J-10 Thread IV

[vesicles]

I don't want to derail the thread into geopolitics or energy security discussion. But China can support Russia in many other fields. Example : ShipBuilding , Telecommunications, Information Technology, Automobiles, Heavy Machinery ...the list is huge.
Why exactly compromise on Aeroengines? Why can't Russia divert the profits it had made in its collaboration and coordination with China on the many fields that I listed above? They could divert some of that Profits into their own Aeroengine Manufacturing base? Russian Sukhois and Migs have never lost their appeal ( to the contrary, the potential buyers keep Increasing - Turkey is the latest). That means more Aeroengine business ?

China must delink/ decouple from Russia on Aeroengines. There will be growing pains. But that has to be endured. WS-10 series should be adopted into more J-10s and Flankers. Even if WS-10 ends up having a lower reliability score than AL-31( a hypothetical scenario), China should keep on pushing ahead.

I also don't want to derail this thread to a geopolitical one, but would like to share one point.

Military tech is a highly specialized and most likely isolated area (the former Soviets never converted their military tech prowess to overall industrial capabilities), whereas ShipBuilding, Telecommunications, Information Technology, Automobiles, Heavy Machinery would be foundations for overall infrastructures and foundations for overall capabilities.

Supporting the Russians with their engines most likely will only keep their highly specialized expertise intact. this will give them the money they desperately need, that's it. On the other hand, if the Chinese support the Russians with their overall capabilities, given enough time, the Russians will thrive into another capable competitor. I don't think that's what the Chinese want.

 

[Tirdent]

The idea that China continued to depend on the AL-31F even while contemporary WS-10 versions were already more reliable is illogical. If they genuinely had a lower failure rate, the policy of deploying them in the twin-engine J-11 first would be especially nonsensical - you'd always prefer to put the more dependable option in the single-engine J-10. Particularly when you've just aroused the Russians' ire over lost revenue from starting to produce the J-11 outside the scope of the license they've granted - continuing to buy AL-31Fs would have gone a long way toward making that palatable. Production bottleneck? Not sure that checks out either - you can get twice as many fighter jets out to the flight lines per WS-10 built by putting them in J-10s...

Like it or not, the timing of the change-over in the J-10 is likely to be a fairly accurate gauge of relative maturity. If there were "many" crashes caused by the AL-31F (is there any actual proof that more than the fair share were engine-related?), then you can extrapolate that the PLAAF was keenly aware there would have been even more with the WS-10, until recently. And it's not as though their Western counterparts have a clean slate in this regard - continued issues with the F100 secured GE a place on the F-16 and later F-15, only for teething problems with the F110 to likewise cause groundings.

Engine tech is hard, no need for contrived theories involving geopolitics to explain the observed facts.

 

[ZeEa5KPul]

On the other hand, if the Chinese support the Russians with their overall capabilities, given enough time, the Russians will thrive into another capable competitor. I don't think that's what the Chinese want.

I don't want to sound too harsh here, so I'll apologize in advance if I do, but this is kind of zero-sum thinking is a little pedestrian. China isn't some besieged middle power that views the world through a bellum omnium contra omnes lens. It's a superpower on its way to being the superpower - the simple fact is that when it completes its development no one will be able to compete with it.

A strong, prosperous, and capable Russia is a useful partner. Economically through having more to offer China and strategically through putting pressure on Europe and the US.

 

[manqiangrexue]

The idea that China continued to depend on the AL-31F even while contemporary WS-10 versions were already more reliable is illogical. If they genuinely had a lower failure rate, the policy of deploying them in the twin-engine J-11 first would be especially nonsensical - you'd always prefer to put the more dependable option in the single-engine J-10. Particularly when you've just aroused the Russians' ire over lost revenue from starting to produce the J-11 outside the scope of the license they've granted - continuing to buy AL-31Fs would have gone a long way toward making that palatable. Production bottleneck? Not sure that checks out either - you can get twice as many fighter jets out to the flight lines per WS-10 built by putting them in J-10s...

