J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII

Deino said:

Oh well ...

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... if this is the USAF's official understanding on the PLAAF's J-20, so what what an epic fail!

1. Not sure, what Zhuhai Airshow they saw, but 15 J-20s in a formation? Here on earth? What?
There were only two and no "additional group of the aircraft parked on the runway."...

But even more:

2. Why still citing SCMP? Minnie Chan is probably the most unreliable source and this report was criticised as simply wrong. To claim there are 150 J-20s in service is ridiculous all the more in "four air regiments, most operating in the interior of the country"
At best there 60-70 J-20s in service yet and the PLAAF operates them in Brigades!

As such, PLEASE beware of such reports and even more the mentioned "source".

In fact, I rate her the most unreliable "source" at all; I would even go as far that she has no true internal PLA-related sources at all. All she does is lurking around at some certain social media platforms and picks up the most obscure rumours, she then hypes as "based on internal contacts ...".

So, by my understanding, she's simply not able or willing to differ between reliable and unreliable internet rumours and to put them into the correct context.

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USAF routinely overestimates the opponents during congressional hearings to obtain additional funding.

banjex said:

^I've heard that website is not credible?

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He had some bias against the F-35. That's all.

some J20s are finished but not in service.
But surely not so much , looks like from 2017~2020 they produce no more than 10 J20 per year. but from 2021 they may double the number.

Five more... The first image gives a nice peek into the cockpit.

I cropped the original image to highlight the cockpit.

banjex said:

The small number of members I'm referring to are verified by DT to be ex military, according to DT, at least.

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While I agree with DT’s overall opinion about Dr Carlo Kopp, the problem is after 10 years, all of these DT experts still have not come up with a single analysis paper about J20’s RCS even 20% as comprehensive and scientific as Carlo’s paper.
It’s more than a decade now, keep on chanting the same “Carlo is bad, I am a defense professional“ is boring.

by78 said:

I cropped the original image to highlight the cockpit.

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Any insights as to what these pictures depict, in regards to the cockpit technology? Thank you.

Now I'm wondering, could future variants of the J-20 be expected to remove the HUD in favour of the HMDS?

zyun8288 said:

While I agree with DT’s overall opinion about Dr Carlo Kopp, the problem is after 10 years, all of these DT experts still have not come up with a single analysis paper about J20’s RCS even 20% as comprehensive and scientific as Carlo’s paper.
It’s more than a decade now, keep on chanting the same “Carlo is bad, I am a defense professional“ is boring.

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No one else has tried to do better because it’s an irrelevant exercise.

All his original analysis did was look at the external shape of the J20. But as anyone with even rudimentary understanding of stealth will tell you, everything from internal structures to the use of RAM and radar transparent composites all work together to give you the final outcome.

As such, while his work could provide a basement level worst possible case baseline for how stealthy the J20 was if China just made it out of standard untreated metal and only applied external shaping, so from a practical point of view is almost useless.

There is no need to repeat this exercise, nor is there much value in going beyond it since your input assumptions about the state of Chinese materials sciences and understanding of structural stealth principles are going to ultimately determine how stealthy the output model is. As such the analysis is essentially useless.

If you assume China has a poor mastery of core RAM and composite materials, and don’t know jack about internal structural design needs, then you will get poor RCS from the model. Conversely, if you assume China had state of the art RAM and composites and is well skilled in applying that to the design and knows the fundamentals of how to marry that with internal structural design, you are going to get a very good RCS design. It’s entirely based on your underlying assumptions so has very little value without credible additional information about just how good Chinese material sciences and internal structural design work is.

You can of course do a best possible RCS design, and I fully expect the US military to have completed such a study long ago. But the results from any such model would need to be kept top secret since the input assumptions are going to be hugely revealing about the current state of American stealth materials and structural design capabilities.

Yodello said:

Any insights as to what these pictures depict, in regards to the cockpit technology? Thank you.

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As far as I can see, nothing new is revealed. We already knew the cockpit features a large single MFD and a smaller lower MFD (between pilot's legs). The pilot is also equipped with what appears to be a portable tablet (strapped to his right thigh?). This image is nice in that almost everything is seen with clarify, whereas most older images of the cockpit were either blurry, obstructed, or reflections off pilots' visors.