H-20 bomber (with H-X, JH-XX)

tphuang said:

Why would it be an over-kill? There really isn't anything else with PLAAF that you'd want to use this role. 2000 km off the coast would allow them to carry full payload from further into mainland without needing aerial refueling. It can also fly non-straight path that would be harder for air defense system to track. It's also close enough where J-20 can perform escort roles with aerial refueling. It would also be able to command UCAVs with shorter range.

I don't see how a JH-XX would be able to haul anywhere near the same amount of payload or have comfortable range without aerial refueling. You can argue its more survivable with its speed, but it would be less stealthy than H-20. And if it is actually supersonic, I don't see it actually being cheaper than H-20.

When you have to drop a bunch of heavy payload against ships or air defense, you'd want to do it with an aircraft with higher internal payload.

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I think the key performance differentiator for a JH-XX vs a H-20 hinges on what that speed offers you. The first is much quicker interdiction of targets after detection, which may matter for response time, and will help a lot against targets that are moving. The second is much better missile kinematics and much better tactical positioning and versatility, which can help you defeat air defenses and other countermeasure. The third is survivability when conducting missile dependent strike missions, since missiles, unlike bombs, give away your general directional position, and thus allows an adversary to search in a tighter space, or send a faster fighter in that direction to interdict, negating some stealth advantage. The fourth is a corollary of the second, which is being able to perform such a mission without depending on escorts to improve your survivability, since escorts themselves are attritable assets. The tradeoff is of course range and payload. But at least on payload, you probably don’t need more missiles if you can get better kill odds.

Imo there are clear tactical benefits to such a platform that are a bit beyond what an H-20 would offer, and maybe aren’t as easy to approximate with other approaches,. I think cruise and ballistic missiles, even hypersonic ones, don’t substitute for air launched platforms because they have predictable trajectories or their launch positions can be more easily monitored, and once you fire you’re locked in to a narrow preset of tactical probabilities. Either your missiles defeat the defenses or it fails, and either the hit is decisive or it’s not, but you often don’t have good options to collect real time information to do follow through strikes, even though target defenses are often most vulnerable right after the first strike. Air launched missiles just offer more tactical versatility, real time responsiveness, and less predictability. Meanwhile, guided missile subs aren’t as positionally flexible, and that will hurt their availability and responsiveness in some scenarios too. Drones I think are the only alternative that might offer the same or similar set of capabilities, but a lot hinges on the state of your situational awareness and autonomous decision making technologies.

I think, without a doubt, this is an expensive capability to procure and have on hand. The cost to benefit ratio may ultimately not be worthwhile, but defeating naval formations with strong air defense systems out at far sea is a major mission profile for the PLA, and even at high expense it may make sense to invest in something that adds another dimension of advantages to those capabilities. There’s a case to be made for this platform but it’s not an absolutely needed capability. I think that’s about as reasonable a position as we can conclude about this concept.

FairAndUnbiased said:

F-117 was designed with 1970s computers. Look at the F-35 instead. F-35 is a 15 m plane with 10000 kg class total payload: 2600 kg internal, 6800 kg external.

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You'd expect a 25 m plane (example: Mig-31, F-111) to have greater capability for internal payload. F-35 bottom weapons bays are 3.7 m in length for a 15 m fuselage. Let's say 10 m of added fuselage only gets you 5m more of weapons ( very conservative, accounting for structural components, added fuel tanks, etc but assumes you don't need much more landing gear, cockpit, etc). Assuming no change in depth or width, that increases internal payload 2.3x. that gets you to 6000 kg payload internal.

Also it's not direct reuse of data but having a starting point to analyze the data and most of all, to make practical design changes based on the data. Experience matters. Conventional layout experience is greater than flying wing experience. Hence, development costs are lower.

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hmm, F-35 does not have all spect stealth against lower frequency bands. F-117's design would naturally be more optimized against L and C band radar you often see from SAMs and early warning radars. I mean PLAAF early warning radars can detect F-35s from hundreds of km out. Would you want that for JH-XX? You also probably want to have 2 seats for JH-XX which would add to the space constraints.

