Chinese purchase of Su-35
- Thread starter flyzies
- Start date
Sorry Deino. Two of your worst trouble makers in me and B787 at it again.
In semi related non-political news.
People are surprised that missiles miss. I bet realistic hit rates are nowhere near the >90% success claims by manufacturers. Just like you can almost never get the manufacturer's claimed fuel efficiency. Weapons makers are even less scrutinised by governments and national consumer protection agencies than car makers. Perhaps Su-35 was purchased as a WVR ultimate fighter to match the coming IAF rafales. There's definitely benefit in being capable at guns only once all your missiles miss their targets. Su-35 should hold well against neighbouring 4.5 gen fighters? China has no equivalent that's reliable and in significant numbers.
In semi related non-political news.
People are surprised that missiles miss. I bet realistic hit rates are nowhere near the >90% success claims by manufacturers. Just like you can almost never get the manufacturer's claimed fuel efficiency. Weapons makers are even less scrutinised by governments and national consumer protection agencies than car makers. Perhaps Su-35 was purchased as a WVR ultimate fighter to match the coming IAF rafales. There's definitely benefit in being capable at guns only once all your missiles miss their targets. Su-35 should hold well against neighbouring 4.5 gen fighters? China has no equivalent that's reliable and in significant numbers.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
As with all complex problems, the first step is to eliminate the impossible and improbable and then look at what is left.
Militaries these days are overwhelming dependent on networks rather than assets.
Logistics have been the backbone of all militaries since the first war, and is still the case today.
On those two counts, we can easily deduce that the Su35 was purchased for peacetime, and will have a minimal role in war time.
Without Chinese data links, they cannot network with the rest of the Chinese military. So are reduced to operating as lone wolves or have to rely heavily on voice commands from ground or airborne controllers and will have to rely purely on their own sensors for targeting without the benefit of things like co-operative engagement.
What more, using them in a real shooting war will also mean every Chinese asset operating in the same area needs an IFF update so they don’t friendly fire on those Su35s.
The Chinese may well have to recalibrate all their jammers and EW systems to not interfere with the Su35’s foreign systems and vice versa.
An aweful lot of work to integrate a couple dozen planes into your order of battle.
On the logistics side, things are little better.
The biggest problem is just how much Russian munitions do you want to buy for just those 24 planes?
Buy too few, and those planes become useless when they run out of munitions a few days into a conflict. Buy too many and you are wasting millions or billions when those munitions date expire.
You are also going to need to make sure there are suitable munitions where you deploy those Su35s. So either you have to serverly limit which bases they can operate from, or have to dedicate a heavy transport or two to ferry all their munitions and support gear around if and when you want to redeploy those Su35s to a different airport.
Again, a huge amount of effort and cost for so few planes.
It just doesn’t make sense. So I am pretty much ruling out operational needs as a primary reason for the purchase.
From a technological stand point, the timing of the deal makes little sense. Especially since it has always been the Chinese who were the ones to hold back from pulling the trigger on the deal.
If they wanted engine tech or FBW tech or anything else form the Su35, then surely it would have been the Chinese who would have been the ones to push for quick completion?
Considering this deal was first floated, what a decade ago? Had they completed it even 5 years ago, they might have gotten deliveries in time for there to be some technical benefit to the likes of the J15/16 or J20. But now that all those planes are on production, it seems very late in the day to be taking apart the Su35 to see if they can learn anything that might benefit those other types.
Quite frankly, the effort needed to reverse engineer anything from the Su35 would be more than would be needed to just develop it themselves.
That goes especially for engines, because the critical bottleneck there isn’t design, but manufacturing. No amount of looking at the Su35s turbine blades will yield any benefit to help China grow similar blades themselves.
If China wanted the Su35 as a gateway purchase to gain actual 117 engines to plug into their J20s, well again, why did the Chinese string the deal along for so long? They could have completed the deal and had 117s flying on the first J20 prototype had they really wanted those engines.
That pretty much only leaves the following possibilities:
- they want the Su35 for training, to help their J20 pilots get used to TVC and develop tactics for the J20s before TVC is ready on the WS15
- they want the Su35s to reciprocate Japanese radar lock ons. Since it’s Russian radars, the Chinese won’t care too much about using wartime modes. And using wartime modes might yield interesting results if the Japanese pilots panic and use wartime jamming methods to try and break the lock etc.
While both are good reasons, are they really worth the massive costs in both upfront purchase price and long term logistics support costs of the deal?
That is very questionable, which is why the deal only makes sense with a political element thrown in to help balance the equations.
That is not to say the Chinese won’t take a real good look at things like the FBW, radar, EW suite and engines etc, they would be silly not to. But those won’t have been the main reasons for justifying the deal in the first place, and are more, well we might as well kind of follow ons.
Militaries these days are overwhelming dependent on networks rather than assets.
