J-15 carrier fighter thread

[leonzzzz]

the F-14 Tomcat was the definitive carrier-based air combat platform of its era

Meanwhile F18EFs have to carry EFTs while barely flying 1 mach and struggling with a 900km combat radius, exactly why some people in USN still miss the F14 platform to this day. Looking back, last year the PLAN carrier air wing was still barely reaching parity against USN and now we see superiority in every comparable major platforms. The only things PLAN need onward is quantity and operational readiness.

 

[Blitzo]

Meanwhile F18EFs have to carry EFTs while barely flying 1 mach and struggling with a 900km combat radius, exactly why some people in USN still miss the F14 platform to this day.

This is off topic, but I think people should dispense with the idea of modern Super Hornets somehow being inferior to F-14s back in their day for their equivalent threat environments.

The Super Hornet has a higher payload than the F-14, superior BFM due to modern flight control systems, far superior avionics and networking and weapons capability, better signature reduction, better maintainability and availability, better bringback, and more importantly it is far easier upgradeable.

For a combat loaded air to air fighter escort profile, a Super Hornet is comparable to a F-14 of the day and actually a bit better (462nmi, versus 420nmi respectively)

F-14 has lots of cultural cachet for good reason, but as a warfighting platform, the only people who reminisce of it, are old F-14 pilots who never got to experience proper Super Hornets (I'm talking Block II onwards).
The F-14 pilots who remained in the service and got to experience modern Super Hornets tend to greatly favour the latter.


If anything the only reason that the F-18E/F is not seen as an apex A2A platform of the current era, is because it is also too capable in the air to surface role as well which inadvertently "diminishes" how good it is at air superiority.

 

[by78]

Three more from carrier Fujian.

 

[Gloire_bb]

If anything the only reason that the F-18E/F is not seen as an apex A2A platform of the current era, is because it is also too capable in the air to surface role as well which inadvertently "diminishes" how good it is at air superiority.

Spoiler: Shornet part under spoiler

The problem can be roughly summarized on the pic below. To go to normal A2A range (i.e. either OFCA or outer air battle) with VLRAAM capability, SHornet takes an incredible balancing act, and gets down to Korean war era specs(even normal OFCA for this platform is barely supersonic, and is always at disadvantage). Which, in turn, forces one hell of a missile to compensate.

But there's more than that. For example, Hornets only get passive targeting capability through combined drop tankod. Which isn't just undroppable (you drop it - you buy it for the rest of your life), it's a big, subsonic tank.
Yes, superhornet is really a king of low speed maneuver, better than flankers. And i am running from thread to thread preaching that it's very important nowadays, because of drone hunting. But it isn't very relevant for normal a2a combat.

Note that comparable F-14 carried for VLRAAMs, and its profile included both significant supersonic dash, and allowed to cross M=2 while at it.
And Shornet...in too many ways, its BVR performance is not unlike of a huge AV-8B+.

J-15 (as flanker) can go to its A2A profile range fully armed, will be able to fight full a2a engagement on afterburner at a significant Mach(1.3...1.5, maybe even more in first release), and go back. "Fully armed" may include even significant number of PL-17s; original flanker armament was 6 R-27ER/ETs, huge 350kg, 4.8m missiles with very draggy fins. PL-17 is longer, heavier, but it's very clean. Note that "normal" sinoflanker is fighting "light" from original design point of view, and numbers above can be even reviewed upwards.
All that comes with significantly(50%) larger radar array, more onboard power, and overall more modern setup. The only question really is whether J-15T had extensive signature cleaning ops, or just light measures were applied. It's hard to tell.

Equally important is that sinoflanker platform can do exact same with 4 EW pods, and chinese EW pods don't feed from RATs to work (working RAT is a yet additional huge drag source). Which means not just range; it means it likely can keep up just fine with normal flankers without formation wizardry(which means inefficiency).

And final fine detail - until MQ-28 is operational. Buddy refueling J-15 also flies clean; as such, it isn't practically limited to immediate refuelling of overloaded aircraft.

