Consequences of Flanker and PAK FA exports for the PACRIM from US-allied perspective?

It's pretty clear that the Sukhoi Flanker derivates in the service of many Asian countries, especially PRC, far outclass all enemy fighters except for the few F22. The Australian blog has extensively written on the topic. While I consider them too F-22-centric, their assessment of the aerial situation and capabilities seems quite correct to me.
brings the current advantage of the numerous PRC Flankers vs the few US F22, JSF and discounting legacy fighters to the conclusion of US loss of air supremavy in the PACRIM. Thus China is currentyl very safe and will be even safer in the future with the J-20 when her potential enemies opt for the JSF (some Chinese netizens complained about powerful potential enemy fighter-bombers too close to their bedsteads, I hope they can sleep better now).
So there appear several obvious questions to me:
Why is the moderately stealthy not a business success?
Why doesn't the JSF get F-22nized to become a more air combat capable version? There seem superficially enough common design features to allow for these steps.
Why is South Korea the only country with some potential military clash (North Korean logistics would collapse early on in any fighting) in the PACRIM that briefly had a PAK FA acquisition idea that came to no fruition?
India's PAK FA derivate, HAL FGFA, seems the most sensible thing to bolster their defenses with the money they have. Why don't others follow, like Australia that is almost as unlikely to clash with India and Russia as it is to clash with Spain (Canberra-class) and faces numerous Flankers in their volatile north.
And from my European German perspective, I think the Eurofighter might be a not so good idea now. But it seems they learned from Russian design philosophy and are upgrading this thing with thrust vectoring, STOL, carrier capability and hopefully some real stealth concept that goes beyond the current coating effect. Having this "cheap" aircraft at the moment has a lot to do with the peace dividend for other other projects because in Europe we are a conflict backwater right now with might and mayhem concentrating somewhere else. But there's always hope because EADS and UAC (the manufacturer of all Russian aircrafts) swapped stocks.

For a very strange reason the Shanghai Cooperation technocomplexes, associates and allies seems to take a fighter and ranged fighter-bomber lead over the old NATO technocomplexes and associates that seem willing to cease that ground. This is unlike the Warsaw Pact time, because there's no deadly dual conflict, but it seems that there are two major technocomplexes competing with each other and I don't quite understand why the US, that has always been top dog, lets things slump that way while sinking money into a JSF that can't accomplish the mission or is way overbred for the environment where it can do something. Any ideas what's going on or is it the usual that missile trucks are just enough because we know where you are through our super-surveillance systems?

Re: Consequences of Flanker and PAK FA exports for the PACRIM from US-allied perspect

Kurt i think you discounted the capabilities of the Euro birds and their AFs too much

as with the APA analysis itself, the Flankers are very capable platform, but we need to look at the individual platform these countries bought, the state they are in, pilot training, maintenance level, and their overall effectiveness

and IMO from what i see, these Flankers are far from the overhyped bird-of-prey APA has been iterating over and over (from Australian perspective)
Australia and Singapore can easily handle them, not to mention the RAF, AdA, or the Luftwaffe

why does the JSF seems to 'fail' so hard?
because it's an excellent strategy from a business point of view, make one product for all your different customers that do everything and anything and backflips, so they drop their legacy platforms and stick to the one and only JSF

which is a disaster in military point of view

Re: Consequences of Flanker and PAK FA exports for the PACRIM from US-allied perspect

I don't think PAKFA will ever in the hands of China, because well India has it's money on it. And will cry foul if such event would occur.

Re: Consequences of Flanker and PAK FA exports for the PACRIM from US-allied perspect

Didn't the Russians offer to jointly produce an 5th generation fighter with Chinese capital and joint R&D, but China saw that Russia had more to gain from the joint-venture than vice-versa, and therefore embarked on her own 5th generation fighter program?

It strikes me that Russia would jointly produce an 5th generation fighter with INDIA, and would have never offered the same agreement to China...

Re: Consequences of Flanker and PAK FA exports for the PACRIM from US-allied perspect

Phead128 said:

Didn't the Russians offer to jointly produce an 5th generation fighter with Chinese capital and joint R&D, but China saw that Russia had more to gain from the joint-venture than vice-versa, and therefore embarked on her own 5th generation fighter program?

It strikes me that Russia would jointly produce an 5th generation fighter with INDIA, and would have never offered the same agreement to China...

Click to expand...

Because Chinese is disappointed by what they saw from the PAFKA when offer by Russian , not because Russian will gain more. As proven by their prototype, it Is hardly stealthy. Is cannot even meet Chinese standard of stealthy for a 5th gen fIghter.

Re: Consequences of Flanker and PAK FA exports for the PACRIM from US-allied perspect

Lion said:

Because Chinese is disappointed by what they saw from the PAFKA when offer by Russian , not because Russian will gain more. As proven by their prototype, it Is hardly stealthy. Is cannot even meet Chinese standard of stealthy for a 5th gen fIghter.

Click to expand...

I don't even think it was offered to the PLA. Due to China's ability to reverse engineer a lot of the high tech weaponry, most countries are reluctant to export their technologies to China, fearing of loss of its own lead and creating potential competition.