Logistics have been the backbone of all militaries since the first war, and is still the case today.
On those two counts, we can easily deduce that the Su35 was purchased for peacetime, and will have a minimal role in war time.
Without Chinese data links, they cannot network with the rest of the Chinese military. So are reduced to operating as lone wolves or have to rely heavily on voice commands from ground or airborne controllers and will have to rely purely on their own sensors for targeting without the benefit of things like co-operative engagement.
What more, using them in a real shooting war will also mean every Chinese asset operating in the same area needs an IFF update so they don’t friendly fire on those Su35s.
The Chinese may well have to recalibrate all their jammers and EW systems to not interfere with the Su35’s foreign systems and vice versa.
An aweful lot of work to integrate a couple dozen planes into your order of battle.
On the logistics side, things are little better.
The biggest problem is just how much Russian munitions do you want to buy for just those 24 planes?
Buy too few, and those planes become useless when they run out of munitions a few days into a conflict. Buy too many and you are wasting millions or billions when those munitions date expire.
You are also going to need to make sure there are suitable munitions where you deploy those Su35s. So either you have to serverly limit which bases they can operate from, or have to dedicate a heavy transport or two to ferry all their munitions and support gear around if and when you want to redeploy those Su35s to a different airport.
Again, a huge amount of effort and cost for so few planes.
It just doesn’t make sense. So I am pretty much ruling out operational needs as a primary reason for the purchase.
From a technological stand point, the timing of the deal makes little sense. Especially since it has always been the Chinese who were the ones to hold back from pulling the trigger on the deal.
If they wanted engine tech or FBW tech or anything else form the Su35, then surely it would have been the Chinese who would have been the ones to push for quick completion?
Considering this deal was first floated, what a decade ago? Had they completed it even 5 years ago, they might have gotten deliveries in time for there to be some technical benefit to the likes of the J15/16 or J20. But now that all those planes are on production, it seems very late in the day to be taking apart the Su35 to see if they can learn anything that might benefit those other types.
Quite frankly, the effort needed to reverse engineer anything from the Su35 would be more than would be needed to just develop it themselves.
That goes especially for engines, because the critical bottleneck there isn’t design, but manufacturing. No amount of looking at the Su35s turbine blades will yield any benefit to help China grow similar blades themselves.
If China wanted the Su35 as a gateway purchase to gain actual 117 engines to plug into their J20s, well again, why did the Chinese string the deal along for so long? They could have completed the deal and had 117s flying on the first J20 prototype had they really wanted those engines.
That pretty much only leaves the following possibilities:
- they want the Su35 for training, to help their J20 pilots get used to TVC and develop tactics for the J20s before TVC is ready on the WS15
- they want the Su35s to reciprocate Japanese radar lock ons. Since it’s Russian radars, the Chinese won’t care too much about using wartime modes. And using wartime modes might yield interesting results if the Japanese pilots panic and use wartime jamming methods to try and break the lock etc.
While both are good reasons, are they really worth the massive costs in both upfront purchase price and long term logistics support costs of the deal?
That is very questionable, which is why the deal only makes sense with a political element thrown in to help balance the equations.
That is not to say the Chinese won’t take a real good look at things like the FBW, radar, EW suite and engines etc, they would be silly not to. But those won’t have been the main reasons for justifying the deal in the first place, and are more, well we might as well kind of follow ons.
Well, you're directly contradicting sources we have on the Su-35 deal then.
According to sources, if I recall correctly, China only wanted 12 planes. Clearly they wanted some planes, but clearly they also didn't want too many.
What would China reverse engineer from the Su-35? They've already reached parity in most of their technologies. What external factors would result in an imminent need?
Parity in most technologies does not necessarily mean parity in the most difficult or most critical technologies. The Russians certainly seem to have focused on untraditional and post stall maneuvability than others.
Love love love this comment. Every single bit of it. Just couldn't find an eloquent enough way to express this so neatly myself.
12 planes was really more than they needed for the role of intercepting and meeting Japanese F-15J and F-2. Even USN and USAF fighters in SCS or Indian Rafales in future. These guys plan things 20 years ahead to the dot and get most of it done so wouldn't be impossible they thought about Indian Rafales and even south east asian Su-30s.
12 is also more than enough to pull apart anything that you want to and look at engines, radar, materials of frame etc. This is also useful for evaluating the greatest fighter asset in RuAF for the time being. Su-57 is some time away from being operational in serious numbers.
Sure (though I wonder how "critical" post stall is), and I'm sure even if they've reach parity in technology there's always value in studying the solutions of other countries and firms, but at the end of the day the point is the Su-35 isn't adding any considerably significant capabilities, and is even less capable in some ways because of the systems integration problem.
I think people missed the point that Su-35 is the perfect "blue army" to mimic India's "super sukhoi" for both China and Pakistan. (and for that matter, Su-35 is more advanced than what Vietnam can buy)