Like it or not, the timing of the change-over in the J-10 is likely to be a fairly accurate gauge of relative maturity. If there were "many" crashes caused by the AL-31F (is there any actual proof that more than the fair share were engine-related?), then you can extrapolate that the PLAAF was keenly aware there would have been even more with the WS-10, until recently. And it's not as though their Western counterparts have a clean slate in this regard - continued issues with the F100 secured GE a place on the F-16 and later F-15, only for teething problems with the F110 to likewise cause groundings.

Engine tech is hard, no need for contrived theories involving geopolitics to explain the observed facts.

Well when WS-10 was first integrated into the PLAAF, they obviously did not know what the reliability was and through these years, they have no doubt been improved. At that time, they didn't know for sure if WS-10 would cut it so it was very logical to put them onto Flankers over J-10. After using them for several years, they would then know if the WS-10 is more, less, or similar in reliability to AL-31 and through this process, they would be making improvements continuously.

However, although several J-10 incidents were reportedly due to engine fault, we cannot assume that the WS-10 is more reliable because single engine failures in J-11 would not have resulted in crashes and would likely not have made it to public knowledge. Indeed Indian MKIs are the most often-crashed Flankers and I'm not aware of any caused by double engine out, but rather by control system problems, so comparing Chinese WS-10 Flankers vs. MKI, there is no answer for which engine is most reliable.

So I guess my point is, we cannot assume that WS-10 is more reliable simply because there are far less J-11 than J-10 lost but neither can we assume the opposite just because the PLAAF had chosen to first put WS-10 on J-11 for many years before J-10.

 

[ougoah]

The idea that China continued to depend on the AL-31F even while contemporary WS-10 versions were already more reliable is illogical. If they genuinely had a lower failure rate, the policy of deploying them in the twin-engine J-11 first would be especially nonsensical - you'd always prefer to put the more dependable option in the single-engine J-10. Particularly when you've just aroused the Russians' ire over lost revenue from starting to produce the J-11 outside the scope of the license they've granted - continuing to buy AL-31Fs would have gone a long way toward making that palatable. Production bottleneck? Not sure that checks out either - you can get twice as many fighter jets out to the flight lines per WS-10 built by putting them in J-10s...

Like it or not, the timing of the change-over in the J-10 is likely to be a fairly accurate gauge of relative maturity. If there were "many" crashes caused by the AL-31F (is there any actual proof that more than the fair share were engine-related?), then you can extrapolate that the PLAAF was keenly aware there would have been even more with the WS-10, until recently. And it's not as though their Western counterparts have a clean slate in this regard - continued issues with the F100 secured GE a place on the F-16 and later F-15, only for teething problems with the F110 to likewise cause groundings.

Engine tech is hard, no need for contrived theories involving geopolitics to explain the observed facts.

Completely ignoring politics for a moment, I agree with everything being said. I mean it is definitely true that earlier WS-10 variants were not put on J-10 because PLAAF did not consider it "safe" enough to use on a single engine fighter. But this "safeness" you are assuming means it is less reliable than AL-31. While this may or may not be the case. The main reason could just as well be because WS-10 has been in operation for fewer years than AL-31... significantly fewer. Both Russia and China know what AL-31 is capable and incapable of. India too. PLAAF does not know whether WS-10 may come out with unexpected problems years into service before service life cycle ends. This would mean replacing even more WS-10 with AL-31. Further to this of course is the often mentioned spool up time factor which a single engine fighter cannot accept. Then there's the rarely mentioned higher rate of mid operation stoppage at least for the early models of WS-10.

I think PLAAF needed to test WS-10 over a decade regardless of where they use it. So given the stoppage and the spool up time and the unknown reliability (could be much better reliability than AL-31 who's to say), of course they'd put it into the flanker variants. Now that the engine has proven itself both in performance and reliability compared to the AL-31. At least to a level that PLAAF deems satisfactory so it could still be worse off than the Russian, they are comfortable using it on the J-10. It's just not a certainty that the initial decade of passivity was only and definitely due to reliability.