Russia is still a formidable competitor in the fighter jet sector. Although their 4th/5th generation fighter didn't come into fruition due to the collapse of the USSR, they already did a lot of groundwork research and testing throughout the 80's and 90's. Even F22 itself had most of its research done in the 80s and finalized in the 90s. I'm sure the Russians probably still have a lot of tricks up their sleeves.

It is actually really surprising that the PAK-FA airframe isn't that stealthy, since it is the easiest part for the Russian engineers, considering their historical expertise in this area, especially when looking at their really mature wind tunnel know-how. If we look at the from the front then move towards rear part of the PAK-FA, it looks like they did a half-ass job. It's like Michael Jackson's face, which the plastic surgeon said, "screw it, I'm going for lunch", half way through the surgery. It literally has the front of F-22, then work just stopped past the mid-line.

But all in all, Russians are still leading (of course, not counting US) the rest of the world in terms of radars, engines, and half a century of engineering expertise. The red empire might no longer exists, but its might still somewhat pass-on. There are still a lot of old engineers and experts that are valuable treasures.

To this day, China still needs Russian assistance in a lot of the aeronautical programs. Hongdu L-15 was assisted by Yakolev, passenger jets like Arj-21 and M-60 received assistance from Antonov, Al-31 are still imported from Russia, the emergency rescue rocket pods on the CZ rockets are still imported from Russia, Russian SibNIA assisted in the finalization of J-10, and many other projects still receive substantial Russian contribution.

But of course, China improved drastically over the last two decades, surpassing Russia in many areas. Chinese semiconductor industry is far ahead of the Russian counterpart, resulting in a lot of better avionics produced at lower price. The AESA radars are great example. The ones equipped on Type 052C and 054A are much more advanced than Russian counterpart. We also spotted AESA radars on J-10 earlier than any Russian counterparts.

But the Chinese aeronautical industry has some natural birth defects since the early days. It was originally set up in the beginning to copy and reverse engineer Soviet weapons. The original plan was to first learn how to copy, then reverse engineer, and eventually transform to self innovation. But the Sino-Soviet split disrupted this growth. The assistance was cut off before they learnt how to properly innovate and design a jet from scratch. Therefore, for the larger part of the Cold War, China had to reverse engineer Soviet weapons. There were countless attempts, such as the Q-6, J-9, J-13, but the first truly successful attempt was not until the J-10 program. So China's true innovation, especially head-on type of R&D, like those in USSR and US was a very recent event, as recent as only 25 years ago with the development of J-10. So China still has a long way to go.

But the bottom line is, China is a rising sun, full of potential and possess a bottomless pocket for money. Its backbone aeronautical engineers are all very young, mostly in their mid 30s and early 40s (read this on an article by Xinhua English). On the contrary, Russia's R&D foundation was mostly dissolved. The old aeronautical engineers either retired or switched jobs, many went abroad. Most of the expertise and accomplishments date back to the pre-dissolution days of the USSR. They barely innovated anything since. However, even their renaming know-how are still beneficial for Chinese to acquire. Like the old Chinese proverb I have heard in the past, a dead camel is still bigger than a horse. Although Russia is no longer at the forefront in pinnacles of technologies, the rest of the world still have a lot they can learn from Russia.

Re: Consequences of Flanker and PAK FA exports for the PACRIM from US-allied perspect

Wow that's a good analysis.

Re: Consequences of Flanker and PAK FA exports for the PACRIM from US-allied perspect

I didn't expect such sensationalist post from you Kurt . Flanker, although a capable platform, is way overrated in my opinion. There is no reason to believe that the regional F15/16 isn't superior to the legacy flankers.

Re: Consequences of Flanker and PAK FA exports for the PACRIM from US-allied perspect

Vini_Vidi_Vici said:

To this day, China still needs Russian assistance in a lot of the aeronautical programs. Hongdu L-15 was assisted by Yakolev, passenger jets like Arj-21 and M-60 received assistance from Antonov, Al-31 are still imported from Russia, the emergency rescue rocket pods on the CZ rockets are still imported from Russia, Russian SibNIA assisted in the finalization of J-10, and many other projects still receive substantial Russian contribution.

Click to expand...

I think you have a lot of mis info. CZ rocket is never imported. If it is, china cant be declared the 3 rd countries able to independently send human to space.

Ad for J-10, I doubt the much contribution of Russian. Probably in the integration of AL-31FN engine area, since J-10 is a national project. The lesser dependent and leak of secret to foreigner.

China has demonstrated many break thru which soviet has not done it. ASAT in 2007 and mid course interception of ABM outside atmosphere cOnducted in 2010.


As for PAFKA, I believe the Russian at least need to show Chinese the airframe and concept to convinced them to invest. Just like how they get the Chinese to invest in the SU-30MKK project. Chinese being more advance that time, knew PAFKA stealth does not fits Chinese more and more demanding requirement.

Re: Consequences of Flanker and PAK FA exports for the PACRIM from US-allied perspect

I would contest that the true development capabilities of the PLA should be based upon the J-20, rather than the J-10. The J-10 has its israeli roots much like those of the Flanker, except not as transparent. The J-20 however, is a truely distinctive bird, albeit still in testing, but a revolutionary development in China's ability to build airframes.