Re-posting some lost images from a few years ago.
Now that you get a really good close up of the J-15, the workmanship on these planes are outstanding compared to the relatively bumpy and wavy Russian supplied Flankers.
J-15 carrier fighter thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
Now that you get a really good close up of the J-15, the workmanship on these planes are outstanding compared to the relatively bumpy and wavy Russian supplied Flankers.
The fundamental airframe is the same, but J-15 is lighter due to the use of more composite materials, and also the Chinese avionics onboard J-15 is at least 20 years more advanced than the one on Su-33.
Lighter by a very small amount. Avionics do not change range/payload ratio or kinematic performance. In these respects the J-15 represents a smaller evolutionary step from the original Su-33 of 30 years ago than most 4th generation fighter models can expect to take during their first 30 years of service lives.
Avionics are still quite important since communication is key in a war situation. The ease to communicate with teammates and to identify the enemy means a lot.
Overall it's a small evolutionary step from the original Su-33, that I largely agree, but it still fulfills the current needs of the Chinese navy. And I think they already have plans for their next generation carrier fighters, which will most likely be a derivative of the FC-31.
And with the steam catapult on the 002 carrier and the electromagnetic catapult on the 003 carrier, J-15 would reach its full potential.
Wait. When did the Chinese say they are gonna install a steam catapult on the Shandong carrier?
Well, it'd be fair to give them time to gain experience.
I've posted su-27kub here before, Sukhoi actually went through very significant changes to the airframe after obtaining data from actual training&ops from 1990s.(spoiler alert: su-33, cool as it is, is actually quite a shitty carrier plane, and t-10k is an even lower starting point than actual 33). Experience matters: you may be highly experienced engineer, scientist and all, but you can't foresee everything. Neither can the military foresee everything in how exactly they're going to operate the aircraft and what do they want.
Chinese carrier operations have started just a few years ago, so Shenyang only relatively recently started obtaining fully relevant feedback. Time isn't ripe yet.
Not the Shandong carrier that is currently in service, but the 002 carrier that is still been built. And the 003 one would have an electromagnetic catapult, from what I've heard.
I could be wrong about the codes though, the naming codes of the Chinese army have always been quite confusing for me.
I see. For the Shandong carrier, its designation code is 002. It used to be called 001a by observers until Xinhua (I think) reported it as 002. As for the 003’s catapult, it’s hard to say obviously, but there were a lot of rumors that the 003 would have the emals instead of the steam catapult.
