J-15 carrier fighter thread

[Gloire_bb]

There is a difference between "underpowered" versus "more thrust would be better".

In the case of Su-33/J-15, comparing their use of Al-31/WS-10 respectively with F-14A and TF30 is a bit of an odd proposition.

...as i said, any >18t flanker(which is over 10% and sometimes 20% over original) with AL-31FN engines is underpowered. More so in the naval context.
There's ultimately a big reason why Russia rn advertises plug in 14.5t engine into the old 905mm slot for land applications (where failure doesn't send you under the carrier) - as this lack of power is acutely felt even in land operations. Most heavier flankers, for example, can't go over M=1.8 due to drag. Which should tell a thing, as vanilla was good for M=2.35, and that was limited by the canopy, rather than engines.

My point is, if AL-31 was chosen over WS-10H in these circumstances in a naval context, WS-10H was (hopefully in past tense) indeed TF-30 level bad.

 

[Blitzo]

...as i said, any >18t flanker(which is over 10% and sometimes 20% over original) with AL-31FN engines is underpowered. More so in the naval context.
There's ultimately a big reason why Russia rn advertises plug in 14.5t engine into the old 905mm slot for land applications (where failure doesn't send you under the carrier) - as this lack of power is acutely felt even in land operations. Most heavier flankers, for example, can't go over M=1.8 due to drag. Which should tell a thing, as vanilla was good for M=2.35, and that was limited by the canopy, rather than engines.

For the purposes of discussion, sure let's go with that... but

My point is, if AL-31 was chosen over WS-10H in these circumstances in a naval context, WS-10H was (hopefully in past tense) indeed TF-30 level bad.

??? how does this make sense?

The whole point of my last few posts has been that the PLAN prioritizes maturity over performance for their engine choices due to being conservative.
WS-10H could have WS-15 levels of performance, but if it was deemed insufficiently mature then they would still prefer to go with the Al-31 due to maturity.

 

[latenlazy]

There's no more powerful naval AL-31 available.
I.e. it probably can be done without much problem, but China would be billing the development fee; the choice was made in favour of WS-10H, but it takes time.

China has already billed the development fee for sustaining and improving their legacy stock of AL-31s for J-10As, J-11As, and LRIP J-20s. Not sure why it’s so hard to accept that the PLAN simply didn’t think it was worth their while to rebuild their entire engine logistics tail for a fighter that isn’t going to be their planned mainstay.