The "different production line" is the same old production line modified. It is the same but different. Regardless how you phrase it, the production will stop during the upgrading/changing, the effect is the same, drop of production numbers for a period.
J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VIII
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
A lot has changed under the hood, more than you can imagine.
I'm not sure if that helps clarify the question that he wrote lol.
I agree that of course there are substantial major reworks for J-20A/S compared to J-20, including internally (obviously), but that doesn't mean they need an entirely different production line for J-20A/S compared to J-20.
Instead what is more likely is that the existing J-20 production line were retooled and modified for J-20A/S production, as Taxiya and others have written.
To accommodate for greater power generation there is significant change to not only the generator but also cooling, which means that the plumbing has to be routed differently. In fourth gen vernacular it is almost as drastic as going from J-11BS to J-16. Sure you have a lot of interchangeable components for aircraft body but I don’t know if the new production line is backwards compatible with vanilla J-20.
The significant scale of the "under the skin" upgrades and modifications are something that we all accept. However I don't see how any of that contradicts the statement that J-20A/S could (or indeed would) be built on a modified J-20 production line, as opposed to requiring a brand new production line.
That is the key statement which they were asking about.
Whether the J-20A/S production line is backwards production line with the vanilla J-20 production line was not part of the question.
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Realistically, I think the unspoken consensus over the years would be that J-20A/S production would occur on existing vanilla J-20 production lines but obviously significantly retooled/modified. I don't think anyone's entertained the idea that J-20A/S would need bespoke new production lines constructed for them.
There now appears to be 14x first-line ABs fielding the baseline J-20, which, assuming each unit fields a 30-plane complement, would amount to 420 aircraft. The 1st AB may well have transferred its J-20s to another unit, however; in that case, there would be "just" 13x active units fielding up to 390 J-20s.
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the 41st is in fact confirmed since some time, but I must admit I think my gut feeling tells me it looks a bit fishy
Me again ... and in fact I'm surprised? Are maybe new J-20 units already that boring?