F100 has been the US' WS-10 experience i.e. years of headache and teething problems. F110 itself hasn't been a smooth ride either and both have been culprits but I'm not aware of F110 directly causing accidents like the AL-31 has. Perhaps the WS-10 would have caused as many or more accidents if they applied it earlier on to the J-10 as well. Given the fact that RuAF only operate twin AL-31 fighters, it's hard to say but India has had an even more woeful experience with the AL-31 compared to China's J-10 which are roughly equal in numbers if we account for earlier Su-30 in IAF.

China's economic cooperation with Russia is not limited to AL-31 and flankers. The flanker drama is totally offset by these many mutual benefits and China really only copied the design because Russia would unlikely have allowed China to use their subsystems and weapons on modernised Russian flankers. So needing this for PLAAF backbone was an issue of survival for the CCP and Russian annoyance be damned when you consider what is at stake for China and the many other ways China has compensated Russia. Further to this China has never and will never put Sino-flankers on export even to Pakistan.

 

[Hyperwarp]

The idea that China continued to depend on the AL-31F even while contemporary WS-10 versions were already more reliable is illogical. If they genuinely had a lower failure rate, the policy of deploying them in the twin-engine J-11 first would be especially nonsensical - you'd always prefer to put the more dependable option in the single-engine J-10. Particularly when you've just aroused the Russians' ire over lost revenue from starting to produce the J-11 outside the scope of the license they've granted - continuing to buy AL-31Fs would have gone a long way toward making that palatable. Production bottleneck? Not sure that checks out either - you can get twice as many fighter jets out to the flight lines per WS-10 built by putting them in J-10s...

Like it or not, the timing of the change-over in the J-10 is likely to be a fairly accurate gauge of relative maturity. If there were "many" crashes caused by the AL-31F (is there any actual proof that more than the fair share were engine-related?), then you can extrapolate that the PLAAF was keenly aware there would have been even more with the WS-10, until recently. And it's not as though their Western counterparts have a clean slate in this regard - continued issues with the F100 secured GE a place on the F-16 and later F-15, only for teething problems with the F110 to likewise cause groundings.

Engine tech is hard, no need for contrived theories involving geopolitics to explain the observed facts.

IMHO, It IS about maturity. Russia does not provide engines to any J-11B, J-16, J-15. Russia only provides kits and spares according to the signed agreements (J-11/11A) as well as spares for existing flankers bought outright from Russia (Su-27SK/UBK, Su-30MKK/MK2, Su-35). Whatever AL-31F used in early J-11B and J-15 were likley cannibalized from either the very early Su-27SK or from spares. J-11B from the start was supposed to be powered by the WS-10A originally at 132 kN. But things had gone horribly wrong. There were no reported crashes but MTBO was said to be something like 50 to 70 . IIRC, problems were identified in quality control during mass production, but, by the end of 2009, the reliability was at an acceptible level. It seems the max thrust was down to 118 kN from the original 132 kN. However, thrust issues seem to been fixed. Newer WS-10D powering J-16 and later batches of J-11B have thrust of 130 kN. Since the J-11B is twin-engined, they could afford to take risks but not with the single-engined J-10 series. There are actually 2x J-10B in service powered by WS-10B in the very 1st batch of the J-10B/C series (#55 & #56). This was before the recent full change to the WS-10B (Batch 04). They were testing those J-10B since 2015. That's a long time. But it looks like finally, the WS-10 has fully matured and gives China true independence when producing fighters.

 

[by78]

In celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese air force, here are some high-resolution images, some old, some new.

 

[by78]

 

[by78]

Taken from the backseat of a J-10S.

(2048 × 1152)

 

[sequ]

Finally they raised a tip of the 'cockpit' veil