Think about it this way. We have now seen two flywing designs from China with internal payload displayed. GJ-11 with 1 WS-13 only has 2 internal payload of 500 kg LGB each. CH-7 with 2 WS-13s only has 2 internal payload 1t each. Now, you could say that they are limiting payload in order to carry more internal fuel. That is possible. But flying at high subsonic, transonic and supersonic speed will also require more fuel than mach .6 to mach .75 cruising speed of the UCAVs.

Now, if you don't think JH-XX need to be as stealthy, then we have a different ballgame here.

latenlazy said:

I think the key performance differentiator for a JH-XX vs a H-20 hinges on what that speed offers you. The first is much quicker interdiction of targets after detection, which may matter for response time, and will help a lot against targets that are moving. The second is much better missile kinematics and much better tactical positioning and versatility, which can help you defeat air defenses and other countermeasure.

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USN carrier groups can handle supersonic missiles pretty well. That extra speed isn't going to help you that much.

latenlazy said:

The third is survivability when conducting missile dependent strike missions, since missiles, unlike bombs, give away your general directional position, and thus allows an adversary to search in a tighter space, or send a faster fighter in that direction to interdict, negating some stealth advantage.

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which wouldn't matter if you can sink a carrier by dropping 15t of payload on there. Launching 4 to 6 anti-ship missile is not going to trouble modern air defense system. The moment you launch missiles, you are going to get picked up. JH-XX is not going to out-run F-35s.

latenlazy said:

The fourth is a corollary of the second, which is being able to perform such a mission without depending on escorts to improve your survivability, since escorts themselves are attritable assets. The tradeoff is of course range and payload. But at least on payload, you probably don’t need more missiles if you can get better kill odds.

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you cannot penetrate carrier group with just a few JH-XXs. 1 or 2 H-20s controlling a bunch of UCAVs and decoys would be quite a tough match up for carrier group.

latenlazy said:

Imo there are clear tactical benefits to such a platform that are a bit beyond what an H-20 would offer, and maybe aren’t as easy to approximate with other approaches,. I think cruise and ballistic missiles, even hypersonic ones, don’t substitute for air launched platforms because they have predictable trajectories or their launch positions can be more easily monitored, and once you fire you’re locked in to a narrow preset of tactical probabilities. Either your missiles defeat the defenses or it fails, and either the hit is decisive or it’s not, but you often don’t have good options to collect real time information to do follow through strikes, even though target defenses are often most vulnerable right after the first strike. Air launched missiles just offer more tactical versatility, real time responsiveness, and less predictability. Meanwhile, guided missile subs aren’t as positionally flexible, and that will hurt their availability and responsiveness in some scenarios too. Drones I think are the only alternative that might offer the same or similar set of capabilities, but a lot hinges on the state of your situational awareness and autonomous decision making technologies.

I think, without a doubt, this is an expensive capability to procure and have on hand. The cost to benefit ratio may ultimately not be worthwhile, but defeating naval formations with strong air defense systems out at far sea is a major mission profile for the PLA, and even at high expense it may make sense to invest in something that adds another dimension of advantages to those capabilities. There’s a case to be made for this platform but it’s not an absolutely needed capability. I think that’s about as reasonable a position as we can conclude about this concept.

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I think we are moving away from firing a limited number of supersonic missiles to penetrate defenses and moving toward firing large quantity of munitions with strong EW pressure, decoys and ARMs to penetrating advanced defenses. having greater situation awareness isn't going to matter when your missiles can't penetrate defense. The only way to do that is with a larger swarm of missiles/decoys or faster missiles. It's much harder to intercept mach5+ missiles than mach3 missiles.

tphuang said:

USN carrier groups can handle supersonic missiles pretty well. That extra speed isn't going to help you that much.

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Naval air defenses are good about handling *cruise* missiles. A supersonic air launched missile with very short notice and at closer than stand-off range is an extremely challenging situation for any modern naval air defense.

tphuang said:

which wouldn't matter if you can sink a carrier by dropping 15t of payload on there. Launching 4 to 6 anti-ship missile is not going to trouble modern air defense system. The moment you launch missiles, you are going to get picked up. JH-XX is not going to out-run F-35s.

