There are claims some J-11B fighters have AESA radar. Because they have a radome color similar to that of the J-16.
Ask anything Thread (Air Force)
- Thread starter Jeff Head
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Numbers from IISS in Wikipedia are good estimates:
1500 4th Gen+ now in service according IISS 2023.
Compare that to US air force which 1800 modern fighters in active service. Getting close
but the number of fighters with AESA radars only around 700 I think. dunno how much USAF has.
US has 900 F-16's which have tiny radars, low fuel capacity and produced more than 20 years ago.
Most of the 4th gen+ planes China have are less then 10 years old.
yea I just checked on wiki, it seems F16 C/D all use pulse doppler lol. man now I feel a bit better. The US has 900 of these pulse doppler fighters lol. the only US fighters that are AESA are F15 C/D, F15 E, F22, and F35. total numbers of AESA fighters is 928. China has 700. not bad not bad lol.
I'm pretty sure some of the F-16 have already been upgraded. A quick Google search gave me that claims the US will upgrade 608 legacy F-16 fighters with AESA radar.
Also, maybe I'm misunderstanding some of the conversation that's going on in this thread. But it looks to me like comparisons are being made to the US Air Force without taking the US Navy and US Marines into consideration. The US Navy has more aircraft than most countries do. Between F/A-18E Super Hornets, EA-18G Growlers, and F-35C they will have between 800 to 1000 AESA-equipped aircraft. The US Marines also has over 400 F-35B & F-35C pending delivery. Compared to the entire US Military, I think China will be lagging far behind in the number of modern aircraft for at least another 10 years.
Just how many of those aircraft the US can deploy in the western pacific is another question.
US Navy has 592 active Fighters with 566 of them F-18 and just 26 F-35.
If you also count growlers which are not fighter aircraft, then its 745 4th gen planes.
US Marine - 225 Harrier plus F-18 and 352 if you also include f-35.
in total thats 1097 more 4th+ gen fighters
So, 1800+1097 = 2900
China is still just 50% of that number.
Still someways to go in the fighter department. But again most of these US fighters are really old compared to whatever China has. Also most US fighters are cheap small size fighters like F-16, F-18 and harriers.
For China, out 1500 planes 565 are the small size J-10s. Rest are heavy weight air superiority fighters with long range and huge radar Flanker family or J-20.
he's talking about future inventory as well. keep in mind China's jets are also growing, so taking into account future inventory is pointless. that said, the USN has 600 AESA fighters and USMC has only 32 active F35, so only 632 AESA jets. in a conflict near China the US can surge maximum 5 carrier groups, so 250 super hornets. most of the USAF stays home, obviously. so right now, there is nothing the PLA can't handle.
In a worst case scenario you could see US, South Korean, and Japanese fighters get into the conflict. And of course the US Air Force would try to move aircraft to the Western Pacific theater. They might even try to get European aircraft into the conflict. They are already pull the European navies into making long range patrols in the Western Pacific close to China as it is.
Which is one of the reasons why I think China is being dumb in not designing their own single engine 5th+ generation aircraft.
Which is one of the reasons why I think China is being dumb in not designing their own single engine 5th+ generation aircraft.
In modern day threat environment where SAM missiles dominate the battlefield, Even stealth is not secure since SAM missiles can use low frequency radars to detect stealth.
You don't need that many fighters in this kind of battlefield. You need the biggest, most capable.
The rest will be handled by missiles and drones.