Let's turn this around; say all ~200 J-11s get upgraded to some "J-16-lite" version. Now what? They still wouldn't fight American stealth fighters nor could China use them to conduct deep strike missions into CONUS obviously. They're probably still just gonna end up in the homeland defense role or for smaller conflicts with like a war with India or something.
China Flanker Thread III (land based, exclude J-15)
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
plawolf
Lieutenant General
I actually think people may need to tone down their expectations for how comprehensive the J11BG upgrades might be.
Taiwan’s F16A/B upgrade to F16V standard may be a good case study to examine as a potential parallel, with particular interest in the choices that were made and their limitations and consequences.
The F16 upgrade was basically a bare bones most cost effective approach. The downside was somewhat exposed in the investigation to the first recent crash where it was revealed that the mission computer wasn’t upgraded and would sometimes become laggy to the point of being dangerous. The RWR, GCAS and many other key subsystem were all not upgraded, party to save costs, partly due to power limitations.
This neatly illustrates the choices that may need to be made in terms of what systems you want to upgrade and the trade-offs and opportunity costs involved in terms of what you prioritise power allocations for. Indeed, one of the big watch outs is whether they are doing an engine change as part of the upgrade, as that could give some clues as to the extent of the upgrade. As a general rule of thumb, if they stuck with the AL31, chances are the upgrades are modest; whereas if they changed to WS10A, then the chances are greater than it’s a more comprehensive upgrade. This is because changing the engine also gives you more scope to also significantly upgrade the power generation capacity of the plane to give you more upgrade potential in terms of the systems you can power.
While it would be great if they make it a J16-lite, but even a more modest upgrade will be immensely valuable. We know from anecdotal stories that the radar range can basically half due to aging, so just getting a bare minimum radar refresh to restore that lost range will be a huge boost.
I personally think the upgrade will probably be a bit middle of the road in that it might surprise some in terms of just how high spec the new radar is, but people might also be a little disappointed in how modest upgrades in other areas like EW and precision strike might be. All of those choices will boil down to intended use case.
With the sheer number of 5th gens the PLAAF now operationally fields as well as with CCAs and 6th gens on the horizon, I just don’t think they really need the J11 to overcrowd the frontline combat airspace.
Instead, I see the J11s being used more as missile truck backup for J20s and J16s, but also to act as sweeping forces to deal with incoming cruise missile and suicide drone swarms that your tip-of-the-spear assets might be loathed to waste their payload on, or your top end assets might be otherwise engaged against enemy tac air coming in on coordinated attacks with the missiles do drones.
The Flankers big weapons load and long endurance makes it ideal for this role, and a big radar upgrade would ge warranted to help them find stealth cruise missiles and small drones.
This may also extend to the weapons load out, as I see it potentially more useful to arm these J11BGs with cheaper, large volume weapons like laser guided rocket pods for anti-drone spam work than to give it PL15/17 capabilities. They may well add PL15/17 if they are using an off the shelf radar suite that’s already had the integration work done, but I just won’t expect them to be hanging PL15/17s much, if at all.
Taiwan’s F16A/B upgrade to F16V standard may be a good case study to examine as a potential parallel, with particular interest in the choices that were made and their limitations and consequences.
The F16 upgrade was basically a bare bones most cost effective approach. The downside was somewhat exposed in the investigation to the first recent crash where it was revealed that the mission computer wasn’t upgraded and would sometimes become laggy to the point of being dangerous. The RWR, GCAS and many other key subsystem were all not upgraded, party to save costs, partly due to power limitations.
This neatly illustrates the choices that may need to be made in terms of what systems you want to upgrade and the trade-offs and opportunity costs involved in terms of what you prioritise power allocations for. Indeed, one of the big watch outs is whether they are doing an engine change as part of the upgrade, as that could give some clues as to the extent of the upgrade. As a general rule of thumb, if they stuck with the AL31, chances are the upgrades are modest; whereas if they changed to WS10A, then the chances are greater than it’s a more comprehensive upgrade. This is because changing the engine also gives you more scope to also significantly upgrade the power generation capacity of the plane to give you more upgrade potential in terms of the systems you can power.
While it would be great if they make it a J16-lite, but even a more modest upgrade will be immensely valuable. We know from anecdotal stories that the radar range can basically half due to aging, so just getting a bare minimum radar refresh to restore that lost range will be a huge boost.
I personally think the upgrade will probably be a bit middle of the road in that it might surprise some in terms of just how high spec the new radar is, but people might also be a little disappointed in how modest upgrades in other areas like EW and precision strike might be. All of those choices will boil down to intended use case.
With the sheer number of 5th gens the PLAAF now operationally fields as well as with CCAs and 6th gens on the horizon, I just don’t think they really need the J11 to overcrowd the frontline combat airspace.
Instead, I see the J11s being used more as missile truck backup for J20s and J16s, but also to act as sweeping forces to deal with incoming cruise missile and suicide drone swarms that your tip-of-the-spear assets might be loathed to waste their payload on, or your top end assets might be otherwise engaged against enemy tac air coming in on coordinated attacks with the missiles do drones.