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There are other valuable naval targets than a carrier. The point of air launched naval strikes isn’t to sink carriers but to sink the destroyers and frigates shielding the carriers. A strike profile where the missile is launched at closer than stand off range and with short notice is not as defensible as the typical supersonic anti ship missile strike profiles naval defense systems are optimized for. A JH-XX performing this mission would still have a distance lead over any intercepting fighters, and should also have a fuel advantage to sustain the dash. It should be absolutely possible to outrun an intercepting fighter in that situation, especially since the extra stealth would mean that the intercepting fighter would need to close in a lot more to achieve an effective missile lock.

tphuang said:

you cannot penetrate carrier group with just a few JH-XXs. 1 or 2 H-20s controlling a bunch of UCAVs and decoys would be quite a tough match up for carrier group.

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If a JH-XX can’t penetrate those air defenses, with the extra tactical advantages it would bring over an H-20, an H-20 with a bunch of UCAVs wouldn’t do too well either. If your view is that things like missile kinematics, launch range, and response time, are all negated by the capabilities of naval air defenses, then discussing any air launched solution is probably a waste of time and money and all that money should be invested in maximizing your missile saturation strikes with as many launchers as possible. In that situation you’d be better off procuring more H-6s than H-20s for air launch surface attack roles.

tphuang said:

I think we are moving away from firing a limited number of supersonic missiles to penetrate defenses and moving toward firing large quantity of munitions with strong EW pressure, decoys and ARMs to penetrating advanced defenses. having greater situation awareness isn't going to matter when your missiles can't penetrate defense. The only way to do that is with a larger swarm of missiles/decoys or faster missiles. It's much harder to intercept mach5+ missiles than mach3 missiles.

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It’s not either or. Advantages are additive and layer on each other. I can’t imagine a JH-XX that doesn’t also field a very capable EW suite to maximize the kP of their missiles post launch. The whole point of launching a supersonic missile from a supersonic capable strike aircraft rather than from a subsonic only strike aircraft is to boost the missile’s kinematic advantage. The whole point of having stealth is to get much closer before launching. The whole point of both is ultimately to reduce your adversary’s reaction time and defensive options. The speed of the missile is not the *primary* central variable here. It’s the notice and reaction time to hit, especially relative to different flight profiles. And there are multiple ways to reduce that particular variable.

latenlazy said:

Naval air defenses are good about handling *cruise* missiles. A supersonic air launched missile with very short notice and at closer than stand-off range is an extremely challenging situation for any modern naval air defense.

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Aegis system is designed to handle supersonic anti ship missiles saturation attacks. Think about the Russian backfire threats against usn groups. The Russians themselves estimated they had to take significant backfire losses to evn take out 1 carrier. Sure, missiles have gotten better. But so have radar systems, cec and ciws.

latenlazy said:

There are other valuable naval targets than a carrier. The point of air launched naval strikes isn’t to sink carriers but to sink the destroyers and frigates shielding the carriers. A strike profile where the missile is launched at closer than stand off range and with short notice is not as defensible as the typical supersonic anti ship missile strike profiles naval defense systems are optimized for. A JH-XX performing this mission would still have a distance lead over any intercepting fighters, and should also have a fuel advantage to sustain the dash. It should be absolutely possible to outrun an intercepting fighter in that situation, especially since the extra stealth would mean that the intercepting fighter would need to close in a lot more to achieve an effective missile lock.

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Hmm, supersonic missiles are really large. Not the type you would want to be putting in your internal weapon bay. Even if you can put one in there, having 1 per aircraft isn't going to make a huge difference. It will however be compromising on its combat radius and maneuverability. You are not really going to sink an Aegis destroyer with a couple of supersonic missiles.

Keep in mind that hitting 1 carrier is way more important than even sinking an AB class destroyer. if a modern missile/munition can land on carrier deck or hit its island. The carrier wing will basically be inoperable for the rest of the battle.

latenlazy said:

If a JH-XX can’t penetrate those air defenses, with the extra tactical advantages it would bring over an H-20, an H-20 with a bunch of UCAVs wouldn’t do too well either. If your view is that things like missile kinematics, launch range, and response time, are all negated by the capabilities of naval air defenses, then discussing any air launched solution is probably a waste of time and money and all that money should be invested in maximizing your missile saturation strikes with as many launchers as possible. In that situation you’d be better off procuring more H-6s than H-20s for air launch surface attack roles.

