US can’t and wouldn’t field all or even most of its F35 in the Asia Pacific. Furthermore, getting an equivalent amount of J-20 as F-35 would be pretty cost prohibitive, and you’d probably be underutilizing their capabilities for most missions that don’t involve stealthy strike or air superiority.
J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII
- Thread starter siegecrossbow
- Start date
- Status
i agree, they wont station everything in Asia and i surely agree PLA does not need same amount of J20 as F35.
But you mindset is still positioning 5gen as day-1 weapon. This mindset makes some sense when PLA is up against some mid level power such as India or Japan, however in high end conflict you cannot expect to crush the enemy air power in a short period of time, then move on to use non-stealth a/c to carry out strike missions. It will always be a highly contested space filled with 5th gen, where 4th gen a/c simply does not have much survivability.
Some time ago i ran some simulation with CMO - not the most authoritative war game simulator i admit.
First if you run 24*J20 against 24*F22/F35, you more or less get a 1:1 result.
Then you throw in 24*J16 on the PLA side, guess what happened? nothing. Basically those J16 are just collaterals damages. With all J16 shot down in the process, not much impact at all to the exchange rate of J20 vs F22/F35, and if you add F15 to the US side, same thing.
J-16’s wouldn’t be used in the frontline in air superiority missions in the first place. They’d be employed at standoff range to knock out opposing support assets like tankers and AWACS. Those sorts of simulations don’t account for complex network warfare tactics.
You also need some sort of strike fighter for CAP assets in support of ground forces, or for standoff strikes against naval assets. You shouldn’t be spending 2-3x what a J-16 costs on J-20s for those kinds of missions.
My reply is given in a different thread:
Future PLA combat aircraft composition
It isn’t throwing money away to produce more J-16s. China still needs to replace hundreds of legacy J-7/8s and J-16 is better suited for multi role operations due to larger payload. Fifth gen are also expensive to operate. Considering that among China’s neighbors, only South Korea and Japan are...
www.sinodefenceforum.com
Looks like J-20 is showing performance characteristics also seen in F-22 which also beat 4th gen planes 15-0 or something. J-20 beat 4th Gen planes 17-0. China needs to build up J-20 numbers as quickly as possible. But it seems they are not mass producing J-20 until they get WS-15 ready, which will unleash j-20's full capabilities.
Any news on when WS-15 will be ready?
According to Liu Daxiang, the WS-15 is going to receive its design certification between 2021 to 2023.
The two fighters are mutually compatible, J-20 is primarily designed as an aerial superiority stealth fighter to deal with opposing stealth fighter and to knock down enemy AEW planes, while J-16 is a multi-purpose fighter that can engage aerial, ground, and naval targets. After J-20 has cleared out the skies, J-16 would follow in and clear out other enemy targets.
lol it feels so weird hearing both sides (US and China) constantly speak of a theoretical conventional naval/air war like nukes don't exist anymore. But I'm digressing here so ignore me.
I thought CMO was as good as it gets? Results wouldn't be taken as reality but pretty OK representation.
- Status