I listened to guancha podcast today for the ones from this week. 2 topics: 1) PAF and J10C 2) China/Russia's recent joint patrol.
it's pretty obvious why J-10 worked great for PLAAF back 20 years ago, but not so much now. For PAF, J-10CE is kind of like a heavy fighter jet for them. It has plenty of range for Pakistan and can carry attack munitions. It's larger and has more power than F-16s. To them, flankers would be kind of unnecessary. But for PLAAF, it's been obvious for a while that J-10 cannot satisfy future demand. Back 10 years ago, China would have to send Su-30 and J-11As if they wanted to do long range patrol and escort missions in Japanese ADIZ. J-10s simply didn't have the range to be used in that role. Clearly, that's not a great matchup against upgraded F-15s. With J-16s, now they have a modern aircraft that can also escort H-6K and Tu-95 through the area. With YY-20 along the way, J-16 can escort bombers all the way to Russia.
If the combat radius of J-16 with 1 refueling is 1600km and J-10C with 1 refueling is 1200km, the difference might not sound like a lot. But in terms of actual missions, that extra 400 km opens up a lot of bases that can now operate and support a mission into Japan.
As we discuss the importance of being able to hit Japanese air bases in a possible westpac scenario, you will find that NTC is severely under armed in terms of long range aircraft. There is only 1 J-20 and 1 J-16 brigade in there that we know of. As such, you don't have a lot of fighter jet that can escort attack aircraft to with 300 km of Misawa air base or Tokyo and patrol there for some time. You also, don't have a lot of modern fighter bombs that can launch stand off missiles to those targets. ETC is really well equipped with both J-20s and J-16s, but ETC aircraft aren't going to be able to attack those targets in North and central eastern part of Honshu island. When I look at NTC, I just see a lot of air bases with aircraft that simply can't do any attack missions. Maybe J-10 base next to Korean border can be helpful like the 61st brigade, but that's about it. As such, they need to quickly move some of those brigades to WTC or CTC and put new J-20/J-16 in those places.