I found this video to be terribly amusing. After years of essentially copying American designs and then passing them off as their own, the Russians are upset that the Chinese are doing that same thing to them.

Think I’m exaggerating about the copying american designs thing? Remember the B-29s they copied at the end of WWII and they called the Tu-4? How about their Buran shuttle, the Tupolev 154 (copy of the Boeing 727), the various copies of the F-15 that they’ve made over the years?

Mig-29 Fulcrum

Photo by: AereiMilitari.org

I can’t remember the genetic principle that talks about degeneration when you make a clone of a clone you eventually end up diluting the DNA so much that you end up with mush. This is what seems to be happening with the Chinese copies of the Russian copies of American fighter planes.

I think it speaks volumes about the quality and caliber of the F-15 that it’s still being copied. I can’t find a photo of an FC-1 that I can use, but the plane at the beginning of the video, is an FC-1.

They don’t look exactly alike, mostly since the Mig-29 has 2 engines and the FC-1 has 1, but I can see some similarities in the wings and ailerons. I imagine that besides using similar engines models, there are other similarities under the skin.

From this top angle however, I think the FC-1 looks more like an F-16 than a Mig-29.