J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII

Tiberium said:

I actually have some issues with this 100-year show. 18 J-20s----which is at least one third or even half of PLAAF entire J-20 fleet, doing nothing in 2 months, just trained to fly in perfectly big formation in low speed/altitude.
I don't think it's the best practice or putting good use for these precious 5-gens.
I mean, I am not against the 100-year show, just I don't think wasting 2 months on something meaningless in combat is a good thing, considering the time we live. If PLAAF have 600 J-20s, then it's nothing. Or just do some practice in 2-weeks period, it's also OK. I'm against the usual chinese thinking to make political decision above everything else.

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Tiberium said:

I actually have some issues with this 100-year show. 18 J-20s----which is at least one third or even half of PLAAF entire J-20 fleet, doing nothing in 2 months, just trained to fly in perfectly big formation in low speed/altitude.
I don't think it's the best practice or putting good use for these precious 5-gens.
I mean, I am not against the 100-year show, just I don't think wasting 2 months on something meaningless in combat is a good thing, considering the time we live. If PLAAF have 600 J-20s, then it's nothing. Or just do some practice in 2-weeks period, it's also OK. I'm against the usual chinese thinking to make political decision above everything else.

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Richard Santos said:

a parade would be a poor way to signal how many J-20s are in service, unless every J-20 in service takes place in the flyby.

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Inst said:

There's operational costs imposed by having J-20 pilots train for parades, as others have mentioned. The wastefulness of J-20s on parade is a way to demonstrate that you have J-20s in spades and can waste them on parade training.

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ougoah said:

I think some are looking too much into the idea of parade numbers revealing something about in service numbers and intentions.

Parking J-20s outside for satellites isn't a good way of showing a "lowest bound" number because it reveals their service locations and force, even revealing something about how J-20s are used by PLAAF when combined with other information. Too much given away. Satellites could also be fed with false data with mockups which runs into a similar problem. There is no intention to suggest anything about in service numbers apart from saying there are dozens upon dozens of J-20s at the very least. But we knew that already.

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Richard Santos said:

If they can fly half of all the J20 to one spot to practice fly by day after day, they can fly all the J20s to one single airbase where they are not normally based, line them up on the runway so overhead satellites can take a peek. they can be showed to be real and not fakes by the heat of their recently running engines. they can then all fly back home without revealing where they are based and how they are based.

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Richard Santos said:

In the 1950s the Soviets painted a few prototype Miasaschev bombers in operational colors and flew them over Moscow during holidays to imply there must be many more in service for them to be able to pull operational nuclear deterrence bombers from service to grace parades. In the 1930s the Germans drove the same few tanks around and around so they pass in front of the review stand many times to imply here were many tanks were in the parade, and Germany thus had far more tanks than she actually did. There are many other examples where parades were used to imply the forces putting on the show were much stronger than it actually was. So most observers are wise to the possibility and generally believe a military parade implied nothing more than exactly what is on show.

If China really wants to let everyone know she had many operational J-20s, she could remove any shadow of doubt by selecting a day and parking most of the operational J-20 outside so the satellites can see them.

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