so when they reported on progress of aero engine last year. They said WS-15 was already in mass production and that was not the case for WS-20. It shocked me a little bit at the time. But this kind of shows where WS-20 as a program is.
China's transport, tanker & heavy lift aircraft
- Thread starter Totoro
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but sir you didn't give explanation.. why is that ?? for me WS-15 is more advanced machine and WS-20 derived from mature WS-10's core. despite all recent hint from different source and AECC, WS-20 still not entering in full scale production. i believe LRIP stage has begun.
My guess is that WS-20 is being given lower priority and less resources. There could also have been diversion of resources to the CJ-1000 engine designer. That is being done by a different company.
The thing is if CJ-1000 is successful then WS-20 loses significance.
The thing is if CJ-1000 is successful then WS-20 loses significance.
i always agree with your assessment but this one i don't get it.
first point -
AECC Shanghai and Shenyang Liming Engine institute never interfered each other program. neither i have heard any kind of poaching.
in fact CJ program Engineering/research team is different. WS-20 team is different. they comes from different provinces. i have already told you there is no shortage of talent in China. we have abundance of skilled people.
second point -
there is no shortage of cash. Shenyang did record revenue in 2022-23.
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these AECC members announced WS-15 LRIP stage back in march, 2023.. they also mentioned WS-20 being entering in material selection stage.. its already been 19 months now. so there is strong chance, small scale production of WS-20 has begun. we also have seen 5 Y-20Bs ..
everything indicates..............................
That was from last year. I assume that it has enter some form of mass production now. But there is certainly some reasons to believe ws15 program is ahead of ws20.
I did say I was just guessing @sunnymaxi.
You talked about how there is a vast engineering talent pool in China. That is certain. But you need more than inexperienced recent graduates in a project like this. I admit I know little about the Chinese industry but AECC Shanghai looks to me to have sprouted out of nowhere. So where did the engineering leads come from?
Indeed both companies making WS-20 and CJ-1000 are at huge geographic distance from each other which means team commonality will likely be extremely limited. It also looks to me as if the Shanghai teams have a certain disdain for anything coming from the military tech sector.
The construction of the production facilities might also have been an issue. Because China had extremely limited production capacity for large aviation jet engines before. The one in the H-6 is the only one I can think of but it is hopelessly obsolete technology.
You talked about how there is a vast engineering talent pool in China. That is certain. But you need more than inexperienced recent graduates in a project like this. I admit I know little about the Chinese industry but AECC Shanghai looks to me to have sprouted out of nowhere. So where did the engineering leads come from?
Indeed both companies making WS-20 and CJ-1000 are at huge geographic distance from each other which means team commonality will likely be extremely limited. It also looks to me as if the Shanghai teams have a certain disdain for anything coming from the military tech sector.
The construction of the production facilities might also have been an issue. Because China had extremely limited production capacity for large aviation jet engines before. The one in the H-6 is the only one I can think of but it is hopelessly obsolete technology.
Could just be you need four WS-20 for every two WS-15 and the WS-20 probably has to share some of its supply chain with the WS-10, so getting to capacity to support meaningful volumes might have taken a while longer. Given that the engines supply chain is still ramping up a number of factors could have de-prioritized or slowed down start of large scale production.
I actually think China needs 500 Y-20 of all variants.
The transport variant alone is around 220, and then 200 tankers and 30 AWACS plus some other variants such as commercial.