 

[tphuang]

Equally important is that sinoflanker platform can do exact same with 4 EW pods, and chinese EW pods don't feed from RATs to work (working RAT is a yet additional huge drag source). Which means not just range; it means it likely can keep up just fine with normal flankers without formation wizardry(which means inefficiency).

Yes, J-15DT with fully loaded electronics and power generation + 4 EW pods. And it is also possible they can take off with that + 2 ARMs.

That would be quite significant.

I think of J-15T as bomb trucks able to carry large attack missiles that you would not want J-35 or GJ-21 (either operating off Type 076 or CV-18) to carry. Seeing the speed it gets catapulted to on the recent CV-18 video (compared to taking off CV-17), I would not be surprised if it can take off with 4 YJ-15s, which would be quite significant.

Other possibilities would be to carry with fully LR AAM load for KJ-600 direct J-15T launch and J-35 guide terminal phase.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

Discussion continued here to avoid derailing original thread.

In their paid episode today, Ayi said this (29:45):

(while talking about the number of J-15s in service and preparing future pilots) Because you also want to look at the next two aircraft carriers, including this "basically officially announced" nuclear-powered carrier

Again aligning with expectations: two carriers under construction, one of them nuclear

With this in mind, we could roughly guesstimate how many J-15Ts and J-15DTs that the PLAN would actually need for the foreseeable time.

CV-16 Liaoning: 1x J-15T squadron (10-12x units) + 1x J-15DT squadron (4-6x units)
CV-17 Shandong: 1x J-15T squadron (10-12x units) + 1x J-15DT squadron (4-6x units)
CV-18 Fujian: 2x J-15T squadrons (10-12x units) + 1x J-15DT squadron (6-8x units)
CV-19: 2x J-15T squadrons (10-12x units) + 1x J-15DT squadron (6-8x units)
CVN-20: 2x J-15T squadrons (10-12x units) + 1x J-15DT squadron (6-8x units)

This would tally up to about 80-96x J-15Ts and 26-36x J-15DTs, or about 106-132x units of the CATOBAR J-15 family. Note that this number hasn't include additional units meant to be spares and/or land-based training.

Of course, this is by assuming that all 5 of the aforementioned carriers will be in active service with the PLAN by the mid-2030s, and that both the J-XD(S)Ts and the carrier-based UCAVs (e.g. GJ-21) aren't ready for large-scale deployment by then.

In retrospect, the most recent count stands at ~80 units for the CATOBAR J-15 family:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1970673843476808129

And as for the 100+ units of the STOBAR J-15 family - Once the requirement gap for the CATOBAR J-15 family has been filled, they can be wholly relegated to land-based training duties and be MLU-ed to the CATOBAR J-15 family standards.

 

[Blitzo]

Discussion continued here to avoid derailing original thread.


With this in mind, we could roughly guesstimate how many J-15Ts and J-15DTs that the PLAN would actually need for the foreseeable time.

CV-16 Liaoning: 1x J-15T squadron (10-12x units) + 1x J-15DT squadron (4-6x units)
CV-17 Shandong: 1x J-15T squadron (10-12x units) + 1x J-15DT squadron (4-6x units)
CV-18 Fujian: 2x J-15T squadron (10-12x units) + 1x J-15DT squadron (6-8x units)
CV-19: 2x J-15T squadron (10-12x units) + 1x J-15DT squadron (6-8x units)
CVN-20: 2x J-15T squadron (10-12x units) + 1x J-15DT squadron (6-8x units)

This would tally up to about 80-96x J-15Ts and 26-36x J-15DTs, or about 106-132x units of the CATOBAR J-15 family. Note that this number hasn't include additional units meant to be spares and/or land-based training.

Of course, this is by assuming that all 5 of the aforementioned carriers will be in active service with the PLAN by the mid-2030s, and that the J-XD(S)H isn't yet ready for serial production and large-scale deployment by then.

In retrospect, the most recent count stands at ~80 units for the CATOBAR J-15 family:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1970673843476808129

And as for the 100+ units of the STOBAR J-15 family - Once the requirement gap for the CATOBAR J-15 family has been filled, they can be wholly relegated to land-based training duties and be MLU-ed to the CATOBAR J-15 family standards.

