A basic part of advanced military training consists of presenting the soldier with large, cumbersome objects that need to be moved or hidden. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that in the hours that have elapsed since the landing, some plane of equivalent size and shape even, perhaps, a mockup has been got into place on a runway, while the original has been towed off into a hangar somewhere under cover of darkness. Fighter-bomber planes travel very fast, and have precious little time to scrutinize their targets. A mockup doesn t have to be correct down to the last rivet. Second, you need to know that any critical equipment that might still be intact is actually in place when you strike.
Late reports say that Chinese military personnel entered the plane as soon as it landed.
They could have stripped the thing by now. If this has indeed been done, we need to know it, and for sure this is not a piece of information the Chinese are going to give us for the asking. Third, supposing the top-secret gear is not already in Beijing, you have to hit the damn plane and destroy that gear. Precision guided munitions are just the thing for bringing down a building or unzipping a bunker, but the aim here is to render into unrecognizable scrap some components no bigger than a home stereo system. We do not, actually, have that kind of precision from the air.