The Flankers big weapons load and long endurance makes it ideal for this role, and a big radar upgrade would ge warranted to help them find stealth cruise missiles and small drones.
This may also extend to the weapons load out, as I see it potentially more useful to arm these J11BGs with cheaper, large volume weapons like laser guided rocket pods for anti-drone spam work than to give it PL15/17 capabilities. They may well add PL15/17 if they are using an off the shelf radar suite that’s already had the integration work done, but I just won’t expect them to be hanging PL15/17s much, if at all.
And what's wrong with that? It releases more capable fighters for service elsewhere, where their attributes are more necessary.
J-11BG and J-10AG (if there is such a thing) can both be used for defensive roles where the main opposition is cruise missiles and the odd balloon rather than 5th gen fighters. The capabilities and numbers for these upgrades is a trade-off against whatever else could be bought for the money.
Isn't that what drones and AD are for? You are only thinking about the cost of the airframe but not the cost of the pilot. Trained pilots can be fighting in 5th gen or 6th gen fighters at where they are most needed instead of wasting their time doing what could be done by drones.
What i meant by 80% or any such figure is that an AESA radar can be tailored to the more limited cooling and power capacities of older airframes, so that means a somewhat less capable AESA than otherwise possible but still an overall great leap from a MSA such as those on J-11B or J-10A. I believe that unless i'm mistaken the F-16V upgrade mentioned above was designed with these kind of limitations in mind, which is why it can be applied to old F-16s for instance, even A models.
Drones are not I suspect quite there yet. You've already got the J-11B and J-10A airframes and engines with life remaining anyway, so why not use them until effective drones are available?
Unfortunately wrong since especially the AL-31F-powered Batch 01 J-11B - formerly from the 1st Air Brigade - were to first to be upgraded to J-11BG standard. I need to look, but I think I have an image showing exactly the same aircraft once as a Batch 01 J-11B and later with WS-10B engines and as J-11BG.
Not every fighter in japan, USA, Philippines is a stealth fighter. And if they are simply missile carriers for a J-20S or AWAC's detection and guidance, they will do the job fine.
I don't think it's meaningful to speculate too much when we don't have inputs on J-11BG, and frankly even on J-16.
We know upgrade happens, it changes radome, updates compatibility(ew pods!) and likely radar.
We know J-16 is a new build, but we don't know all that much about it even 10 years later.
At this point, just accept that either option can be true.
We know upgrade happens, it changes radome, updates compatibility(ew pods!) and likely radar.
We know J-16 is a new build, but we don't know all that much about it even 10 years later.
At this point, just accept that either option can be true.
I agree. Some people who are laughing at this may be proven wrong. We didn't see the potential for J-10 centre pylons supporting A2As until recently. Yes that was a display model with those centre pylons but that's pretty suggesting the real J-10 could potentially support more A2As as we assumed. Just because we haven't yet seen J-11BG with PL-15 could point more towards attempts at secrecy than it does at non-compatibility. J-11BG with PL-15 capability is an easily overlooked and underestimated strength. With those numbers it's arguably a greater threat than having an extra few squadrons of 5th gens when talking about peer to peer.
They are forgetting that the Flanker platform has one serious advantage. It gives tremendous kinematic justice to a better missile. It is an absent minded mistake to not upgrade J-11B -> J-11BG with PL-15/6 and PL-17 compatibility. Yes it's a cost calculation but we know B -> BG received engine and avionics upgrades. One thing discussed on the Chinese PLA watching side is the radar upgrade. If they are upgrading radar why would you not do a PL-15/16 compatibility upgrade.
Sometimes the academic guys here are too narrow minded and rigid on certain things so they will not entertain ideas that the strategists in PLA might genuinely have considered ie if J-11BG as an upgrade package for a fighter platform with up to 20 years of airframe life left is performed, what should be included in said upgrade? The conclusion is very obviously going to be PL-15/16 and maybe even PL-17 compatibility. PL-17 is questionable but would be quite a nice to have.
As you said, even JF-17 block 3 was upgraded to PL-15 compatibility. Therefore it isn't hard to that expensive to do. JF-17 block 2 to 3 leap isn't as time significant as J-11B to J-11BG leap. It's also giving no kinematic advantage to the PL-15 missile unlike the Flanker which will give it significantly more altitude potential and speed compared to a puny JF-17.
The diminishing returns for investment when doing this for block 3 is a low threshold. The payoff for doing the same (similar cost) to the J-11BG is so much greater and arguably more important/useful.
If suppose J-11BG is indeed PL-15/16 compatible with modern datalinking included, it does become a J-16-lite because it would be the only other PLAAF flanker that can carry PL-15. Forget the homeland defense idea. These are frontline fighters. You've picked up 200 J-16 lites to supplement your force. No one here thinks PLAAF is a big enough force to comfortably face off against US and Japan. PLAAF needs all the 4.5 gen fighters it can muster.
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