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As long as China is under CCP, they need enemy.

I admit there are hopeful signs, though. I hope things do work out, because I think China will be a better behaved superpower if it doesn’t feel threatened all along its periphery.

“I??m just saying that the India-China relationship is already pretty sour.”

Maybe it was, but didn’t Hu Jintao and Manmohan Singh reach a number of trade/cultural agreements on Hu’s recent visit to India, as well as an agreement to some kind of resolution of their border dispute?

Are you saying that North Korean pilots routinely operate these days as part of the flight crews on the normal missions of Chinese military aircraft (to include fully armed missions on routine patrols, or maybe just on routine “strip alert” status)?

I wouldn’t think so, but I admit I don’t know. However, your scenario sounds more like a James Bond movie than something that is a realistic possibility.

Even if NorK pilots do train routinely these days with the PRC air force, I don’t think the Chinese would allow North Korean pilots to be members of Backfire aircrews.

The theoretical basis for any such joint training would be to help the North Koreans to improve their skills. Since North Korea doesn’t (and presumably won’t) have any Backfires, there would be no reason for PRC to allow NorK pilots any access to their Backfires.

I would guess that the Japanese Air Force, along with USAF fighter acft stationed in Japan, do practice routinely the interception of unidentified aircraft headed toward the Japanese home islands.

They probably got a lot of practice in this during the Cold War, intercepting Russian long-range patrol acft (Tu-95) that routinely patrolled out of the Soviet Far East air bases.

Might have fallen off some after the Cold War ended but I bet it picked up again after 9/11. Also anything unidentified coming out of China would be intercepted immediately.

It would be interesting to know if Japan keeps at least a couple of fighters in the air 24/7, given how close they are to NorK and China. Even if they don’t, I suspect they ( also USAF) can “scramble” air defense fighters 24/7 in a couple of minutes.

The long range enabled them to operate from Russian Arctic and Pacific bases while ranging for immense distances out into the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans, where they could use cruise missiles to attack US naval task forces and shipping from “stand-off”. Their land bases would be relatively immune to counterattack from the much shorter-ranged US naval aircraft, operating from carrier task forces.

Their theoretical ability to attack the continental US and then return (with aerial refueling) was a standard theme of stories about them, in the US media during the 70’s and 80’s.

But a military weapons system, though it may prove adaptable to a great variety of missions, is usually built with a very specific “mission” in mind. The US B-52, B-1, and B-2 bombers were built for the original mission of long-range attack against the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons. However, the Backfire was not meant by the Soviet Union to be a parallel to these US aircraft.

My guess is that the Chinese are undoubtedly interested in acquiring the Backfire for this same specific mission of long-range naval attack. Since the Russians are no longer able to maintain much of their own deepwater navy, and since any potential differences Russian might have with the PRC don’t involve competition over issues of sea power, it’s not surprising to me that the Russians might be rapidly losing any reluctance they have retained to date about selling the Chinese some Backfires.

It would be interesting to know if the Backfire is still in production. Even if it isn’t, if the Russians have some mothballed “low-mileage” ones (as one of the linked stories seems to imply), these could prove quite suitable for the Chinese. The Chinese should be able to get a pretty good deal on them.

The Chinese lack of an aerial refueling capability (a capability that requires an enormous expenditure of resources to acquire) wouldn’t matter. Like the Russians, the Chinese will count on their land-based ICBMs as their deterrent against a US strategic nuclear attack.

The best description of the potential use of Backfires I’ve ever seen was in the Tom Clancy novel Red Storm Rising. Warning it’s immensely long (but easily skimmed due to the way he wrote it). Should be a lot of used paperback copies out there.

I once knew a woman who said she was related to King Sejong; like she was his _th great grandaughter or something. Is this an example of what you mention?

on a different note, why did hedeyoshi want the chinese to recognize him as ruler of all japan?

lastly, to kushibo: i keep seeing you write that china is going to take north korea. what i don’t see you write is the reasons why. why would china take north korea? i understand if you have no time to respond.