China Flanker Thread II

[latenlazy]

The issue is whether Justin Bronk's assertion that Chinese Flankers have dramatic weight reductions compared to their Russian counterparts is tenable.



By implication, the latter.

Even the basic Su-27 has a tiny amount of composite construction and there was never a reason to doubt that modest increases could have been made in the J-11. Bronk's assertion however requires the introduction of composite on a frankly massive scale which necessarily means the inclusion of primary load-bearing structure. These are the heaviest and most highly-stressed parts of the airframe, so it is here that the largest reductions can be obtained. If you want to get a Flanker below 16t, you're going to run out of moderately stressed skin to replace before approaching that figure.



Where have I rubbished anything? It's just that the scale of application is quite frankly a very important point in this discussion. Without having a handle on that, it's impossible to safely make the kind of assertion Bronk made.



Sure - Bronk did (indirectly), before we even get into my contributions! And I in fact made the point rather plain in #8829 (the first really elaborate message on the subject):





And thanks were given to the contributor responsible! The statements just happened to be too vague to really add much to the discussion.



Well, until this thread I had never seen the claim properly supported in all these years that it has been around, and not for lack of searching, either. Only in English, obviously, and with that caveat the argument *was* at best supported by the primer colour reasoning in the resources available to me until now. Trust me, I'm happy that finally this debate has yielded a proper source for something I've been wondering about for longer than I've been a member round here!

That second video with the J-11 fins unambiguously referred to in the subtitles is gold - but as I said, required about 40 minutes of effort to get the information content of 40 seconds. A verbatim translation of the text from that segment would have made the whole thing orders of magnitude more accessible:

关键材料的每一次突破 - Every breakthrough in key materials

都凝聚着创新与拼搏 - Are all condensed with innovation and hard work

而在航空工业 - And in the aviation industry

也有一个口号 - There is also a slogan

"为每一克减重而奋斗。- "Fight for every gram of weight loss.

因为 - because

轻质高强度材料 - Light high strength material

历来是航空材料攻关的方向 - It has always been the direction of aviation materials research

新型复合材料 - New composite materials

是目前航空强国 - it's an aviation strong country.

最关注的核心材料之一 - One of the most concerned core materials

航空人是如何实现材料突破升级的呢 - How did the aviation people achieve material breakthroughs and upgrades?

在航空工业沈飞的部装车间里 - In the assembly workshop of Aviation Industry Shen Fei

中国第一款三代重型战机 - China's first three-generation heavy fighter

开-11B正在组装 - Kai-11B is being assembled

它绿色的尾翼 - Its green tail [at this point the J-11 tails are shown]

正是由高强度复合材料制成 - It is made of high-strength composite materials

That is as good as it gets as a source, the link between composites and the J-11 tails is made absolutely plain. But each of the lines above is one screenshot that you have run through the translator which, just to keep you entertained, will every now and then ask you to solve a captcha for sending such a flood of requests.



Nothing really, unless we want to discuss whether such things as the wing skins, spars and wing carry through bulkheads are composite. But clearly we've established that the J-11 and subsequent Chinese Flankers have composite fins and rudders, which is more than the Su-35 and admittedly more than I thought. Will it save >500kg and justify Bronks assertion? Probably not, we should be looking at 100 to 200kg, but it's not entirely trivial.

With all due respect this was a bit of a silly exercise for you though no? If you had asked for a word for word statement as sources one of us could have done the translation of key parts in a few minutes…

 

[ougoah]

Maybe the schedules don’t align. The AL31s were most likely swapped out when the engines reached the end of their service lives and needed to be replaced anyways. Which may not align with the desired timetable for a radar change.

Or maybe the PLA has decided it doesn’t need every single plane in the fleet to have the newest expensive AESA radars when they have co-operative engagement capabilities and plan to use J11A/B and J10As as PL15 missile rack extensions for J16s and J10Cs instead.

Or maybe they did upgrade the radar and just didn’t bother to change the external paint colour of the radome.

Most plausible theory indeed. That the original AL-31s being used on these first batch J-11B have reached around 15 years of service.

Even if there are spare AL-31s around to re-engine fighters, they may be kept for J-10A which may not be able to be integrated with WS-10 at all. Who knows.

As for CEC, well the PLA can CEC between a UAV and a Z-10 which they are happy to disclose. PLAN CEC is years old news, PLAAF CEC is expected although not directly confirmed. CEC here meaning one platform providing all the targeting information while another shoots and missile is not active is using the targeting from the separate platform. If Z-10 can do this with a WL or was it CH drone, wouldn't be surprising if even modernised J-11B should be able to with other more modern PLAAF platforms. After all the intention for J-16 + J-20 pairings is to pull off this very missile truck extension purpose.

