J-22 as an imaginary enemy?

Liu Chuanwu was stunned for a moment subconsciously.

Afterwards, he realized that in his heart, the Air Force had gradually lost its rivals in this world.

He shook his head slightly, and said to himself silently in his heart:

"We are still in the primary stage of development and will remain so for a long time. The main contradiction is still the contradiction between the intensified international confrontation and our lack of firepower."

The plane taxied into the hangar, Liu Chuanwu got off the plane, and Yang Wei, who was the chief designer of the plane, had already been waiting by the side.

"How is it? How is it flying?"

Yang Wei asked impatiently.

In fact, most of the data will be transmitted to the laboratory through sensors, and the reason why he came here specially is to get the latest first-hand experience report from the pilot.

"Very good! The handling is even more flexible than the J-22, and there are almost no problems for our pilots."

"I reckon that if there's a flaw in the plane, it's a flaw in the plane itself."

"For example, the voyage is still too short. After I take off vertically, there is only less than two-thirds of the fuel left in the fuel tank, and I have to reserve fuel for landing."

"Understood, we will solve this problem!"

Yang Wei nodded and continued:

"Now the aircraft still uses the old F119 engine. You also felt it when you flew the J-22. The performance has not improved much."

"In the future, we will provide it with a variable cycle engine, and then the problem of excessive fuel consumption will be solved to a certain extent."

"At that time, let me take a test flight!"

Liu Chuanwu said.

"Hey, that's not necessarily the case. You're a baby now, and you're still counting on you to train other pilots for us. If it's too dangerous a mission, I won't let you take it on."

Liu Chuanwu opened his mouth, he still wanted to refute, but after thinking about it, this is actually the most realistic decision.

So, he could only nod his head and replied:

"Understood, I promise to complete the organizational tasks!"

Two days later, an explosive news woke up the whole world.

The message is only a few short words.

"my country's new fighter jet successfully made its maiden flight."

When it comes to the content, this report is also written extremely conservatively.

".It is understood that this type of fighter is a fourth-generation fighter with vertical and short-range take-off and landing capabilities, and can take off on any flat and hard ground."

"This fighter plane is an important supplement to the combat effectiveness of our Air Force, strengthens our army's anti-strike capability, and plays an obvious role in stalemate battlefields."

But adhering to the principle that the fewer words, the bigger the matter, no one will misjudge its importance.

Vertical/short takeoff and landing fighter.

Fourth Generation.

Any one of these two keywords can set off huge waves internationally, but at this moment, they are combined together.

what does that mean?

very simple.

It means that, at least in the field of military aviation, Huaxia has completely surpassed other traditional European and American powers, and has reached the forefront of the world!

Therefore, as soon as the news was released, all the forces that were paying attention to China's movements exploded.

For them, these two years are definitely not peaceful.

Since the earliest news about the F119 engine was released, at that time, everyone thought it was the biggest news in a short period of time, so the media used a lot of space to report it, and even defined it as "the pinnacle of China's technology."

Even the subsequent Xiaolong III and J-10 modifications were within their expectations.

Although they had to admit China's progress, they still proudly boasted about the accuracy of their judgment. It seemed that, as they thought, F119 was the pinnacle, and other achievements were just derivatives of F119.

But I didn't expect that just a few months later, the J-22 made its first flight, and the research institute, which had been silent for a long time, slapped them hard with an unparalleled high-profile attitude.

By this time, everyone has begun to have some doubts.

With such a technological breakthrough in such a short period of time, is there really only this little thing in their hands?

Sure enough, their guess was fulfilled.

Electronic jamming pods, over-the-horizon air-to-air missiles, and the J-20 that has not been disclosed on a large scale

Until now, J-20B appeared.

Only now did they realize that F119 is definitely not the pinnacle, but just the beginning.

After making this judgment, for a while, the media seemed to suffer from aphasia, and they suddenly didn't know what attitude to use to report this matter.

Continue to advocate the so-called "threat theory"?

What a joke!

Just like your neighbor, if you want to win everyone over to isolate him and bully him, then you have to spread the word about how dangerous and terrifying he is when he is incapable, and then unite to crush him to death in the cradle.

The premise of doing this is that he has no ability to resist you, and he has no ability to resist the alliance.

This was indeed the case before.

But now, they have a guy in their hands!

Are you still foolishly going up to promote the "threat theory"?

Don't be stupid, if you don't get it right, someone will come up and give you a short while, and then pick up your ears by holding your hair.

Armed with a sharp weapon and ready to kill, do you really dare to touch him?

So, it's better to keep silent for the time being, at least, if you don't speak, you won't make mistakes.

Thus, in the public opinion market, a strange situation emerged:

The domestic scrambled to report, but the foreign countries remained silent.

This makes many netizens feel strange. Didn't they say that foreign media are the most impartial spokespersons? Why did they even start selective reporting?

For a while, there were endless discussions on this matter on various forums.

"I'm afraid this time it's for real. It's the military newspaper who sent the news. Their style is so cautious, and it's impossible to add fuel to such an important matter."

"Don't talk about embellishment, I guess, they may even have a hidden hand. Look at the news, it only mentions the STOVL fighter, but the specific performance is not mentioned at all."

"I think this thing cannot be deduced by common sense. It is possible that its comprehensive performance far exceeds our understanding of the STOVL fighter."

"Hehe, how about pancakes upstairs? No photos, no videos, just relying on a few paragraphs of text to climax, right?"

"It's so awesome. Pull the plane out and have a look. I've never seen a vertical take-off and landing plane in my life. Could it be an improved version of the Harrier?"

