People have been throwing in drones and 5th gens to the conversation. There are dedicated production of those lines already. Those are running separate to considerations for upgrades of existing aircraft.
China is trying to make itself into more of a consumer economy. It can print money and manufacturer 99.9% of the common consumer goods that the people working and building conjectured BG upgrades would be consuming. All it needs to do is ensure there is adequate flows into the economy to balance the cost... which it can. This upgrade program is not an opportunity cost of production line, brainpower or top tier talent. Those are still directed at those other projects. China has an absolute abundance of talent even with braindrain. There is an abundance of underemployed talented people.
The economic question of how to support the program is honestly null. Those people can be previously underemployed or shifted such that underemployed people down the pole get a boost. Those people aren't being paid fortunes. They're just buying Chinese products with the CPC printed RMB. They're consuming mostly Chinese food and any additional imports they do consume is more than balanced by growing Chinese trade surplus.
It's not a question of time or money when those J-11Bs with 15+ years of airframe life are already made and sitting there.
It's only a question of internal accommodation and the complexity and cost of turning available space and constraints into objectives achieved (here defined as radar and/or datalinking upgrade and PL-15/16 compatibility).
Another factor to consider, if they have gone to the trouble of giving these airframes WS-10x engines, this is a considerably greater financial cost and opportunity cost when we know more than one UADF is using the WS-10 series. A pair of WS-10s is quite a generous commitment if we're keeping BG to slugging PL-12As for some "homeland" second tier defense role. Supposedly these >100 fighters wouldn't even participate in any potential war (since they can't do much if they're 4th maybe "4.2" gen with PL-12A). Then why go to any trouble upgrading them at all? If we don't have "overproduction" of WS-10, just scrap the B models already since they're not going to be frontline facing and if they get used in war, it signals PLAAF frontline losing bad enough to need them.
Alternatively, why not just stretch more and get them up to 4.5 gen with some AESA upgrade and PL-15/16 at least. You've given them a pair of new engines. The platform does justice to these missiles and is arguably one of two in the world that can be considered air superiority behemoths (F-15 being the other platform). We know it's possible to convert a tiny JF-17 block 1/2 to block 3 (AESA and PL-15) with available space and similarly constrained plumbing given the modernity of relative upgrades.
China is trying to make itself into more of a consumer economy. It can print money and manufacturer 99.9% of the common consumer goods that the people working and building conjectured BG upgrades would be consuming. All it needs to do is ensure there is adequate flows into the economy to balance the cost... which it can. This upgrade program is not an opportunity cost of production line, brainpower or top tier talent. Those are still directed at those other projects. China has an absolute abundance of talent even with braindrain. There is an abundance of underemployed talented people.
The economic question of how to support the program is honestly null. Those people can be previously underemployed or shifted such that underemployed people down the pole get a boost. Those people aren't being paid fortunes. They're just buying Chinese products with the CPC printed RMB. They're consuming mostly Chinese food and any additional imports they do consume is more than balanced by growing Chinese trade surplus.
It's not a question of time or money when those J-11Bs with 15+ years of airframe life are already made and sitting there.
It's only a question of internal accommodation and the complexity and cost of turning available space and constraints into objectives achieved (here defined as radar and/or datalinking upgrade and PL-15/16 compatibility).
Another factor to consider, if they have gone to the trouble of giving these airframes WS-10x engines, this is a considerably greater financial cost and opportunity cost when we know more than one UADF is using the WS-10 series. A pair of WS-10s is quite a generous commitment if we're keeping BG to slugging PL-12As for some "homeland" second tier defense role. Supposedly these >100 fighters wouldn't even participate in any potential war (since they can't do much if they're 4th maybe "4.2" gen with PL-12A). Then why go to any trouble upgrading them at all? If we don't have "overproduction" of WS-10, just scrap the B models already since they're not going to be frontline facing and if they get used in war, it signals PLAAF frontline losing bad enough to need them.
Alternatively, why not just stretch more and get them up to 4.5 gen with some AESA upgrade and PL-15/16 at least. You've given them a pair of new engines. The platform does justice to these missiles and is arguably one of two in the world that can be considered air superiority behemoths (F-15 being the other platform). We know it's possible to convert a tiny JF-17 block 1/2 to block 3 (AESA and PL-15) with available space and similarly constrained plumbing given the modernity of relative upgrades.
