You’ve probably heard the Chinese J-20 Stealth Fighter ripped off the same basic stealth technology of the F-22 Raptor. This isn’t all that disturbing (at first) or even all that surprising when you think about it. Communist countries like China and the former Soviet Union have been ripping off our technologies for decades.

What are potentially disturbing are recent reports that the technology may have come from the United States itself.

In 1999, during the Kosovo War, an F-117 Nighthawk was shot down over Serbia during NATO strikes in the region. It was the first time any stealth plane had been shot down and although the pilot ejected safely, the Pentagon was a little shaken over it. In the end, they believed that it was sheer bad luck that the stealth plane went down.

Some of the wreckage wound up on farmland in China and no one knows for sure if that was enough for them to reverse-engineer the stealth technology or if they actually bought the rest from Serbia to duplicate our stealth technology.

Either way, the J-20 is a reality now and even though it probably won’t be operational for ten years or so, it could be a match for our own stealth fighters and the future fighter pilots flying them. (That would be YOU!)

Given that China might be in with Serbia on this technology and the likelihood that the Russian T-50 also developed from the stolen technology of the downed F-117, it looks like we’ve got cause to be on guard.

Is this part of a resurgence of communism in the Eastern hemisphere? Only time will tell.

How do you see a future confrontation between an F-22 and a J-20 playing out? Do you think it will really be a match for us, or is China blowing smoke?