J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VIII

Blitzo

Blitzo

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tamsen_ikard said:
If the radars are on par that means China is still weaker in radar tech considering
The much higher tr units in the J-20. My impression was that China is at technological parity with US on AESA radar tech.
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ENTED64's answer was phrased carefully to give a non-answer, because that is all we can say to the question you asked.
"On par" is deliberately so vague, and qualified with "exact capability is classified" and "general assumption," to make it so that one is not able to derive any particular detailed conclusions apart from "both are modern fighter AESAs".

In other words, it is a polite way of conveying that the question you originally asked was unanswerable in any level of detail.
The fact that you are asking more detailed questions after his answer means that you have missed his point entirely.

I will put it more bluntly -- the original question about asking in any level of detail comparing J-20A's radar and that of F-35 is unnecessary and cannot be really substantiated by us. The best answer is "they're both modern fighter AESAs" and there is no reason to try to derive anything more.

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Various subsequent posts deleted, for "he said/they said" misunderstandings and people lacking common sense.

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@ZeEa5KPul

Quoting Pisigma as an answer is nice and all, but really the proof in the pudding will be seeing J-20As with WS-15s in serial production and delivery.

I think there is a good chance that is happening... but naturally we have to consider the idea that initial serial J-20As may be powered by WS-10s considering some J-20A prototypes had WS-10s.
 
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ENTED64

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Deino said:
Do we really? What per your information is the most recently converted unit?
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I phrased my comment poorly, what I meant to say is we are only still finding out fairly recently about units that have been converted, like your own posts about 19th AB,131st AB, and possibly another from STC. Of course we don't really know when exactly the conversion took place but given generally assumed production rate and such to me it seems unlikely these units were converted in 2022/early 2023 or something.

You previously posted that it would be difficult to imagine them all being hidden for this long:
Deino said:
And still my main argument against these high numbers: Where are they all? Surely a few can be hidden, but usually the CHinese spotter community is quite well connected and we get usually quite a good hint of "there's something in the making"! So to hide almost 100 or even more delivered J-20 is IMO almost impossible!
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That's why I said that it seems that J-20 production has continued until at least recently (like probably all of 2023 and some of 2024) and might even be ongoing right now depending on how conversion to J-20A and production of WS-15 is going. We don't really have any photo info or such on that so we don't really know much beyond that for sure.
 
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zlixOS

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ENTED64 said:
I phrased my comment poorly, what I meant to say is we are only still finding out fairly recently about units that have been converted, like your own posts about 19th AB,131st AB, and possibly another from STC. Of course we don't really know when exactly the conversion took place but given generally assumed production rate and such to me it seems unlikely these units were converted in 2022/early 2023 or something.

You previously posted that it would be difficult to imagine them all being hidden for this long:

That's why I said that it seems that J-20 production has continued until at least recently (like probably all of 2023 and some of 2024) and might even be ongoing right now depending on how conversion to J-20A and production of WS-15 is going. We don't really have any photo info or such on that so we don't really know much beyond that for sure.
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Is there any info on how the conversion to J-20As and J-20双s are going? I've only seen that one prototype image of a J-20双. And as for the J-20A, it seems like every month people are saying that all new production is J-20A and WS-15 and whatnot with very little evidence to back it up.
 
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ENTED64

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zlixOS said:
Is there any info on how the conversion to J-20As and J-20双s are going? I've only seen that one prototype image of a J-20双. And as for the J-20A, it seems like every month people are saying that all new production is J-20A and WS-15 and whatnot with very little evidence to back it up.
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People have been posting info on this thread. However if you are talking about hard evidence like photos of J-20A in production or in front line units then no and we probably won't see that for a while. PLA doesn't really announce this kind of thing ahead of time and as you can see from this thread sometimes we don't know that a unit has converted until we get pictures of them flying the new planes.

So yes currently hard evidence doesn't exist, but that isn't definitive proof that J-20A production isn't happening right now. It's entirely expected that it will take some time after J-20A starts production for it to be deployed to front line units and then for us to get pictures of that. That could take a year or more after J-20A starts production. So currently a lot of it is kind of rumors/informed speculation rather than hard evidence but this is just the nature of the PLA. Certainly skepticism and wait and see is necessary but sometimes we just don't get hard evidence until years later.
 
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