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Comment by formerly_proven | Hacker News Reader

The US bombed the Chinese embassy for revenge of reverse engineering a plane shot down just a few weeks earlier by the Serbs? Wow, the Chinese are incredibly fast! And the US military so quick to act!

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Yeah. It is a persistent conspiracy theory about the embassy bombing that is still around until this day (in particular in China and Serbia, of course ...).

Here is an article from AP written ten years later, essentially saying that the Chinese based their J-20 stealth fighter on the pieces of the F-117 laying on the ground in Serbia:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/23/china-stealth-...

Chinese stealth fighter jet may use US technology

China may have bought parts of US F-117 Nighthawk shot down over Serbia in 1999, say experts

Considering that F-117 was based on thrown out Soviet paper (which was declared to be publishable in the open by Soviets), they migh have at most taken a look at materials used for coating, but the materials weren't that great as F-117 based itself on the shape not absorbing capability of materials...

This is the 'paper' / monograph I think people refer to when they make this claim.

https://archive.org/details/ufintsev-method-of-edge-waves-in...

Wiki link about 117 development that mentions the work by Pyotr Ufimtsev.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk#Devel...

Additional data point: the US made no attempt at salvaging or destroying the wreckage... but then bombed an embassy to make a point?

Oh and it's not like that was the only time poor recon resulted in bombs dropped in another place during the intervention. The execution of it is certainly not a high in NATO's history.

The paper is mentioned also in the book "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed". The Skunk Works' design team used the equations published by Soviet physicist and mathematician Petr Ufimtsev on electromagnetic wave reflection to create the plane.

Any links?

Is there any other explanation for why US bombed that embassy though?

There's a claim out there from a former Delta operator that an Intelligence Support Activity / Task Force Orange guy put the laser designator on the wrong building. I have no way of knowing if it's true or not.

One thing we know for sure is that perpetrators, as usual in the Land of Freedom, never got punished.

The official story was that the intelligence officer providing the target had the wrong map.

The story would go like this: Chinese agents working out of the Belgrade embassy go and buy the pieces of the F177 and collect them at the embassy. The US bombs the embassy knowing that even though it is an act war against China, China is in no position to respond.

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