"Upstairs still said that other people's sesame cakes, you are the sesame cakes, right? Fourth-generation machine, do you know what a fourth-generation machine is? Would you mind telling me about something like the Harrier?"

"Oh yes, your beautiful father said before that the STOVL fighter is useless. Didn't they stop developing it? Now we have it, what do you say?"

"So what if it's done, it's useless, it's useless, you say it's useless to break the sky"

In such a chaotic public opinion, the appearance of a program is like a reef thrown into the water, blocking all waves.

One night in March, a television military program launched an exclusive interview, and the subject of the interview was Chen Yunyong, who had returned to China.

This legendary J-20B has not yet shown up. What Chen Yunyong introduced was only the two-pole counter-rotating lift fan technology involved.

But this is the point that thoroughly confirms the existence of the STOVL fourth-generation machine.

Because the technology itself is its symbol.

The engine problem has been completely solved, and the vector nozzle, stealth design, avionics system and other problems have been learned from the J-22, what can stop them from building a STOVL fourth-generation aircraft? ?

As soon as the program was broadcast, the trend of domestic public opinion suddenly reversed.

The military fans cheered, and the banana people were mourning.

Of course, these banana people in China are not the only ones who are bereaved.

On the other side of the sea, the turret.

Paine stood silently in the office. This wasn't the first time he, as the actual leader of the May Society, faced the controller of the turret, but it was definitely the most difficult moment in his career, and even in his life.

For no other reason, things went wrong.

Moreover, there is no room for redemption.

Sitting opposite him was a senior official of the Ministry of Defense named Bob. At this time, he was slapping the table and pointing at Paine and cursing.

"Are you all idiots? How can you be so stupid?"

"J-20B! Fourth generation aircraft! STOVL! Do you know what these words mean?"

"I've said it before, if you can't do it, then report directly to Congress and give us the authority. We always have other ways to interrupt their projects!"

"But now? Until last week, your feedback in the report was 'everything is fine'!"

"You tell me, where's the normal? You're talking about their projects running as normal?"

"Yes, you are right. None of your actions have affected them in the slightest. This is really normal!"

Paine grinned bitterly, took a deep breath and replied:

"I admit that we made a serious mistake. We greatly underestimated their scientific capabilities."

"But in fact, this is indeed unpredictable. Please think about it. Even if you command it yourself, it is impossible for you to think that they can manufacture such an aircraft in just half a year."

"It's not half a year, it's ten years!"

Bob slammed the table again, and said bitterly:

"Do you have amnesia? I have said countless times in the meeting that they have been preparing for this project for at least ten years."

"And, I also emphasized that their breakthrough could happen at any time, maybe today, maybe tomorrow."

"Now, I'm right."

"And what about you? You didn't respond!"

"This is simply a joke. I heard that you even plan to delay their progress by assassinating scientific researchers. Can you use your brain, is this possible?"

"We almost made it."

Paine argued.

He was a little unconvinced in his heart, he almost succeeded, even from his point of view, the plan was perfect.

It's just that there seems to be an invisible force that is interfering with the progress of the matter.

He even felt that he was fighting against some omniscient and omnipotent shadow.

If not, how could the other party have such high vigilance, and even caught their own people so soon after the incident happened?

Bob on the opposite side took a deep breath, suppressed the urge to take out a gun from the drawer and shoot Paine to death, and then continued:

"It's not a near success. What you call a near miss is actually at least one distance from here to the sun!"

"Do you think that if you get rid of a few core scientists, the matter will be resolved?"

"Tell you, their accumulation of talents is not much weaker than ours, especially the talents who can change the overall situation. They definitely have not just one, nor a few, but a group!"

"Even if you get rid of one, the others can quickly make up for it. Can you handle it?!"

Paine was speechless. At this moment, he deeply felt the gap in the way of looking at the problem from different standpoints.

The May Conference itself is an intelligence department, and what it does is always buried underwater. Therefore, the way to solve problems is more inclined to point-to-point, small-scale, and leverage the smallest force to leverage the greatest results.

As for the turret, they disdain to use this kind of conspiracy.

More often, they will use absolute power.

This also leads to their ideas being quite different from their own.

I can't even argue, because they simply can't listen.

Paine sighed, his tone lowered a bit.

"Things are already like this, all we can do now is to find a way to make up for it."

"I'm not asking for your help, I'm looking for cooperation."

"In the past, we had too little cooperation, and even many times, we were in a competitive relationship, which is unhealthy."

"Hmph, I wish you'd figured this out sooner."

Bob looked at Paine with disdain, and continued:

"But now, it's too late."

"The J-20B has made its first flight, and our F-35 is still in the lab."

"What's even more stupid is that in order to cooperate with your so-called public opinion offensive, they even took the initiative to slow down the progress of the F-35 project."

"They've got a head start, and it's a huge step."

"This is definitely not alarmist talk, the situation is very serious. Although the race has just begun, we are already behind."

"Mr. Paine, I want you to understand one thing: this is the first time we've fallen behind in nearly two hundred years."

"And you are the culprit for falling behind this time."

"You will be nailed to the pillar of shame in history."

"Now, don't talk about cooperation anymore. I have reported to Congress and applied to remove you from all positions."

"Go home and retire."

"Hope you live to be old."

"Now, get out of my office!"

Paine looked at Bob in shock, he knew very well what the other person meant.

Go home to retire.

For a key person like him who has a lot of information, how can he be accommodated?

There was despair in his heart.

At this moment, he had already foreseen his own ending