China's Additional fighting power (What do you think?)

I think there is no need to maintanance, because you dont fly training missions with this airkrafts. You simlpy make them flyable, add your gudgets and conservate them.

zaky said:

I think there is no need to maintanance, because you dont fly training missions with this airkrafts. You simlpy make them flyable, add your gudgets and conservate them.

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Aircraft being put into storage need maintenance. If it is short term, airplanes have to be run up and taxied once a month to ensure everything is in working order. This is done to ensure no water has gotten into the engine fluids, and if any did, they would evaporate due to the high temperatures. With long term storage, this requires the draining of fluids, possibly replacing lubricants with a fluid that is designed to prevent internal corrosion and drying out of the seals (pickling), plugging up all areas where birds or bugs could nest, installing dehumidifiers in the engines and in the airframe to prevent corrosion and to prevent water from getting into the engine, and the periodic checks on humidity. When you are pulling aircraft out of long term storage, you have to drain the preservation fluids, replace with the appropriate fluids, check engines and perform a multitude of tests to ensure all systems are operational.

No, the only use for these old birds is as a target drone or for scrap metal. Maybe the airplanes that are in extremely good shape can be sold as warbirds, but that's about it.

batskcab said:

The question I want to ask is, how rugged is J5/6? How much maintaince is needed to have it into fly-able condition when they've been siting around collecting dust? .

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They're physically rugged alright, but both planes are maintenance extensive in the sense they require replacement parts all the time. Parts that are increasingly harder to get over time.

Are the two strategies mutually exclusive?

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Yes in the sense that money spent on one is less money on the other. I may consider that the cost of maintaining old planes to be used as sacrificial drones can be more than building drones specifically built for the purpose to be expended. That does not consider the land you need to store all those old planes.

FriedRiceNSpice said:

Enemy radar will be able to identify the type of aircraft, and will reserve less potent assets such as shorter range SAMs or WVR fighter interception to deal with them.



Depends on the type of assets being dedicated to intercepting them. The cost of fighter interception at gun-ranges will be minuscule. The only use I can see for such a strategy is a large-scale saturation attack occurring with a full-scale PLAAF strike, where the older unmanned jets can thin out enemy fighter cover, tie up enemy short-to-medium range assets, and tax the enemy information and combat management networks.

IMO such a platform is just a low-cost LACM with reduced capabilities.

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If a full blown attack was launched with around 1,000 J-5, and J-6 carrying some bombs and heavy explosives. Surely the defense system of the targeted enemy will be put into a panic.

Then behind them will be a full blown air raid from the main strike aircrafts of PLAAF.

I do believe the enemy can be easily taken down with minimal losses.