J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VIII

[ENTED64]

You know, it's almost alarming to see how the flagship Western fighter (The F-35) still flying with GaA radars and struggling to adopt even GaN-on-Si whereas Chinese stealth jets are flying en masse with GaN-SiCs and are probably gonna switch to Diamond substrates post-2030 too. This is more than a generation's gap and no matter how I look at it I cannot for the life of me understand how this even happened. Now, to be fair the actual backend processing and signal tech is still probably on par with the Chinese counterparts (or maybe not? I'm not entirely sure since obviously no one would ever know this and those who'd know will never say it), but that still doesn't erase the fact that they're behind in such a key area and struggling to advance. Does anyone know how this happened? I mean we hear the major stories for the Chinese aviation industry about how they went from struggling with the WS-10s in the 2000s to now mass-producing WS-15s and WS-19s but we've never (at least to my knowledge) heard about how they advanced so much in these less "fancy" but arguably just as important areas of technology especially when it comes to flagship fighters like the J-20 (I still remember when the prototype was first shown in 2011 I believe, and the Western media hacks calling it a "3rd gen" aircraft with a fancy body or some even going as far as saying that it couldn't even fly).

Radar and semiconductor technology usually follow civilian RF engineering and semiconductor expertise. If you look at a country's civilian sector you can usually get a ball park estimate of how capable the radars and such are. In this respect China has been on the leading edge for a while now so it makes sense that PLAAF has benefited from this and is now outputting excellent radars. As for the US, while the radar and semiconductor technology sectors are not bad, they are no longer well ahead of China and may even be behind in some areas and combined with defense contracting issues and inefficiencies means they haven't held up well. It's hardly like fighter radars are the only thing the US MIC has struggled to put out modern versions of at acceptable cost and time.

 

[jospence]

Radar and semiconductor technology usually follow civilian RF engineering and semiconductor expertise. If you look at a country's civilian sector you can usually get a ball park estimate of how capable the radars and such are. In this respect China has been on the leading edge for a while now so it makes sense that PLAAF has benefited from this and is now outputting excellent radars. As for the US, while the radar and semiconductor technology sectors are not bad, they are no longer well ahead of China and may even be behind in some areas and combined with defense contracting issues and inefficiencies means they haven't held up well. It's hardly like fighter radars are the only thing the US MIC has struggled to put out modern versions of at acceptable cost and time.

The biggest U.S. problem isn't so much the upper echelon of their semiconductor and radar knowledge, it's the fact the U.S. simply doesn't have the manufacturing capacity to build them at scale in a way anywhere close to China. This gives China a huge edge in terms of how quickly it can mature the technologies it develops, how much it can experiment with trial and error to resolve problems, and in general there are a lot of benefits to building robust civilian supply chains for components that can be used for military hardware in the future. It's all well and good if MIT, Georgia Tech, or the University of Oklahoma can do some groundbreaking university research, but it doesn't mean anything if it can't be applied on a mass scale.

 

[Deino]

Guys! Are we still in the J-20 thread?

Since several posts there are endless replies to the radar - indeed relevant - but now general issues and comments on telecommunication, economics and so on!

Let us stick to the topic, at least as long as it is indeed relevant to the J-20 and other side-aspects can be discussed in the radar-thread or otherwise!

 

[karaway]

CCTV confirmed the reports that the J-20 had driven away the F-35.
It also implicitly mentioned that J16 had carried out the mission of expelling the F22.

 

[siegecrossbow]

View attachment 170069
CCTV confirmed the reports that the J-20 had driven away the F-35.View attachment 170071
It also implicitly mentioned that J16 had carried out the mission of expelling the F22.

ETC should make their museums available for ordinary citizens. So much goodies there waiting for a wider audience.

 

[talonn]

View attachment 170069
CCTV confirmed the reports that the J-20 had driven away the F-35.View attachment 170071
It also implicitly mentioned that J16 had carried out the mission of expelling the F22.

Did they release video recording of the engagement?

 

[siegecrossbow]

Did they release video recording of the engagement?

No. But rest assured they are on file in military museums for each squadron that performed the intercept.

 

[latenlazy]

No. But rest assured they are on file in military museums for each squadron that performed the intercept.

One day we will get the tapes. Could be quite a while though if the uhh “right” circumstances don’t come around.

 

[siegecrossbow]

One day we will get the tapes. Could be quite a while though if the uhh “right” circumstances don’t come around.

Best bet would probably be a CCTV 7 documentary that no one but hardcore Chinese military enthusiasts watches 25 years down the road.

 

[latenlazy]

Best bet would probably be a CCTV 7 documentary that no one but hardcore Chinese military enthusiasts watches 25 years down the road.

Last minute propaganda fodder in a looming war scenario to warn normie Americans they *really* shouldn’t want this fight is the only possibility of an earlier release heh.