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you simply can't launch swarm air defense with H-6 as well as you can with H-20 and accompanying UCAVs. H-20 and UCAVs can get closer to carrier group before being detected. If it can get within 100 km of intended target(s), then all the PGMs, mach 4 ARMs and MALD type of decoys (along with strong EW pressure) is how you can overwhelm air defense systems.

latenlazy said:

It’s not either or. Advantages are additive and layer on each other. I can’t imagine a JH-XX that doesn’t also field a very capable EW suite to maximize the kP of their missiles post launch. The whole point of launching a supersonic missile from a supersonic capable strike aircraft rather than from a subsonic only strike aircraft is to boost the missile’s kinematic advantage. The whole point of having stealth is to get much closer before launching. The whole point of both is ultimately to reduce your adversary’s reaction time and defensive options. The speed of the missile is not the *primary* central variable here. It’s the notice and reaction time to hit, especially relative to different flight profiles. And there are multiple ways to reduce that particular variable.

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USN carrier groups have a lot of training against threat of multi-axis supersonic missile attack launched by supersonic bombers like Tu-22M. They do not have training against multiple ASBMs or hypersonic AShMs. As long as you want to keep JH-XX stealthy, it will need to use internal weapon bay, which limits how many missiles it can carry. At best, you create a central weapon bay that can hold 1 large supersonic missile. Given the cost of such platform, it really does not offer a lot of incremental capability.

gelgoog said:

What makes you think the WS-10 engine is worse than a 1980s era F-16 like engine?
It is probably as good as the latest generation versions of that engine.
Like I said we should expect the H-20 to have similar or better range than the B-2.
i.e. it should have intercontinental range and be able to hit targets all over the US if you use a polar route.

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Sorry, I misunderstood what you meant.

tphuang said:

Aegis system is designed to handle supersonic anti ship missiles saturation attacks. Think about the Russian backfire threats against usn groups. The Russians themselves estimated they had to take significant backfire losses to evn take out 1 carrier. Sure, missiles have gotten better. But so have radar systems, cec and ciws.

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The Backfire wasn’t stealthy. Every halving of distance before detection is a halving of response time. And the stealthiness also helps with survivability.

tphuang said:

Hmm, supersonic missiles are really large. Not the type you would want to be putting in your internal weapon bay. Even if you can put one in there, having 1 per aircraft isn't going to make a huge difference. It will however be compromising on its combat radius and maneuverability. You are not really going to sink an Aegis destroyer with a couple of supersonic missiles.

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I don’t think a JH-XX makes any sense if it can only fit 1 anti ship missile. If that’s what you’re discussing, then we’re thinking two totally different planes. Even the J-20 and J-XY are planned to have four smaller anti-ship missiles mounted internally. I think if a JH-XX emerges it should be expected to carry 4 larger supersonic anti ship missiles or more smaller ones. You could even mount a mixed complement of different anti-ship missiles (between supersonic and stealth) to make defeating an attack harder.

I don’t think the expectation here would be something with intercontinental range. That’s not the kind of mission a JH-XX would be meant for. Nor is maneuverability going to be prohibitively inhibited by larger payload I think. There’s really only one maneuver a JH-XX would need to be able to do well, which is a defensive sustained turn followed by acceleration into supersonic dash.

You also don’t really need to sink an Aegis destroyer per say. It’s easier to knock them out of operational capacity, especially their sensor suite, and that alone would be quite crippling to a carrier fleet (though I absolutely think one YJ-12 sized missile has the capability to sink an Aegis).

tphuang said:

Keep in mind that hitting 1 carrier is way more important than even sinking an AB class destroyer. if a modern missile/munition can land on carrier deck or hit its island. The carrier wing will basically be inoperable for the rest of the battle.

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I think it’s unrealistic to go after a carrier until you’ve found a way to deal with the flotilla’s air defense system. But if it takes just one missile to incapacitate a carrier operationally, I think a JH-XX penetrating the air defenses before the air defense can mount an effective response can be just as effective as one attacking an Aegis destroyer.

tphuang said:

you simply can't launch swarm air defense with H-6 as well as you can with H-20 and accompanying UCAVs. H-20 and UCAVs can get closer to carrier group before being detected. If it can get within 100 km of intended target(s), then all the PGMs, mach 4 ARMs and MALD type of decoys (along with strong EW pressure) is how you can overwhelm air defense systems.

