After all, William Cohen's focus is not on the threat itself posed by a third-generation fighter, but on how to gain more benefits for his own department by exaggerating the threat from China.

Therefore, after some marginal discussion, he soon gave up continuing to study the specific technical source of Huaxia's domestic engine.

Rigorous military intelligence is one thing, but using think tanks and the media to build public opinion is another.

People will always only believe what they want to believe.

Among the 100 masters in the Senate, there are definitely no more than a handful of people who will really go through the procedures to look at the documents of the intelligence agencies.

Therefore, the focus is on seven points of truth and three points of falsehood, and reasonable deduction is carried out on the premise of certain basic facts.

The matter of the Chinese people's domestic production of the Su-27 is nothing more than two possibilities.

First, "the Chinese people concealed from the world and secretly spent a few years developing an aero engine to install on the plane";

The second is that "the Chinese bought military engine technology from the Russians."

To convince senators who don't understand technology, it's not about what the truth is, it's about judging which version of the story they'll prefer-

Apparently the second type.

Because this is more in line with an American's perception of the world.

Moreover, it can also involve old and new adversaries together and further exaggerate the challenges that the US military will face in the new century.

After all, even though the Cold War is over, no one will really regard the Russians as friends.

It has nothing to do with the position of the other party.

Rather, it is simple, the empire needs an enemy.

Otherwise, if the world is really peaceful, wouldn't the tens of millions of laborers who rely on war and arms sales to eat starve to death?

"Well, thank you very much for bringing this news."

Cohen lifted his wrist and looked at his watch, feeling that the time was almost up, and then changed his mind to end the conversation.

And Henryon, who was on the other side, had already done this, and after a few polite words, he got up and left the defense minister's office with the intelligence document.

After seeing the other man's back disappear in the doorway, Cohen picked up the phone and dialed the number of his secretary's office.

"Help me make an appointment with Mr. Daniel Mitnick, the head of the Intelligence Selection Committee."

"Yes, the sooner the better."

This intelligence selection committee is the department in which Cohen served before he became secretary of defense.

Although the name sounds like an intelligence unit, it is actually a non-governmental think tank with no official background.

In the past, it has been in a situation where it has a very good reputation, but not a lot of influence.

However, in the past two years, for obvious reasons, they have begun to get the opportunity to cooperate deeply with the defense system, and the frequency of the report has become more and more frequent, and there is even a tendency to develop in the direction of semi-official think tanks.

……

Almost at the same time.

Huaxia, Beijing.

Although it was approaching late at night, there were still a few brightly lit rooms in the office building of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

An emergency internal meeting is taking place here.

Meetings like this were not uncommon a few years ago.

As the department in charge of the construction of the national defense industry and the development of military technology, it is basically inevitable that a meeting will be held until the second half of the night whenever there is any major national project.

It's just that in the past two years, the frequency of problems in key national projects has decreased significantly, so the number of people who are urgently called back after work has become significantly less.

And this time, naturally, it was also because of a certain key model, something went wrong.

In the conference room, Ding Gaoheng, who had almost been regarded by everyone as having quit smoking, was swallowing clouds and spitting fog for the first time, and the expression on his face was also full of coldness.

After taking a hard puff of his cigarette, he finally broke the silence to the point of death:

"Lin Hai, let's talk about the specific situation of the current ring project."

The Ring Project, that is, the early warning aircraft project jointly developed by Huaxia and David, plans to use the Il-76 platform to carry the Filcom radar system developed by the latter, in order to obtain an early warning aircraft with sufficient performance in a relatively short period of time.

Although the contract was formally signed more than a year ago, in fact, before that, there had been a lot of contact between Huaxia Aviation Technology Import and Export Company, David Guo's Elta Company and Damao's Beriev Aviation Manufacturing Company.

So, in the first year after the official launch of the project, the overall progress was very rapid.

Even at the beginning of this year, an Il-76TD transport aircraft, which had been prepared for a long time, was sent to the Kingdom of David, ready for flight tests after the installation of a disc-shaped radome.

However, after that, the ring project did not usher in the next critical node according to the preset schedule.

Of course, this kind of cross-border, especially cross-border cooperation between three countries, is not uncommon for some delays as the depth increases.

But as time passed, the technicians involved in the project on the Huaxia side gradually noticed that something was wrong, and reported the news to China after collecting some evidence.

That's why we have today's meeting.

"Director Ding, according to the report of the leader of our technical delegation to the Kingdom of David, it is likely that Elta is deliberately delaying the research and development progress of the ring project."

"In April this year, the 14-meter radome required for the AWACS aircraft was transported from Taganrog to the Kingdom of David, and even assembly tests were carried out, but the test flight of the combination was not carried out immediately."

"At that time, the reason given by the Davidian side was that because the Il-76 we provided was an old aircraft, some of the details of the fuselage did not match the drawings provided by the Belyev company, and there may be risks in forced assembly, and they needed to measure the structural deformation of the aircraft, and then make necessary adjustments to the installation method of the radome."

"At that time, the Beryev company thought that this argument was untenable, because although our Il-76 was eight years old, it had only flown less than 300 hours in total, and there was no deformation enough to affect the installation of the radome, and they had never encountered such a problem in the past with a longer flight platform."

"However, we considered that the ring project involved a major project after all, and as long as there was a risk, it should still be ruled out, so we still adopted the opinion of the Davids, and re-inspected the structure of the aircraft."

"But from that time on, the El Ta company began to hinder the development process of the project for various reasons, and under the repeated urging of us and Beriev, it was not until last month that the radome was installed on the Il-76, but all kinds of reasons were used to delay the first flight of the combination......"

“……”

With Lin Hai's introduction, most of the rest of the people present at the meeting expressed anger.

Even a few deputy directors did the same.

In recent years, China's foreign cooperation in the field of aviation has been increasing, but it is rare to encounter such a thing.

Even Airbus and the European Space Agency, no matter what others think, at least on the surface, they have an attitude of equality and reciprocity.

Although they don't talk about it, they definitely have the feeling of raising their eyebrows.

Now that he is being put on such a face, it is naturally impossible to swallow this breath casually.

"I'm afraid there will be no motive to do this just by the Kingdom of David."

Huai Guomo's tone of voice was much sharper than usual:

"I see, behind this, I'm afraid that there are Americans making trouble."

"No matter who is behind it, it is absolutely unacceptable to use such a small means to stumble us in secret!"

Zhang Dongxu almost slapped the table halfway through hearing it just now, and now he is obviously angry:

"The current plan is to put pressure on the Davids, and we paid $350 million, not for them to grind foreign workers."

“……”

In the voice of statements and condemnation, although Ding Gaoheng, who was sitting in the first place, also frowned slightly, he never spoke.

The fact that the David Congress was making small moves in the Ring Project was not a surprise to him.

Because as early as more than a year ago, Chang Haonan proposed this possibility.

At that time, it was only a reason for the domestic AWACS backup project to be launched, but now it seems that it is ......

It seems more like a prophecy......

(End of chapter)