J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII

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crash8pilot

Junior Member
Registered Member
What's with the correlation often made between Max thrust and supercruise?
Things like these are not very forthcoming for a website named "Flight Global".

Isn't supercruise related to dry thrust?
Engines are my kryptonite, I don't know much about them other than the concept of "suck squeeze bang blow" - I'm just acting as a messenger relaying the article Deino posted.

Speaking from my own experience as an airline pilot though, Flight Global is a trusted and forthcoming source of information when it comes to commercial aviation. They publish a monthly magazine that's widely distributed and read by pilots, executives within the airline industry, and aviation enthusiasts. I've been reading it for years and its a great way to keep in touch with what's happening on civil aviation, especially when I was prepping for pilot assessments with airlines.

Military wise though... I'm not so sure about Flight Global's objectivity. I particularly disagree with the conclusion of the article - I'd argue that the US and NATO counterparts also face the two similar "weaknesses" in terms of logistics/maintenance and strategy when fielding fifth-gen F-22s and F-35s. While US DoD has military installations across the globe, not every one of them is equipped/suitable to forward deploy Raptors and F-35s. That's why the USAF have been testing the concept of being able to forward deploy anywhere around the world within 48-hours a four-ship of F-22s alongside a C-17 loaded with additional pilots, maintenance crew, and parts/spares (a concept I could picture the PLAAF doing with a Y-20 and a couple J-20s). DoD also has USAF pilots (that much rather be flying) where their sole job is to prepare and present powerpoint presentations to strategists and generals how fifth-gen fighters are actually supposed to be fielded, and therefore suffer the same "weakness" of "not capable of dealing with modern warfare".
 

Gatekeeper

Brigadier
Registered Member
Ten years after its maiden flight, the Chengdu J-20 remains the world’s most enigmatic fighter.

On 11 January 2011, then-US defence secretary Robert Gates sat down with former Chinese premier Hu Jintao in Beijing to discuss ways to improve defence ties. Just hours before, images of the maiden flight of the J-20 had flooded China’s internet.

“This is about as big a ‘f*** you’ as you can get,” an aide told Gates, according to the former defence secretary’s memoir.

Gates’s team considered calling the high level meeting off altogether. Instead, he asked Hu directly about the test. The Chinese civilians in the room seemed shocked by the query. Apparently they were unaware of the milestone.

After several minutes of discussion in Mandarin among the Chinese delegation, Hu finally told Gates that the roll-out had been a “previously scheduled scientific test”. Gates, for his part, believed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would have given him a different explanation.

In this dramatic fashion the J-20 entered the fighter world’s central stage, where it has remained over the last decade. Aviation experts and amateurs alike pore over every photo that emerges of the iconic, twin-tailed type, noting fuselage numbers, design tweaks, and most importantly the J-20’s all-important engines. No other fighter has garnered the same aura of mystery. By comparison, the successes and failures of the Lockheed Martin F-35 are an open book.

In those early days of the J-20, what intelligence there was came from aviation enthusiasts near the Chengdu airfield where the type is produced. Video and photographs of matt black J-20s were frequently posted on China’s internet. Over the years, however, the steady stream of imagery and video from Chengdu has fallen off. This potentially relates to a tighter security environment in China in the era of Xi Jinping. Still, there are plenty of sightings from air bases around China and in satellite photos. The J-20 has also made some public appearances.

The first such appearance occurred in November 2016, when a pair of People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) J-20s conducted a brief flypast at the opening ceremony of Airshow China in Zhuhai. Their fleeting appearance was a major sensation, but in the vast AVIC display inside the show, there was not an image or model of the J-20 to be found. When asked about the J-20, AVIC officials, never prone to sharing much detail, frowned and looked away uncomfortably.

Two years later, four J-20s participated in the flying display. While the performance highlighted the type’s large size, there was a lack of aggressive manoeuvres, such as the falling leaf and tight vertical loops. At air shows, such manoeuvres are routine for the fighter to which, rightly or wrongly, the J-20 is most often compared: the US Air Force’s Lockheed F-22.


