Chinese Engine Development
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Re: New J-10 Thread III
just to answer your question in this thread. I would say it's probably been installed on close to 100 flankers of various types by now. I'm probably under counting. All the J-11Bs after the first batch should be using WS-10.
just to answer your question in this thread. I would say it's probably been installed on close to 100 flankers of various types by now. I'm probably under counting. All the J-11Bs after the first batch should be using WS-10.
Re: New J-10 Thread III
If we work backwards and presume that the rate of production matches the production of J-11Bs, it might be something like 100 a year (assuming we get two new regiments a year?). If we presume that for every two engines installed on a J-11B a spare is also produced, that might make the count up to around 150 a year.
Not a bad rate, but if I were to be conservative about any aspect of the WS-10 as a program, at this point it would be their ability to scale up production.
If we work backwards and presume that the rate of production matches the production of J-11Bs, it might be something like 100 a year (assuming we get two new regiments a year?). If we presume that for every two engines installed on a J-11B a spare is also produced, that might make the count up to around 150 a year.
Not a bad rate, but if I were to be conservative about any aspect of the WS-10 as a program, at this point it would be their ability to scale up production.
The question is how many new flankers SAC are pumping out per year.
In 2009 or 2010 we had pictures of J-11Bs and BSs at SAC waiting to be fitted with engines.
In 2011 we had pics of massive numbers of new flankers equipped with WS-10As, going through standard production tests before handing over to the PLA.
Previous estimates put SAC production at a regiment a year, is it confirmed that SAC had doubled or even expanded their capacity?
Further, if they have expanded capacity, some of that may go to J-15 production, which we can see from videos that at least the first batch are still using Al-31s. Interestingly enough, J-16 prototypes look to be using WS-10As.
Depending on SAC's production capacity and retooling speed, as well as PLAAF's demand for J-15 and J-16 and J-11B, we may see production of the latter ramp down and cease for a little while as they retool for production of the former two.
On the subject of J-16, huitong says the first pre production batch is starting to enter service.
Will be interesting to see if they're using WS-10As or not.
In 2009 or 2010 we had pictures of J-11Bs and BSs at SAC waiting to be fitted with engines.
In 2011 we had pics of massive numbers of new flankers equipped with WS-10As, going through standard production tests before handing over to the PLA.
Previous estimates put SAC production at a regiment a year, is it confirmed that SAC had doubled or even expanded their capacity?
Further, if they have expanded capacity, some of that may go to J-15 production, which we can see from videos that at least the first batch are still using Al-31s. Interestingly enough, J-16 prototypes look to be using WS-10As.
Depending on SAC's production capacity and retooling speed, as well as PLAAF's demand for J-15 and J-16 and J-11B, we may see production of the latter ramp down and cease for a little while as they retool for production of the former two.
On the subject of J-16, huitong says the first pre production batch is starting to enter service.
Will be interesting to see if they're using WS-10As or not.
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It's been a while since I reviewed regiment counts, so I could have it wrong and it's only 1 regiment a year. In which case, cut my very rough estimates by half. That said, I seem to remember someone saying there were 5 regiments of J-11Bs with WS-10s, so going by that rate it'd have to be about 2 regiments a year.
one regiment in a normal year is about right. And J-11B production will stop pretty soon and they will move to J-15 and J-16. At which point, I think you could get to about 30 flankers a year out of SAC.
j11b went into serial production in 2007, allegedly 5 years after first flight. That'd make some 7 years of production so far for a total of roughly 140-150 planes. (assuming this second planaf regiment has been fully formed by now)
Overall that is around 20 something j11b/bs per year, but there was probably some sort of ramp up in the beginning. something like (this is for illustration only) 8 airframes in 2007, 16 in 2008, 24 from 2009 onward.
There's clearly some j15 production going on, hard to tell how many, possibly we're in the middle of the first or second year of serial production so perhaps 8-24 planes total. J16 may be on the verge of being ready but, alongside J15, it seems likely to me it really is waiting until last batch of j11b is out of the door. So maybe first half of next year we might see some j16s for testing and tactics development with PLAAF. Probably not a full regiment formed on top of the training and tactics development examples though before 2015.
All in all, it does seem 24 or so is peak rate at which shenyang produced both j11a and j11b. At times it was a bit less, when a new model was worked into. Perhaps the line which produced J8s will be used for extra planes, though, that's hard to tell. But would that mean a regiment of j11b and a regiment of j16 side by side each year? Or two regiments of j16? The latter seems like a better option, especially concerning the number of q5 regiments to be replaced. But that doubled flanker production rate seems another year or so away, i don't think it happened yet, otherwise we would've already seen more new regiments formed in the last two years.
Overall that is around 20 something j11b/bs per year, but there was probably some sort of ramp up in the beginning. something like (this is for illustration only) 8 airframes in 2007, 16 in 2008, 24 from 2009 onward.
There's clearly some j15 production going on, hard to tell how many, possibly we're in the middle of the first or second year of serial production so perhaps 8-24 planes total. J16 may be on the verge of being ready but, alongside J15, it seems likely to me it really is waiting until last batch of j11b is out of the door. So maybe first half of next year we might see some j16s for testing and tactics development with PLAAF. Probably not a full regiment formed on top of the training and tactics development examples though before 2015.
All in all, it does seem 24 or so is peak rate at which shenyang produced both j11a and j11b. At times it was a bit less, when a new model was worked into. Perhaps the line which produced J8s will be used for extra planes, though, that's hard to tell. But would that mean a regiment of j11b and a regiment of j16 side by side each year? Or two regiments of j16? The latter seems like a better option, especially concerning the number of q5 regiments to be replaced. But that doubled flanker production rate seems another year or so away, i don't think it happened yet, otherwise we would've already seen more new regiments formed in the last two years.
To answer your question, J-16 used the WS-10 engine through out the duration of its test flight. So it is likely that production version will continue using domestic engines.
Schumacher
Senior Member
They're testing some souped-up WS10, J16 looks like a good candidate to use them first.