 

[plawolf]

Most plausible theory indeed. That the original AL-31s being used on these first batch J-11B have reached around 15 years of service.

Even if there are spare AL-31s around to re-engine fighters, they may be kept for J-10A which may not be able to be integrated with WS-10 at all. Who knows.

As for CEC, well the PLA can CEC between a UAV and a Z-10 which they are happy to disclose. PLAN CEC is years old news, PLAAF CEC is expected although not directly confirmed. CEC here meaning one platform providing all the targeting information while another shoots and missile is not active is using the targeting from the separate platform. If Z-10 can do this with a WL or was it CH drone, wouldn't be surprising if even modernised J-11B should be able to with other more modern PLAAF platforms. After all the intention for J-16 + J-20 pairings is to pull off this very missile truck extension purpose.

J10 and J11 use different versions of AL31 which are not interchangeable due to the different location of the gearbox (among other things).

 

[Tirdent]

I thought the debate had come to an amicable conclusion, but since my sharing of information that was not made easily accessible in any other manner is deemed silly...

With all due respect this was a bit of a silly exercise for you though no? If you had asked for a word for word statement as sources one of us could have done the translation of key parts in a few minutes…

Having repeatedly stated that I don't understand Chinese in this very thread, previously asked for a translation with the first video, and in doing so even explicitly mentioned the kind of information I was looking for, it's not rocket science to work that out. Word by word would've been great, but a summary (as provided upon request for the first clip) which made it clear that the commentary directly referred to the J-11 tails in mentioning composite would've sufficed. I don't think I'm dropping a bombshell when I point out that what is being said and what is shown need not correspond that well, if you've ever watched TV segments talking about a Boeing 777 while showing an A320.

This isn't just about me either, or I could've kept the machine translation to myself after checking that the source was sound. I posted it as an English language reference for other users who don't understand Chinese to rely on in future, if the question crops up again.

 

[latenlazy]

I thought the debate had come to an amicable conclusion, but since my sharing of information that was not made easily accessible in any other manner is deemed silly...



Having repeatedly stated that I don't understand Chinese in this very thread, previously asked for a translation with the first video, and in doing so even explicitly mentioned the kind of information I was looking for, it's not rocket science to work that out. Word by word would've been great, but a summary (as provided upon request for the first clip) which made it clear that the commentary directly referred to the J-11 tails in mentioning composite would've sufficed. I don't think I'm dropping a bombshell when I point out that what is being said and what is shown need not correspond that well, if you've ever watched TV segments talking about a Boeing 777 while showing an A320.

This isn't just about me either, or I could've kept the machine translation to myself after checking that the source was sound. I posted it as an English language reference for other users who don't understand Chinese to rely on in future, if the question crops up again.

I didn’t mean offense by the comment…it’s just that what you ended up turning up turned out to be exactly the same details that person you were debating with said it was…I think for future reference if what you wanted was a transcript, we might be able to help you better if you directly ask for a transcript of relevant sections, since it seems when people translated the basic gist of the content that did not meet the bar of qualification you wanted for sourcing of a claim…

 

[Blitzo]

I didn’t mean offense by the comment…it’s just that what you ended up turning up turned out to be exactly the same details that person you were debating with said it was…I think for future reference if what you wanted was a transcript, we might be able to help you better if you directly ask for a transcript of relevant sections, since it seems when people translated the basic gist of the content that did not meet the bar of qualification you wanted for sourcing of a claim…

Just seconding this, because in the post where I provided the times for the two videos and described what parts of the aircraft they mentioned as using composites, I thought that would have been sufficient for the discussion's purposes (and were basically a translation of the important part of section relevant to our conversation anyway).

A degree of trust that is usually implicit in these kind of exchanges didn't seem to be present this time around for some reason.
But if a verbatim translation is requested, it could have been provided if explicitly asked. If not, then it is usually at the discretion of the people who read the language to provide the salient points.

 

[Strangelove]

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[yungho]

Idk if this fits better in the ama thread, but is there a possibility of another flanker variant after the J16? Or is the J16 lastly the last flanker variant to be made?

What about continuous iterations like we see in the F15? It seems like for now, the PLA are focused on other projects.

 

[siegecrossbow]

Idk if this fits better in the ama thread, but is there a possibility of another flanker variant after the J16? Or is the J16 lastly the last flanker variant to be made?

What about continuous iterations like we see in the F15? It seems like for now, the PLA are focused on other projects.

Depends on whether J-11D lives or dies.

 

[latenlazy]

Depends on whether J-11D lives or dies.

Think we should know the answer to this one.