The 2018 Zhuhai show saw another first, with AVIC distributing a J-20 flyer with this brief description: “The J-20 developed independently by China is a heavy stealth fourth-generation fighter (aka fifth-generation internationally), renowned for its dominant role of medium and long-range air combat and excellent capability in ground and marine precision strike.”

But apart from the rare statement in China’s nationalist Global Times newspaper, there is little acknowledgment about the type.

Rod Lee, research director at the China Aerospace Studies Institute, believes there are three primary mission sets for the J-20. The first is destroying high-value airborne assets.

“The combination of a large combat radius with long-range air-to-air missiles and low visibility should enable J-20s to prosecute [airborne early warning and control/intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR)] aircraft, as well as tankers. Conceptually, the PLAAF talks about rolling back these high-value targets as being a major part of establishing air superiority. This is backed by semi-authoritative sources in AVIC, who suggest that J-20 is a platform that can ‘pierce the net’ for other aircraft.”

Supplemental mission sets include launching anti-radiation missiles and air-to-ground munitions at surface targets. The PLAAF believes stealthy aircraft are essential for prosecuting key nodes owing to the element of surprise. The last mission set Lee suggests is destroying other fighters in air-to-air engagements.

“The PLAAF does indeed like to tout the J-20’s manoeuvrability and air-to-air combat performance,” he says. “Given this, the PLAAF almost certainly will use the J-20 as an air superiority fighter against other fighters. But the PLA de-emphasises the importance of attrition warfare and instead advocates a ‘systems destruction’ approach. Killing individual adversary fighters (even in large numbers) is not as useful as killing [high value airborne assets] and key ground targets.”

That said, the J-20 fleet is still small. Andreas Rupprecht is an avid observer of Chinese military aviation, and author of Modern Chinese Warplanes, an authoritative guide to mainland airpower. According to Rupprecht, some estimates of J-20 strength put the overall number at 40-60 airframes, but he notes that only 20 examples have been confirmed.

Rupprecht highlights some of the frustrations in tracking the secretive J-20 programme. He points out that many observers believe prototypes and low-rate initial production (LRIP) examples powered by Russia’s Saturn AL-31FN engine should bear the simple J-20 designation, and later aircraft powered by the indigenous WS-10C Taihang should be designated J-20A. In their view, the J-20B designation should be reserved for J-20s powered with the advanced WS-15 Emei.

Rupprecht disagrees with this, basing his opinion on the designations used for China’s J-10 family. He feels prototypes should be designated J-20, while J-20A refers to LRIP examples powered by AL-31FNs, and J-20B to examples powered by WS-10Cs. If J-20 designations hold true to the protocol used with the J-10, he feels that WS-15-powered examples should actually be designated J-20C.

Based on photos of recent J-20s, he believes that since mid-2019 all factory-fresh examples use WS-10C engines, and that a WS-15-powered aircraft is in testing. He reckons that the WS-15 will take until 2025 to reach operational service, but that the WS-10C is nonetheless a major breakthrough in that it erodes Chinese dependence on Russian engines – sawtooth exhaust feathers distinguish the WS-10C from the Russian engine. As for the WS-15, estimates suggest that its maximum thrust will be 18.4t (180kN), potentially enabling ‘supercruise’, or the ability to fly at supersonic speed without maintaining the use of afterburners.

It is good and comforting to know our Deino is such authority on this, that even flightglobal acknowledged this in their publication.
 

silentlurker

Junior Member
Registered Member
What's with the correlation often made between Max thrust and supercruise?
Things like these are not very forthcoming for a website named "Flight Global".

Isn't supercruise related to dry thrust?
Yep, seems like they messed up the AB thrust for dry thrust.
 

weig2000

Captain
Ten years after its maiden flight, the Chengdu J-20 remains the world’s most enigmatic fighter.

