China is actually doing pretty good. Not too long ago photos were leaked of China's F-35 clone. Interestingly enough, they dropped the V/STOL fan and slimmed down the fuselage. The result is a copy that will likely out-perform the original in the majority of applications. Yes, the Chinese copy has no V/STOL capability, but neither do the majority of F-35's. The non-V/STOL F-35's retain the fat, slow fuselage of the the V/STOL versions, ostensibly for interchangeability of parts, even though the percentage of parts that are actually interchangeable keeps going down further and further.
> the percentage of parts that are actually interchangeable keeps going down further and further
It's sad to see so much people at every scale and in every field buy on OSFA / WORA when it's been empirically demonstrated so many times that it just doesn't work. This is why I'm sad to see the A10 decommissioned: it's a testament to Unix'y "do one thing and do it well, and possibly be so awesome that it may cover a few more unexpected bases along the way".
