China Flanker Thread II
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PiSigma
"the engineer"
And by the time they do, flankers will be truly obsolete.
I think the problem for 601 is that flankers is all they got now, since J31 is not able to get any funding from the air force.
The air force is realizing there are newer and better things to spend their money on. Flankers has always been a stopgap plane for the Chinese, starting on the Su27s to the J15 and J16 of now. J15 is only around because there has not been enough budget for a dedicated carrier plane and the Chinese are new to carriers. Only they get more time with the carriers the navy will hammer down more detailed specifications for what they want to see in a carrier oriented plane. The Russian and american philosophies may not apply.
That's why ever since J10 came out more and more resources have been going to 611. And thus 611 is designing and building all the new generation planes. All of this will just snowball, more research funds means better tech means more projects.
Except this model is basically what happened in the US with the F-35, where Lockheed ate up the entire USAF's 5th-gen inventory. Assigning more resources to CAC may work, but at the same time, you risk having a single organization control your fighters, and if they screw up, you're screwed too.
No point in keeping an incompetent organization around though. If you want two, split up CAC and create a new subsidiary. Both CAC and SAC are back to being owned by AVIC anyway.
PiSigma
"the engineer"
I'm not saying there won't be more J15s, just that it is an stopgap plane until a fully Chinese carrier jet is designed and built.
The entire sino-flanker family is something China needed due to lack of good indigenous planes or complete lack of existence before hand, is J15.
With the increase in their ability, the air force will want a 100% Chinese product eventually, and not a copy of a Russian product no matter how good flankers are.
Meanwhile, they will continue to build J15/16/11 or whatever until a good Chinese product comes along. It doesn't have to be 5th gen or F35 like budget.
They are looking into the future and not going to depend on Russia for the tech like in the past.
The strongest advantage of Chinese aviation is knock-offs, or more politely, integration. Chinese aircraft designers are willing to adopt the best practices, as well as design paradigms from all over the world, using canard airframes similar to Eurofighters, strakes like on the F-16, as well as American stealth technology. Having more designers allows China to explore more approaches than their foreign rivals; if you look at US aircraft, on the 4th generation, you had the F-14, the F-15, and the F-18, with each having a different, but effective, aerodynamic configuration. On the fifth generation, however, you're looking at pretty much the same thing, the F-22 is a stealthified F-15 with input from the F-16 (LERX). The F-35 is a budget F-22. Lkewise, looking at the Russians, we see the MiG-27 being developed into the Su-27, then into the PAK-FA, showing a single design lineage.
With both the J-31 and the J-20, China has two radically different design paradigms for fifth generation aircraft. One is a sort of merger between the F-35 and F-22, while the other is a stealthified J-10. The former presents a useful development opportunity to explore the use of LEVCONs, if they ever choose to add it, as well as conventional TVC-only supermaneuverability. If SAC were to go under, on the other hand, China would be left with only the J-20 as a lineage. This has more pernicious effects than merely on aircraft development, it also affects military effectiveness. Having two radically dissimilar aircraft means that opposing forces must train against two different aircraft capabilities, as well as configure their forces to fight two different design philosophies. For instance, the J-31 has potential to be much more stealthy than the J-20, due to its lack of canards and smaller size, resulting in better IR stealth.
Optimistically, it could be that if the J-11 line is nixed, the J-31 has been greenlighted. It needs EODAS installed, but otherwise it shows promise as an attritional stealth fighter for the Chinese, like the F-35 is for the Americans.
With both the J-31 and the J-20, China has two radically different design paradigms for fifth generation aircraft. One is a sort of merger between the F-35 and F-22, while the other is a stealthified J-10. The former presents a useful development opportunity to explore the use of LEVCONs, if they ever choose to add it, as well as conventional TVC-only supermaneuverability. If SAC were to go under, on the other hand, China would be left with only the J-20 as a lineage. This has more pernicious effects than merely on aircraft development, it also affects military effectiveness. Having two radically dissimilar aircraft means that opposing forces must train against two different aircraft capabilities, as well as configure their forces to fight two different design philosophies. For instance, the J-31 has potential to be much more stealthy than the J-20, due to its lack of canards and smaller size, resulting in better IR stealth.
Optimistically, it could be that if the J-11 line is nixed, the J-31 has been greenlighted. It needs EODAS installed, but otherwise it shows promise as an attritional stealth fighter for the Chinese, like the F-35 is for the Americans.
Considering J-11D is supposed to have been cancelled I don't see how that would make any sense.
Jeez, four WS-15s would be a bit much imo. An aircraft with four WS-15s would be B-1 sized -- I think an optimal JH-XX size should be smaller than Tu-22M3 but bigger than F-111.
I think two WS-15s in that batwing "JH-XX" model could fit two YJ-12s internally in the main bay (along with two side bays for PL-12 pattern MRAAMs), or fit 4-6 PL-X in the main bay, with a combat radii of about 2000km or slightly less, and capable of either moderate supercruise or supersonic dash.
But yes, I also like that J-11D is being cancelled. They should either go for a cheaper 4+ fleet (like J-10C), and/or upgrade existing 4th gen fighters (J-11Bs would do well with an AESA, ESM, datalink and cockpit overhaul), and/or going more all in into stealth whether it be 5th gen fighters or developing a whole new theatre fighter bomber... though the last option/"JH-XX" is probably wishful thinking.
J-11Ds being canned doesn't mean J-16 variants and J-15 variants are also being canned. I expect we will still see development and production of J-16/J-16D, J-15A, J-15D, and upgrade packages for J-11B... but just no J-11D.
It's not like cancelling J-11D means SAC is suddenly going out of business.
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