J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VIII

[antiterror13]

Imagine if China didn't have J-20 .... how wild and aggressive the US military in the South China Sea and around Taiwan

Thats we would call .... "from position of strength" from the US side

 

[SanWenYu]

This might have been shared.

Shilao and Yankee said that there are now 几百架 (i.e. more than 200) J20. In Chinese, 几百 (a few hundreds) means a number between 200 and 999.

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[latenlazy]

Please elaborate.

1) They explicitly said TVC is coming and that is not a question.
2) The discussion about how the J-20's mission profile requires an assumption of operating in unsupported situations was in the context of how CAC built a lot of system redundancies into the airframe, in fact *too many redundancies*, and how subsequent production batches, in consultation with operator feedback, have refined exactly what kinds of redundancies should be deprecated or added in, or else improved on the efficiency of those redundancies.
3) They explained the reason TVC isn't being tested on this current airframe is because the thrust increase itself is such a gain in capability they want to test what the plane can do with the new engine first before figuring out exactly what kinds of optimizations and requirements they want with TVC.
4) They *never* said systems redundancies were more important than TVC. The systems redundanchy conversation and the TVC were two completely seperate threads of discussion.
5) They *never* mentioned TVC only coming once subsystems became lighter weight or after a higher thrust variant of the WS-15.
6) They didn't say anything about system redundancy causing difficult maintenance. The "difficulty" was that it made production less efficient.

 

[nelBi]

It's been 5 years since J-10B TVC demonstrator performed on 2018 Zhuhai Airshow.
There are a lot of video on YouTube for you to check out how good the TVC is on J-10B TVC.
So I don't think TVC itself is a problem.
On the Yankee & Shilao member only podcast, they mentioned TVC is not a priority on J-20A as the main mission profile is to venture into distant hostile air space on its own with little support.
Thus sensor capability and subsystem redundancy in case of battle damage or malfunction are more important than TVC.
They're not expecting TVC on J-20 until subsystems become lighter weight or more thrust on WS-15 variants.
A lot of time on the podcast covering how redundancy making early batch J-20 a hassle for maintenance guy and how job become much easier in the later batch unit due to continuously improvement over the production.
The main inspiration for redundancy focus design came from the half wing F-15 able to RTB safely.

Until TVC is actually installed on a real production fighter I think it's unfair to say China has "mastered" fifth Gen engines. Zyun is right, "Mastering" is a better way to put it.

 

[TK3600]

Until TVC is actually installed on a real production fighter I think it's unfair to say China has "mastered" fifth Gen engines. Zyun is right, "Mastering" is a better way to put it.

TVC do not matter if performance match it. It is called super maneuverbility.

I could also say US never mastered 5th gen because no cannards on production aircraft. That is simply arbitrary.

 

[Blitzo]

Can we say China has now mastered 5th gen jet engines? Or is it still not yet confirmed via official photos?

I would say Mastering, not mastered yet. After J20 with WS15 in serial production for at least 1 year, then it’s OK to say mastered. To be on the safer side, I would wait until a new variant of WS15 comes out.

I would say no. Supercruise has not be confirmed although we all suspect that is in the pipeline. thrust vectoring is under the same status as under development. It's a great step but we are far from equal to our competitors.

Until TVC is actually installed on a real production fighter I think it's unfair to say China has "mastered" fifth Gen engines. Zyun is right, "Mastering" is a better way to put it.

TVC do not matter if performance match it. It is called super maneuverbility.

I could also say US never mastered 5th gen because no cannards on production aircraft. That is simply arbitrary.

To all of the above -- mastery is a bad word and should not be avoided. It's charged with assumptions and vague, in the same way that words like "innovation" are.

TVC is not a prerequisite of a "5th generation engine".



The maiden flight of J-20 with two WS-15s (which should be mostly production representative prototypes in most ways, as opposed to a demonstrator like YF119/YF120 that still needs substantial revision), is a major milestone in the pursuit of 5th generation engines, but there are still a few milestones left to go until they can are mature, in production and in service.

 

[latenlazy]

To all of the above -- mastery is a bad word and should not be avoided. It's charged with assumptions and vague, in the same way that words like "innovation" are.

TVC is not a prerequisite of a "5th generation engine".



The maiden flight of J-20 with two WS-15s (which should be mostly production representative prototypes in most ways, as opposed to a demonstrator like YF119/YF120 that still needs substantial revision), is a major milestone in the pursuit of 5th generation engines, but there are still a few milestones left to go until they can are mature, in production and in service.

I’ll add that “mastery” is kind of a pointless qualifier. The tech level is the tech level and regardless of how much China has caught up these tech contests don’t stop just because China has finally converged.

 

[gelgoog]

The F-35 has neither TVC nor supercruise. I guess the F-35 is not 5th generation. And neither is its engine. /sarc

While I would reserve my comments on the WS-15 until it enters service in numbers and we know more about it, I doubt they would put it in service if it was worse than the WS-10C, which is fairly capable as it is.

I assume all J-20Bs will come with this engine.

 

[henrik]

The F-35 has neither TVC nor supercruise. I guess the F-35 is not 5th generation. And neither is its engine. /sarc

While I would reserve my comments on the WS-15 until it enters service in numbers and we know more about it, I doubt they would put it in service if it was worse than the WS-10C, which is fairly capable as it is.

I assume all J-20Bs will come with this engine.

Just by looking at the number of important people witnessing the flight with WS-15 engines, I guess they are very satisfied with the current version.

 

[Kich]

TVC will induce such a unique characteristics to a craft that I wonder if those J-20s will become J-20C or some other acronym.