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I’m not actually arguing that the PLA should exclude H-20’s from the mission profile, but if it holds that the H-20 can add a dimension to this mission profile, then a JH-XX also adds a dimension of its own. If distance to target matters, then so does kinematic advantages in ingress and weapons launch. Both are about reducing response times and challenging the flight profiles of the intercepting missile. A faster more energetic missile launch adds an additional dimension to attacking at closer range. The point after all isn’t whether a JH-XX should replace the H-20, but whether it’s worth adding a JH-XX as an additional capability.

tphuang said:

USN carrier groups have a lot of training against threat of multi-axis supersonic missile attack launched by supersonic bombers like Tu-22M. They do not have training against multiple ASBMs or hypersonic AShMs. As long as you want to keep JH-XX stealthy, it will need to use internal weapon bay, which limits how many missiles it can carry. At best, you create a central weapon bay that can hold 1 large supersonic missile. Given the cost of such platform, it really does not offer a lot of incremental capability.

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Again, I think you can only stretch the Tu-22 comparisons so far, since the Tu-22 isn’t stealthy, and again, I think if you’re going to develop a JH-XX carrying 4 large supersonic anti ship missiles is probably to be an expected requirement. There’s a reason all the designs we’ve seen of the JH-XX indicates a blended wing body design. I agree such a platform will probably be costly. But whether the capability is incremental or not is measured by how effectively it can increase pK (inclusive, I should add, of layering with other attack options) and I don’t think that’s something we can readily know. I personally think the capabilities offered by combining supersonic kinematic advantage with stealthy ingress could be pretty significant, and hard to replicate with other attack options, and I think the mission of incapacitating US CVGs is so central to the PLA’s strategy that adding another capability that can be layered on top of the capabilities already being fielded or developed to help ensure a check mate might be worth the cost.

I think the reason China will build a supersonic bomber is because they seem intent on mastering almost every aviation segment there is, and this is a glaring hole in that plan.

If it is faster than F35, can hold internally 1 large missile (supersonic, hypersonic, ballistic) and you have a fleet of 50 of them, then I think it complements very well H20.

Supersonic UCAVs can accompany a JH-XX to clear the path for the missile.

Dealing with this should fully occupy any air defense, allowing other attack vectors to succeed.

The trend seems to be adding special mission aircraft functions into other aircraft, so JH-XX would also be a supersonic AWACS, EW, ECM, JSTARS, MPA, tanker etc..

Finally, it should also be exportable to recover development costs.

So, just for the sake of establishing with some clarity what kind of plane we’re actually talking about here with a hypothetical JH-XX, the Tu-22M has a total dry thrust of ~300 kN and a total wet thrust of ~500 kN. Presumably two WS-15 class engines should provide maybe 220 kN of dry thrust and 320-360 kN of wet thrust. The Tu-22M has a thrust to weight ratio of 0.45 at gross takeoff weight. That means using two WS-15’s for a JH-XX with a similar thrust to weight ratio you get a plane with a gross weight of 70-85 tonnes. The Tu-22M has a fuel fraction of 0.48 and an empty weight of 58 tonnes. That means a JH-XX using WS-15s with comparable T:W ratio and fuel fraction should have an empty weight of 36 to 44 tonnes. 4 YJ-12s should weigh between 8 and 10 tonnes. A Tu-22M can supposedly carry 3 Kh-22 in its internal bays (at least from what I can find open source, open to being corrected here), totaling maybe 17 tonnes of internally held payload. I think a JH-XX that’s about 30-40% smaller than a Tu-22M should easily be able to carry the 8-10 tonne payload of 4 YJ-12s internally.

However, if there’s any doubts about whether a 70-85 tonne plane is sufficient, or whether either the thrust to weight ratio or fuel fraction of a Tu-22M is the right point of comparison, it’s worth noting that the WS-15 is a low bypass ratio engine (probably between 0.25 and 0.35), and the NK-25 has a bypass ratio of 1.45. If you increased the bypass ratio of the WS-15, say because you either ditch or relax supercruise requirements, or you wanted better fuel consumption at cruise, you could easily get more thrust as needed for a JH-XX, especially with wet thrust. It would require making a WS-15 derivative, but the only real change would be a larger fan section, and so long as the WS-15 is a mature design these kinds of changes usually have pretty quick development cycles for an engine.

latenlazy said:

The Backfire wasn’t stealthy. Every halving of distance before detection is a halving of response time. And the stealthiness also helps with survivability.

