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Ask anything Thread (Air Force)
- Thread starter Jeff Head
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Russia classifies F-22, F-35, J-20 and Su-57 as 5th gen
US previously classified the above as 4th gen, but have since some around to the Russian classification.
China initially followed the Russian standard, but eventually came around to the US standard. But then since US changed their standard to match Russian it became very confusing.
US previously classified the above as 4th gen, but have since some around to the Russian classification.
China initially followed the Russian standard, but eventually came around to the US standard. But then since US changed their standard to match Russian it became very confusing.
well, now they use their own standard, which is just coincidentally similar to the US old standard.
but honestly, I don't think anyone would argue differently that J-20 should be classified at the same level as F-22, F-35, and Su-57, and the rest does matter, especially in this thread, so let's please move on...
... What?
Russia and the US had always defined the likes of F-22, F-35, J-20 and Su-57 as 5th generation. Similarly, F-15, F-16, Mig-29, Su-27, Typhoon, Rafale, J-10 etc are considered 4th generation.
China's generation system for the two groups respectively are 4th generation and 3rd generation.
I don't know what change in standard you're talking about.
Can I just add onto this post by Deino a little bit?
Seriously, for anyone who thinks that the presenter describing J-20 as 5th generation is reflective of some kind of inherent change in Chinese system of defining generations, I strongly advise thinking a little bit more carefully and applying Occam's razor a little bit.
If something doesn't smell right, or if something is a little bit surprising, first ask whether there's something obvious you might have missed which may most reasonably and simply explain the observation, instead of leaping to a dramatic or "significant" conclusion.
In this case, it is almost certain and frankly not even worth mentioning the fact that the presenter described J-20 as 5th generation, because among all of the possible explanations, the overwhemingly most likely one is simply that in this instance he was using the international standard.
well, I think he was talking about the story of how the fighter generation was known to the public
to my knowledge, everybody started to widely accept the concept of fighter generation from the F-22, and other counties just followed it.
But when Russian got their T-50 out, they claimed it was a fifth-gen fighter, instead of a fourth, because they think their Mig-25 and Mig-27 are superior to their Amecian counterparty.
Later when F-35 was out, Americans just redefined their fighter generation system, and put F-4 in the same generation as the Mig-25/27, so their level count is matched.
China, on the other hand, is still following the vanilla version of the fighter generation system, as they don't have a similar jet to the Mig-25 (J-8 maybe???), nor to the F-4, so to them, J-20 is the fourth generation fighter jet they produced.
I think you need to review your aircraft generations a little bit.
I have no idea what you're talking about and this entire discussion is becoming ridiculous.
I'm not even sure what you mean by Mig-25/27 -- Mig-25 and Mig-27 are entirely different aircraft -- are you referring to Su-27 instead?? But why include Mig-25, or do you mean Mig-29?
I loathe referring to wikipedia, but as a resoruce for this purpose it is appropriate -- have a look at the fighters for each generation it describes, and they are broadly correct.
The Chinese generation system is the same, but just minus one.
F-22/F-35/Su-57/J-20 are 5th generation in the rest of the world, 4th generation in China's system
F-16/F-15/Su-27/Mig-29/J-10/Typhoon are 4th generation in the rest of the world, 3rd generation in China's system.
F-4/Mig-23/J-8 are 3rd generation in the rest of the world, 2nd generation in China's system.
It's just that simple, I'm not sure what sort of change in generation you're counting.
Now that this is settled, I'm going to ask people to get back on topic, and in future if anyone has any basic questions about things like fighter generations, to first please do some reading around the topic before coming back and/or even starting a new thread or using the "ask anything" thread in each subforum please.
that was exactly what I was talking about, trying to explain what causes people confusion, because the system of generation was changed over time. especially to you and what you quoted on.
And that was @Temstar was talking about at there
You didn't explain it very well, and more importantly there really should be no confusion over this topic at all.
The current understanding of fighter generations hasn't changed for the last two decades.
I'm going to move the irrelevant posts to the "Ask anything thread". This is getting ridiculous.
no, it has, there was no fifth-gen system prior to Russian claimed their Su-57 as a fifth-gen fighter. which is only about 10 years ago, F-22 was a fouth gen fighter by then as to American and the rest of the world.
American changed the F-22 to a fifth-gen fighter roughly about the same time when F-35 was introduced to service (~2015)
come on, how can you not remembering this, there were so so so many discussion about this back then