On 11 January 2011, then-US defence secretary Robert Gates sat down with former Chinese premier Hu Jintao in Beijing to discuss ways to improve defence ties. Just hours before, images of the maiden flight of the J-20 had flooded China’s internet.

“This is about as big a ‘f*** you’ as you can get,” an aide told Gates, according to the former defence secretary’s memoir.

Gates’s team considered calling the high level meeting off altogether. Instead, he asked Hu directly about the test. The Chinese civilians in the room seemed shocked by the query. Apparently they were unaware of the milestone.

After several minutes of discussion in Mandarin among the Chinese delegation, Hu finally told Gates that the roll-out had been a “previously scheduled scientific test”. Gates, for his part, believed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would have given him a different explanation.

I have always been amazed by how self-serving and feeling entitled Mr. Gates and these Americans were to make the connection between their visit to China and the first flight of J-20. Even 10 years ago, China was a great power and there were thousands of important things going on in China even if we were only to limit it to the defense sector. Why would PLA make way for Gates and his entourage with one of their more important developing program schedule? Why did he think China would even bother to go through all the trouble of coordinating the activities around the flight to coincident with his visit? Sure, Mr. Gates had said China would not be able to debut her flight stealth fighter until 2025 or later; he might had felt embarrassed when hearing the news of J-20 taking the first flight. In that case, it would be him who should be ashamed and might have been gracious enough to congratulate the Chinese if this thing bothered him so much, or simply shut up. Instead, his people were thinking of calling off the meeting with the Chinese President because of this?!

This incident vividly tells you what these Americans think of themselves and what they think of Chinese. This happened ten years ago, but even today the same patterns occur to different things in similar ways.
 

Atomicfrog

Major
Registered Member
What's with the correlation often made between Max thrust and supercruise?
Things like these are not very forthcoming for a website named "Flight Global".

Isn't supercruise related to dry thrust?
It help a lot to have a high dry thrust, but aerodynamic efficiency is way more important. Take the Concorde for example, It had only a Thrust/weight ratio of 0.373...but is engine had 140 kN thrust dry and 169.3 kN with afterburner. It was supercruising most of the time to cross the atlantic.

Having a high thrust/weight ratio doesnt mean much but help supercruising abilities.
 

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
Rupprecht disagrees with this, basing his opinion on the designations used for China’s J-10 family. He feels prototypes should be designated J-20, while J-20A refers to LRIP examples powered by AL-31FNs, and J-20B to examples powered by WS-10Cs. If J-20 designations hold true to the protocol used with the J-10, he feels that WS-15-powered examples should actually be designated J-20C.

@Deino,

Do you believe the WS-15 equipped j-20 should be called J-20C?

My issue with such a belief is that if it were the case then the WS-10 equipped J-20s would be dubbed J-20Bs by all of the Chinese PLA watchers but this isn't the case.


More importantly, I don't think we have any reason to expect a mere engine change in the same thrust category to lend itself to having a whole new variant name when there is little else different.
For example, the first batch of J-11B were powered by Al-31s while the rest were powered by WS-10s, but they are all still called J-11B.

Similarly, J-10Cs equipped with Al-31s and WS-10s will also both still be known as J-10C despite having different engines.

I would be surprised if that wasn't also the case for J-20, i.e. I think either the Al-31 and WS-10 equipped J-20s are called J-20 and J-20A respectively, or where both are just called J-20A.

But I cannot see any logical reason why the WS-10 powered aircraft would be J-20B.
 

taxiya

Brigadier
Registered Member
I think the "ABC" variant is ultimately designation from PLAF requirement/specification, not CAC's choice. PLAF put forward a list of requirement for an aircraft regardless what brand of component including engines, their bottom line is the performance spec. The outcome of that set of specs get a variant designation.

In this line of thinking, AL-31 and WS-10 powered J-20 would be the same variant IF both engines meet PLAF's requirement, while WS-15 powered would be a new variant as one of the major spec has changed (T/W). The merit of "ABC" is not based on how big the improvement is but rather what is the requirement PLAF put forward.
 
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