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I agree that real VLO supersonic bomber has great value. I just don't think launching supersonic AShM is what you want to launch from it. you can fly low with J-15/16s and launch sea-skimming supersonic missiles from 300 km out with the same effect.

latenlazy said:

I don’t think a JH-XX makes any sense if it can only fit 1 anti ship missile. If that’s what you’re discussing, then we’re thinking two totally different planes. Even the J-20 and J-XY are planned to have four smaller anti-ship missiles mounted internally. I think if a JH-XX emerges it should be expected to carry 4 larger supersonic anti ship missiles or more smaller ones. You could even mount a mixed complement of different anti-ship missiles (between supersonic and stealth) to make defeating an attack harder.

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4 larger supersonic AShM? Your typical anti-ship missiles like Brahmos/Yakhont is 2500kg air launched. You generally don't want to carry more than 1 of them even on a flanker. Something like YJ-12 would be similar in weight. Now, you can carry more (probably 2) if you are firing something like an anti-ship version of YJ-91, but it would have to travel high profile to reach 70 to 100 km in range. That would be really easy for air defense system to pick up and intercept. You'd be better off dropping 3 or 4 gliding PGMs that can glide over 100km.

latenlazy said:

I don’t think the expectation here would be something with intercontinental range. That’s not the kind of mission a JH-XX would be meant for. Nor is maneuverability going to be prohibitively inhibited by larger payload I think. There’s really only one maneuver a JH-XX would need to be able to do well, which is a defensive sustained turn followed by acceleration into supersonic dash.

You also don’t really need to sink an Aegis destroyer per say. It’s easier to knock them out of operational capacity, especially their sensor suite, and that alone would be quite crippling to a carrier fleet (though I absolutely think one YJ-12 sized missile has the capability to sink an Aegis).

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It would be very hard to fit one YJ-12 size missile internally into JH-XX. Launching something as large as YJ-12 could even cause balance issues on JH-XX (that was one of the issues they had launching Brahmos from MKI)

latenlazy said:

I’m not actually arguing that the PLA should exclude H-20’s from the mission profile, but if it holds that the H-20 can add a dimension to this mission profile, then a JH-XX also adds a dimension of its own. If distance to target matters, then so does kinematic advantages in ingress and weapons launch. Both are about reducing response times and challenging the flight profiles of the intercepting missile. A faster more energetic missile launch adds an additional dimension to attacking at closer range. The point after all isn’t whether a JH-XX should replace the H-20, but whether it’s worth adding a JH-XX as an additional capability.

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H-20's advantages are significantly higher payload, range and stealth. Adding speed to a mach 3 supersonic missile doesn't mean as much as flight profile and stealth of the missile. Keep in mind that modern air defenses are designed to be able to handle multiple sea skimming supersonic missiles that can only be tracked under 40 km out.

latenlazy said:

Again, I think you can only stretch the Tu-22 comparisons so far, since the Tu-22 isn’t stealthy, and again, I think if you’re going to develop a JH-XX carrying 4 large supersonic anti ship missiles is probably to be an expected requirement. There’s a reason all the designs we’ve seen of the JH-XX indicates a blended wing body design. I agree such a platform will probably be costly. But whether the capability is incremental or not is measured by how effectively it can increase pK (inclusive, I should add, of layering with other attack options) and I don’t think that’s something we can readily know. I personally think the capabilities offered by combining supersonic kinematic advantage with stealthy ingress could be pretty significant, and hard to replicate with other attack options, and I think the mission of incapacitating US CVGs is so central to the PLA’s strategy that adding another capability that can be layered on top of the capabilities already being fielded or developed to help ensure a check mate might be worth the cost.

