SAC new large facility indicate, they have been working on serial production for years. fighter jet serial production is depend on Engine supply. it means WS-21 also entered in serial production.
J-35A fighter (PLAAF) + FC-31 thread
- Thread starter ACuriousPLAFan
- Start date
The J-35's #1 advantage over the F-35 isn't technological, but political: you can blow up whoever and whatever you want with your new stealth fighter.
Does that mean the J-35A is F-35 Plus, whereas the J-35 is F-35 Pro/Max?
Man, man...
Yeah, the F-35 isn't going to have the capabilities that it was advertised until the Block 4, and the Block 4 isn't released until sometime this year. It's supposed to include such wonderful features as "less need to reboot he software in flight". I can't imagine the modern PLA allowing incomplete designs like that to be released to combat units. They'll allow planes to be fielded with interim engines but that's about it.
Chinese strategists and weapons designers tend to think about American white papers as if they work as touted, and base their assumptions and designs around that. A good example of this is dual pulse rocket motor on the PL-15. There was an American white paper talking about the advantages of the dual pulse design so the Chinese developers went ahead and built it. The problem? The Americans themselves never managed to get dual pulse AAMs working! The AIM-260 is the first American AAM that's supposed to have this feature and they never started work on it until after the PL-15 was revealed.
It helps that the J-35 also isn't some Frankenstein compromise design either.
Will you stop with that?
CAC continue to hire more workers and add more capex in order to expand its production. Clearly, its factory floor space expanded in the past year so that it can expand production more.
J-20 production will got above 100.
At no time, did the Guancha guys say J-20 production cannot go above 100 in the future.
And while SAC has added a lot of factory floor space, going from 0 to 50 in 1 year for something advanced like J-35 is very difficult.
The idea of CAC being able to go above 100/year for J-20 is not contradictory to what he wrote (after all he did say "~100" not "100").
The point is that CAC is approaching the limits of what it can credibly produce per year. Sure it may be able to reach and even sustain over 100, like 120, but that sort of rate won't satisfy the PLA's 5th gen appetite and sustaining such rates for too long may adversely effect CACs long term health or progress of other projects .
I'm not going to speculate what he thinks the limit is.
I think CAC @ 120 and SAC at < 30 for the next year is far more likely than 100 to 50. Whether it goes beyond 120 is something for PLA to decide. In the past year, I've said it is likely for China's 5th gen production to get to 200 a year. And under that scenario, a 60:40 split or even 65:35 split between CAC and SAC is all quite plausible. I certainly do no think that getting to 120 a year or beyond for CAC will be bad for its long term health.
It would be bad for CAC to have expanded its floor space and not try to fully utilize it.
Expanded floor space may not only be for J-20.
The next immediate year of 5th gens alone isn't important, rather it is the sustained/average rate that CAC and SAC can combined produce over the next decade, while both CAC and SAC have upcoming next gen fighter projects and various likely UCAVs in the works as well that all need to be produced.
Overall the thrust of the argument is that CAC's ability to expand and produce an increased number of J-20s is not able meet the PLA's 5th gen appetite, if they also want to maintain robust R&D and testing/moving to LRIP for next gen fighter and UCAV projects, while also not burning out large chunks of CAC's workforce.
Whether that means sustaining 100, 110, 120 or 130 J-20s a year for 5 years or 10 years, doesn't really matter to the conversation -- the point is that the PLA wants both CAC and SAC up and running at a healthy and sustainable pace for a long period that allows them to meet PLA 5th gen demands over the course of this decade and into the 2030s, while simultaneously letting both develop their next gen fighter and UCAV projects competently, while also doing R&D into more future projects beyond the 2030s, and also allowing both organizations to remain healthy from a human resources perspective.
It seems that some think that if CAC is limited by its size of workforce and floor area to meet PLA's demand, then it must be SAC to produce large number of J-35A to fulfill that demand. However this is not the only possible conclusion to draw.
I tend to think CAC and SAC as a whole, they together fulfill whatever demand that PLA want. What ratio of J-35 and J-20 is up to PLA's design of their force structure, less a thing based on who is designer and producer. If hypothetically PLA only want heavy fighter or majority of their fighter being heavy, and CAC's current manpower is inadequte, AVIC can alot floors and workforce in SAC to produce J-20, or sent workforces to CAC if factory facility isn't the limit. AVIC's former self did that many times, XAC and CAC were created out of SAC and CAC got the job of making J-7 that was initiated by SAC as a result.
So I won't put much trust in the talking by the Guancha Trios of "CAC up to their extrem limit". They know some bits and pieces from their contacts here and there, but not every dots can be connected correctly. Even they know a guy in the production line of J-20, that guy won't necessarily know what AVIC and PLA have in mind.
I tend to think CAC and SAC as a whole, they together fulfill whatever demand that PLA want. What ratio of J-35 and J-20 is up to PLA's design of their force structure, less a thing based on who is designer and producer. If hypothetically PLA only want heavy fighter or majority of their fighter being heavy, and CAC's current manpower is inadequte, AVIC can alot floors and workforce in SAC to produce J-20, or sent workforces to CAC if factory facility isn't the limit. AVIC's former self did that many times, XAC and CAC were created out of SAC and CAC got the job of making J-7 that was initiated by SAC as a result.
So I won't put much trust in the talking by the Guancha Trios of "CAC up to their extrem limit". They know some bits and pieces from their contacts here and there, but not every dots can be connected correctly. Even they know a guy in the production line of J-20, that guy won't necessarily know what AVIC and PLA have in mind.