Hmm, PLA really can’t employ its air doctrine the same way without a dedicated EW aircraft like J15DT. And for the foreseeable future, this is the only option available to them.
J-15 carrier fighter thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
PLA is many different things though. PLAAF, which is clearly tilting towards offensive stance, is one. There, J-16D prominence (as key multiplier) is indeed reality. Though it isn't absolute, and it's this way exactly because PLAAF fleet is established. Take small PLAAF detachment away from mainland, and you'd see that J-16D is again not the aircraft type you begin from...
PLANAF, which right now has just two operational carriers for a whole huge fleet, is another.
Basic requirements for naval aviation, in order of priority, are:
1, persistent undeniable reconnaissance
2, maritime strike,
3, force protection
4, land strike
(2-3 is generalized, and for weaker navair arm 3>2; PLANAF is a weaker naval air arm).
Furthermore, there's a growing question of carrier ASW, which is also part of that 3-2.
EW aircraft supports offensive missions the most, less so defensive ones, and supports reconnaissance the least.
Priority for PLAN, currently, is it's two fighter types, closely followed by (individually more important) deck AEW and heavy ASW helicopters.
EW are after that, together with more dedicated future refueling capability.
More so, because PLAN won't be able to truly establish diverse airwings for a few years to come.
003 will be first unlimited PLAN carrier.001s are constrained by space and aircraft consumables, 076, even if considered, is probably unable to operate J-15 to a reasonable extent. 003 is ultimately a single ship for years to come. It is in only one place at best; it also can be in maintenance, it can be sunk.
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J-15 with its subsonic, small range anti-ship missiles is supposed to Maritime strike?
That seems pointless to be honest.
If J-15 was supposed to do anti-ship, China would't be investing so much on ship-based anti-ship missiles that are far more superior, longer ranged, faster (super and hypersonic).
I would say the role of the J-15 or carrier aviation in the anti-ship domain will be to act as the sensor node to the hypersonic missiles.
The main role that carrier aviation like J-15 will play is to act as the top-down radar so that Earth's curvature problem can be solved for ship based radar. J-15 can act as the Sensor while HQ-9 strike attacking planes and missiles. J-15 can also act as the sensor whole YJ missiles attack the ships.
J-15 working as a cheap Bomber on land missions is doable but it depends on if Chinese carrier fleet can achieve air dominance. That is only possible against very weak countries. Against any decent Air force country like Japan or Taiwan, Carrier aviation can only act as distraction while Ship based missile do the actual strikes. If they venture too deep, they will be shot down.
J-15(without letters) established carrier air arm in the first place, for the first time in PLAN history allowing it to:
Have any survivable/persistent OtH reconnaissance and below horizon intercept. It's undoubtedly the single most important PLAN aircraft of the past decade.
It's also reconnaissance:strike, though that is indeed secondary. Though I wouldn't underestimate importance of this secondary capability. Russia now can't win Black sea, a conflict fought deep within radius of it's far superior, longer ranged, faster supersonic and hypersonic missiles.
J-15T and J-35 are a different story. Unlikely they are limited to that ASCM.
Every Gorshkov-styled navy does that, a direction China now departs from. You're paying far too much attention to the final effector, and where it comes from. For all intents, it can come even from mainland, in suborbital delivery. Closing the targeting loop is only the last part of the maritime strike, arguably the hardest to break no matter which weapon is used.
And far more superior, longer ranged and faster missiles here aren't a sign of strength. They're a sign of desperation, a way to bet on getting something from patchy information flow.
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Russia dominates the black-sea with its ground based planes. Is there any ship that Russia cannot destroy within the black sea if it wanted to? No.
Its a different problem that Russian ships are also suffering from Ukrainian attacks cause again Ukraine can use its ground to launch attacks. Ground will always win against ships in an all out war scenario. That sea is so small that Ukraine can use ground based missiles, drones and mines to destroy Russian Ships.
Reliance on Superior longer ranged missile is not because its a sign of weakness, its a sign of technolical trends.
Air defense is simply too strong these days. Planes are too vulnerable. A plane simply cannot beat modern AI based radar with stealth. A plane cannot beat modern Anti-Air missiles due to superior Radar and speed on the missiles. So, if a plane gets too close to a modern carrier strike group, it will be shot down, period.
Gone are the days of WW2 when Planes came close to ships and dropped bombs. I would say that was the peak power of carriers and its power has only gone down since then due to the power of Ship-radar and Air defense missiles.
Now the situation is so lopsided that even stealth planes will struggle to come close to a proper carrier fleet with destroyers and cruisers. So, I don't think its realistic to expect planes to act as a maritime striker. Yes, If China develops YJ-21/Yj-12 level missiles that can be carrier by J-15 then that could be the way to go, but we haven't seen that so far.
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A very fresh trend, late 1950s one.
Still trending.
Speed isn't the only way to cut reaction time, nor often it is the best one.Though nothing says that bay generation of Chinese air to surface means doesn't include those in any case.
If memory serves me right, the most recent case of huge campaign of gravity/glide bombing of well defended installations is barely one month old.
At least some SAMs involved were more modern than your average AEGIS.
And while intermediate carriers are just more efficient means of bringing warheads, who's the shooter is beyond the point anyway.
Out of entire targeting loop, penetration of final defense against SAMs is a very small part, applicable to a rather small subset of ships afloat.
Out of entire set of tasks of naval air arm, it's smaller still.
so your premise is that EW aircraft for PLAN is not important because they only have 2 carriers.
When in reality they clearly are building a lot more. PLAN leadership has to plan for many years ahead.
You can believe what you want, but SAC developed a J-15S that we have never seen operating on a carrier just so that it can develop J-15DH and now J-15DT. That's a lot of investment for something that's apparently not very important.
Guancha guys also talked extensively about all the testing they had to do to get J-15D into service. PLA considers dedicated EW aircraft as true force multipliers and it has approached J-15DT exactly this way.
~3-5 years in the future, when the second 003 hull (or first 004) will reach operational status it will start turning true.
But not now.
Right now PLAN has 2 operational carriers, 6 flat decks overall, +2 more working up. Out of all these, just 1 unfinished ship will get to fully employ carrier EW; 001s are hard capped to 14 aircraft in the air by spotting limitations. You can include them (both into strike packages and doing their own supression missions in interest of other operations), but there's only so much you can do with this number of aircraft.
And it is a force multiplier. But neither primary capability nor the most important aircraft on the deck.
Remove it, and carrier air will keep it's current functionality almost perfectly.
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Is it a separate cn series for J-15DT, so #7 of batch 1?
No, the batches of the original J-15, J-15S and J-15D had a different number for each Batch given by the first two digits and two more digits denoting the aircraft within this batch … all J-15T have a different system as it seems with the first two digits denoting the batch but a summarised number of aircraft built.
So cn. 0107 means 7th aircraft within batch 01, whereas cn. 04070 means most likely 70th aircraft altogether built as a batch 04 aircraft.