Sometimes I get a feeling people are saying Chinese are building/buying new planes too slowly. Well, I've been checking out some procurement rate numbers... From 1995 until today, PLAAF and PLANAF seem to have procured over 950 newly built combat aircraft, which is something like 76 planes a year. And that is my very conservative estimate. Some stuff i had to basically guess, for rest i used figures given on sinodefence and huitong's site.
Breakdown would be something like this- remember from 1995 till today:
at least 343 newly built J7 (D, E, G models)
at least 275 newly built/bought su-27/30/j11 (included a token number of j11b)
at least 80 newly built j10 (interpolation from most often mentioned figures)
at least 80 newly built jh7/7a (same as above)
at least 72 newly built j8 (pure guess, i'd say very conservative)
at least 72 newly built q5 (again, pure guesswork)
at least 36 newly built h6 (this would be enough for two new units, even though usually it's said there's 2 units of H model alone, plus a unit of M model)
Now, that's a very fine procurement rate, though, i'm guessing, unsustainable, in light of new gen planes, increasing costs, etc. Future procurement rates are likely only to be slower, not faster. Now, if we accept a fact there are at least 1000 old combat planes to be replaced (500 old gen j7, 200 old gen j8, 400 q5, 50 old h6) that would take, realistically, not less than 18 years from now (with a 30% slow down in procurement rate in a 10 year period), not including possible replacements for the likes of current su27s etc.
I know some are going to say that future fleet size is bound to shrink, but i'd say the shrinking has already been done (from an onetime fleet that featured 3000 j6 alone) and in light of vast area to cover and combined china's neighbors fleets (SKorea, Japan, Taiwan, let alone the US) it would be a grave mistake to keep shrinking it further, certainly not under 2000 combat aircraft.
Breakdown would be something like this- remember from 1995 till today:
at least 343 newly built J7 (D, E, G models)
at least 275 newly built/bought su-27/30/j11 (included a token number of j11b)
at least 80 newly built j10 (interpolation from most often mentioned figures)
at least 80 newly built jh7/7a (same as above)
at least 72 newly built j8 (pure guess, i'd say very conservative)
at least 72 newly built q5 (again, pure guesswork)
at least 36 newly built h6 (this would be enough for two new units, even though usually it's said there's 2 units of H model alone, plus a unit of M model)
Now, that's a very fine procurement rate, though, i'm guessing, unsustainable, in light of new gen planes, increasing costs, etc. Future procurement rates are likely only to be slower, not faster. Now, if we accept a fact there are at least 1000 old combat planes to be replaced (500 old gen j7, 200 old gen j8, 400 q5, 50 old h6) that would take, realistically, not less than 18 years from now (with a 30% slow down in procurement rate in a 10 year period), not including possible replacements for the likes of current su27s etc.
I know some are going to say that future fleet size is bound to shrink, but i'd say the shrinking has already been done (from an onetime fleet that featured 3000 j6 alone) and in light of vast area to cover and combined china's neighbors fleets (SKorea, Japan, Taiwan, let alone the US) it would be a grave mistake to keep shrinking it further, certainly not under 2000 combat aircraft.