I feel like it would be prudent to use the STOBAR J-15s purely for land based roles (which seems to be what you're implying), and perhaps they could be given a "J-11BG" equivalent MLU but I doubt they would be able to be fully fitted up to J-15T standards in terms of avionics.

One way of examining J-15T and DT production imo, is to look at the number of aircraft that may be part of each carrier's regular fixed wing complement (which would of course need to be balanced against how many J-35s a carrier also accommodates), and then also look at how many "extra" J-15T and DT aircraft they may want to build for purposes of:
- attrition
- land based rotational training/evaluation
- having "excess" pilots/airframes

After all, the STOBAR J-15 family has over 100 airframes by now, yet the two STOBAR carriers only accommodate 24 STOBAR J-15s each which is just under 50 aircraft... yet they've produced twice that number of STOBAR J-15 airframes. Even if we assume they overproduced them due to concerns of attrition/flying the early airframes very hard, we may be looking at anywhere from a 150-175% airframe requirement of the number of actual "total onboard airwing slots".

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

I feel like it would be prudent to use the STOBAR J-15s purely for land based roles (which seems to be what you're implying), and perhaps they could be given a "J-11BG" equivalent MLU but I doubt they would be able to be fully fitted up to J-15T standards in terms of avionics.

Yes, that's what I mean.

One way of examining J-15T and DT production imo, is to look at the number of aircraft that may be part of each carrier's regular fixed wing complement (which would of course need to be balanced against how many J-35s a carrier also accommodates), and then also look at how many "extra" J-15T and DT aircraft they may want to build for purposes of:
- attrition
- land based rotational training/evaluation
- having "excess" pilots/airframes

After all, the STOBAR J-15 family has over 100 airframes by now, yet the two STOBAR carriers only accommodate 24 STOBAR J-15s each which is just under 50 aircraft... yet they've produced twice that number of STOBAR J-15 airframes. Even if we assume they overproduced them due to concerns of attrition/flying the early airframes very hard, we may be looking at anywhere from a 150-175% airframe requirement of the number of actual "total onboard airwing slots".

Does the 24x STOBAR J-15 family per CV include the DH variant? There should be about 4 to 6 (more) J-15DHs as part of the airwing for each of the STOBAR CV twins, in addition to the J-15H/SHs.

In the meantime, 150-175% would mean somewhere from ~159 to ~231 units of the CATOBAR J-15 family - Which is a pretty sizeable production run.

 

[Blitzo]

Yes, that's what I mean.



Does the 24x STOBAR J-15 family include the DH variant? There should be about 4 to 6 (more) J-15DHs as part of the airwing for each of the STOBAR CV twins, in addition to the J-15H/SHs.

Yeah it would include any STOBAR J-15 variant in that case. I don't think either of the STOBARs can accommodate more than 24 J-15 sized aircraft per vessel.

In the meantime, 150-175% would mean somewhere from ~159 to ~231 units of the CATOBAR J-15 family - Which is a pretty sizeable production run.

Are your calculations of J-15T/DT squadron sizes aboard the carriers including 1-2 squadrons of J-35s as well? (I assume you are)

But yes, depending on how many J-35s they end up aiming for versus J-15T/DT, the total J-15T/DT production run could be a bit bigger or smaller.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

Are your calculations of J-15T/DT squadron sizes aboard the carriers including 1-2 squadrons of J-35s as well? (I assume you are)

But yes, depending on how many J-35s they end up aiming for versus J-15T/DT, the total J-15T/DT production run could be a bit bigger or smaller.

No, I'm only counting the CATOBAR J-15 family.

As for the J-35, I certainly expect a larger production run than the J-15T/DTs, as I anticipate that the carrier air wings on future carriers (i.e. post CVN-20) would most likely only consist of J-35s and J-XD(S)Ts as their manned fighter components (apart from the J-15TDs, if their roles haven't been taken over by something else).