Canceled, its place replaced by J20 and J16
China Flanker Thread III (land based, exclude J-15)
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
To my understanding it is cancelled as a PLAAF version and as not produced in serial … but as it seems, its avionics/AESA-radar was transferred to the updated J-15B (?) …
Based on last I heard, it was not developed further and most of tech will end up as upgrade on J-11BG and J-15B instead.
PLAAF already have J-16 for missile truck and J-20 will be better to handle air to air role. No need to add another type of 4th Gen into their inventory. Those resource should be put elseware.
Dead. As for why - it's all still speculations.
We can speculate that the reason lies somewhere in-between J-16, J-11BG, J-20 and Su-35sk, but nothing more.
As stated previously, it is because of the J-20 and J-16.
Why bother with more J-11D, given that 100+ J-20 are being produced every year?
They are both focused on being air superiority fighters.
This is too bold of a statement - because we don't know for sure. Your logical construction makes sense (and I personally agree with it). But this is our external knowledge.
This is why I said that the answer lies in between 4 directly related types.
Everything else is a - educated, sure - guess.
Why do you need a dedicated 4.5 gen air superiority fighter when 5th gen are proliferating and 6th gen are on the way?
Well, while J-11D died back then, J-15B(and J-11BHG) programs are still quite alive.
Better oversized payloads capability, probably significantly greater range/loitering time(flanker after all).
J-20 is ready and J-35 is not. If the J-20’s development faced a delay so that it couldn’t reach IOC until 2020, I think J-11D would’ve filled the gaps.
I personally think that J-20 was just a part of the pie; also, J-35 and J-15B appear to be parallel, not competing programs.
The key question is, was J-11D satisfying/successful in the first place. The most probable answer is no.