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you can't fit 4 large supersonic anti-ship missile on JH-XX. US CVG are very good at tracking and interception supersonic missiles from short range. They are not very good at tracking and interception hypersonic missiles and ballistic missiles. A really stealthy and low flying subsonic anti-ship missile would have as good of a chance in evading air defense as a large supersonic one. Now, the supersonic one would cause more damage, but the subsonic one can still take out the radar system.

latenlazy said:

So, just for the sake of establishing with some clarity what kind of plane we’re actually talking about here with a hypothetical JH-XX, the Tu-22M has a total dry thrust of ~300 kN and a total wet thrust of ~500 kN. Presumably two WS-15 class engines should provide maybe 220 kN of dry thrust and 320-360 kN of wet thrust. The Tu-22M has a thrust to weight ratio of 0.45 at gross takeoff weight. That means using two WS-15’s for a JH-XX with a similar thrust to weight ratio you get a plane with a gross weight of 70-85 tonnes. The Tu-22M has a fuel fraction of 0.48 and an empty weight of 58 tonnes. That means a JH-XX using WS-15s with comparable T:W ratio and fuel fraction should have an empty weight of 36 to 44 tonnes. 4 YJ-12s should weigh between 8 and 10 tonnes. A Tu-22M can supposedly carry 3 Kh-22 in its internal bays (at least from what I can find open source, open to being corrected here), totaling maybe 17 tonnes of internally held payload. I think a JH-XX that’s about 30-40% smaller than a Tu-22M should easily be able to carry the 8-10 tonne payload of 4 YJ-12s internally.

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Doesn't scale like that. I haven't seen any evidence of flankers carrying more than 1 2500 to 3000 kg supersonic AShM externally.

Even with something as large as H-6J, the most number of YJ-12 you'd see it carry in practice is 4.

The dynamics of naval combat has changed with AESA radars and active radar homing missiles. Now, it is no longer possible to overwhelm the defenses of a ship by exploiting the limited firing channels that characterize mechanical radars and SARH missiles. Moreover, supersonic missiles can now be reliably intercepted by modern interceptors and are no more survivable than subsonic missiles.

This is why anti-ship weapons have been shifting in two directions. The first is to overwhelm a ship's defense by exhausting its entire supply of interceptors, fully expecting most weapons to be shot down. Naturally, this is best accomplished using small and cheap weapons, so guided bomb>subsonic missile>supersonic missiles. Up to 8 SDB II or the Spear 3 can be carried in the internal weapon bay of an F-35, and a squadron of F-35 can launch a salvo of 96 weapons, enough to exhaust all 64*HQ-9 and 24*HQ-10 on a Type 052D.

The limitation to this approach is that small guided bombs have much shorter range than cruise missiles, less than 100km, and can only be release at high altitude, thus preventing the launch aircraft from sea skimming. The launch aircraft must therefore survive to close that distance while remaining in high altitude. This is why VLO stealth is essential for this strategy to work.

The second strategy is to use high end missiles that defeat the current generation of interceptors missiles, or to have a PK so low that many interceptors need to be launched against a single missile. The most famous of these are of course the ASBMs DF-21D and DF-26.

There are many attractive features for this strategy compared to the first. For one, the amount of fire power is not connected to the number of aircraft sent on the mission. This allows for the attacking side to spread out its fighters to better search for the enemy ships, while enabling fighters to carry full air-to-air load outs that maximize range. The other advantage is that the TELs carrying the ASBM are a thousand km away and dispersed, and are very survivable.

I would argue that the paradigm of high end 21st century naval warfare is that all aircrafts will act as armed ISR platforms while ASBMs and HGVs perform the strike role from a standoff distance.

So where does leave a medium supersonic bomber? For strikes with massed guided bombs, bombers do not offer advantages over existing designs like the J-20 or the J-XY carrier 5th gen, both of which can carry 8 SDB class weapons internally. A medium bomber could have more range, but a strategic bomber would have even greater range. For strikes using standoff ASBMs and HGVs, medium bombers are decidedly worse. Their advantages in payload is meaningless while their limited number make them worse as an ISR platform.

Using a stealth medium supersonic bomber to launch anti ship cruise missiles would be the worst thing you can do. Even if you have 20 bombers each carrying 4 YJ-12s making it within 200km from a CBG, its perfectly realistic to expect the CBG armed with SM-6 and ESSMs to shoot down all 80 missiles.