J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VIII

Deino

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
They hit that in 2023. Their estimate is behind by one year.

When he toon over the job as the China-related journalist for Jane’s from my former boss and me I tried to get in contact… unfortunately with no true success!

So what should I say, since then the reports from Jane’s are like they are since then … written by an Indian responsible for the China news section! Do I need to say more?
 
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lcloo

Captain
If USAF can buy an F-35A for US$82.5 million in 2024, a mass production J20's 2024 cost would be substantially below $80 million. AVIC is owned by Chinese government, they will not charge a subtantial profit margin like Lockheed Martin.

So a J20 probably cost around $70 million or less, or even as low as $50 million, we can only guess.
 

Stealthflanker

Senior Member
Registered Member
Gotta see the learning curve tho. aircraft production without much changes can easily attain 80% while those subject to many changes in every batch of productions (e.g new feature or changes introduced every 50-100 aircrafts or less) The effect of learning curve might be less felt (e.g production cost curve of 95%) Also the fiscal year as USD have inflation.

You can calculate those things here :

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One assume the cost would be 110 M USD FY 2014 for those LRIP's If 80% learning curve is achievable then the 200th aircraft will cost as low as 19.98 M USD FY 2014 or 26.6 M USD FY 2024.

If there are changes, 95% learning curve can be assumed, same calculation would give 74 M USD FY 2014 or 98 M FY 2024 of today.

The better estimate tho must work based on RMB.
 

Wrought

Junior Member
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Came across this article:
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that bemoans the current state of the F135 engine in the F35 family vs the impending intro of the WZ15 into J20. It is amusing to me that just about a decade ago the common refrain in the Western establishment was whether China can make a fighter jet engine.

The problem in this case is not the engine (F135 is excellent, for the record). It's the conscious design tradeoff made by USAF when they transitioned from an air superiority platform (F-22) to a multirole one with emphasis on strike (F-35). It can only go supersonic for short bursts because it was
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.

For the F-35, as opposed to the F-22 where supersonic flight is baked into its tactics, the ability to fly supersonic is more of a “break glass in case of emergency” feature, said Bryan Clark, an analyst with the Hudson Institute and a retired naval officer.

“Supersonic flight is not a big feature of the F-35,” Clark said. “It’s capable of it, but when you talk to F-35 pilots, they’ll say they’d fly supersonic in such limited times and cases that — while having the ability is nice because you never know when you are going to need to run away from something very fast — it’s just not a main feature for their tactics.”

The problem is wanting a multirole platform to outperform an air superiority one at air superiority. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
 
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