plawolf
Lieutenant General
PLAN does not need to shove 20+ J-20 on to a carrier. They can limit J-20 to about 10 - 12 and fill the rest with FC-31(J-35?).
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Why the need for J31 at all if you have a naval J20? J15s would make better bomb trucks, and they could beef up numbers of deep strike assets with stealthy strike UCAVs.
If a target is so well protected and/or deep in enemy territory you need stealth strikers to go after it, better those stealth strikers are unmanned as that sounds like a very high risk mission.
But TBH, I don't think the PLAAF cares as much about pure strike capability of its carriers as much as the US and western navies do.
China's non-intervention policy means its very unlikely they would need to bomb hopelessly outmatched 3rd world nations all over the world.
Their carriers are primarily for fleet defence and protection of sea based lines of communications. For those missions, air dominance and anti-shipping are the missions most important for its air arm.
The J20 will have air Dom covered, but for anti-shipping, a J31 would be little better than a J15 since it won't be able to fit AShM of any worth in its bays, and hanging big AShMs externally will destroy any stealth benefit from the airframe design.
J15s OTOH, would be able to carrier more, bigger AShMs further.