I'm part way through James Fallows' "China Airborne" and he talks about what it would mean for China to have an airline industry like the US. It means it would

I'm part way through James Fallows' "China Airborne" and he talks about what it would mean for China to have an airline industry like the US. It means it would have the technical know-how in designing engines, manufacturing high-precision parts for engines, advanced metallurgy for body, wings, etc., advanced electronics, and software to tie it all together. In addition, it must have the organizational ability to direct all the flights around the country and do advanced scheduling (computationally difficult) to minimize wait time, etc. China is part way there but not completely. It will be a while. Even their fighters today use Russian engines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-10 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-10 If someone is going to copy the RQ-170 and use it operationally the same way the US does, it won't be China and much less Iran anytime soon.