J-10 Thread IV

[siegecrossbow]

Came to me how transformative this aircraft can be for either side in Ukraine.

For Ukraine - direct ability to counter Russian air raids (effectively suppressing glide bomb attacks), at leas than half of flanker fuel burn and maintenance effort.
More sorties for CAS and strike at the same time.

For Russia - same amount of glide bombing for a fraction of cost, as j-10 self escorts for a fraction of price of flanker glide bomb package. Massive savings for attrition campaign, freeing flankers for duties where their qualities are advantageous.

Effective CAS (via targeting pod and guided rockets, unlike su-25 lofting dumb rockets) as a bonus.

Funnily enough.

I'm not sure how true this is but I'll leave it here:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1399262116486402052

I doubt they'll buy J-10s considering Ukraine's geopolitical situation.

 

[Gloire_bb]

Funnily enough.

Well, indeed.
I just saw again picture of J-10c with new export pylon configuration from last year Zhuhai, and made a quick check.
For Ukraine it's a qualitive change, j-10, when compared to existing fighter ecosystem, changes entire game.

For Russia, it doesn't, the difference is only economic. The problem is scale. i ran a very quick, approximate math - J-10c allows Russia to cut expenses for its bombing campaign by a factor of bloody 10 (7...11 to be exact).

To give you an idea about savings, 1 year of sustained J-10 bombing ops, when compared to fullbacks escorted by su-35s, is so huge that you can fit entire order for sufficient J-10c force into savings.
And that's before we even take into account any other missions and availability (fullbacks sorties are damn valuable, as they're multirole backbone of the effort: reconnaissance, ew, precision strike...).

 

[doggydogdo]

For Russia, it doesn't, the difference is only economic. The problem is scale. i ran a very quick, approximate math - J-10c allows Russia to cut expenses for its bombing campaign by a factor of bloody 10 (7...11 to be exact).

How is it so much cheaper?

 

[Gloire_bb]

How is it so much cheaper?

Long story short - over twice lower flight hour cost(15...20k v 35...45k for flankers, both approximated), 75% less pilots(fullbacks are twins), many times less ground personnel, higher overtime sortie generation (2 sortie/day v typical 1 longterm for flankers), self-escort capability (su-34 is bomber and their flights have su-35s in top cover). At the same time - actual delivery capability at land war ranges is either similar (500 kg bombs, 4/plane - both; though widely available UMPK bombs are very unreliable, so realistically it's like 3) or superior (250 ones, 6/plane; Su-34 tends to carry only 4).

As a result - it takes 1/3...1/6 number of a much cheaper force to deliver same effects (aka ~150 bombs/day, 365 days).
To be exact - approximately 130 million USD/year for J-10 (12...24), 1.2 billion/year for a mixed force of Su-34(48) and Su-35s(24). Both numbers without weapon costs, pure delivery systems.

Key enabler for J-10c here is new pylons - before that it was a very mediocre strike aircraft. Now, it's totally OK to fly with 2 PL-15(center, instead of supersonic 800L tank), 2 subsonic tanks(2x1600), 2 multipositional bomb pylons, EW pod.
Like this:

 

[by78]

The article on India-Pakistan air conflict in this month's Air Forces Monthly.

 

[FirebirdFan]

I think it's perfectly believable for PL-15Es to have hit at between 160km and 190km as AVIC stated in their materials the range of PL-15E is >145km.

More confirmation of KLJ-10 designation as well as J-10CE's ability to work with Saab Erieye is very nice too, although I think we were pretty sure in recent past.