Hey if your goal is to make yourself feel good about J-20 production rates power to you. But even if the J-20 counts were up to 50 (and again need to emphasize it’s just a guess) that’s just not a lot of planes objectively speaking.
J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII
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Except you're not really being objective are you? Don't put words in my mouth. I don't want to feel good about any production rate. I don't care that much. There are objectively a lot of J-20s around. When you talked about expectations meeting the scale of needs, that's you comparing J-20 numbers with USAF 5th gen numbers according to certain need to counter them. That's a subjective judgement on how many J-20s are required for that task. I'm saying 50 J-20s is a lot of fighters objectively because that's 20% of the entire J-11 fleet built within 3 years of J-20 production. At this rate J-20 fleet numbers will be equal to the current backbone heavy fighter of PLAAF in about 12.5 years. Its taken longer than this to have the current J-11 fleet and the cycle of modernisation can be similar. This is just LRIP where the manufacturing problems are still being perfected and optimised. Also 50 fighters is more than what most airforces have. So again that's fairly objectively a large number of fighters. I dunno again it's semantics and personal expectations but I don't need to make myself feel good or bad about any supposedly slow production rate and build up. It is what it is to me and I apologise unsincerely for thinking 50 is a lot for such a new and capable fighter. It wasn't long ago when the PLAAF was at least 1.5 generations behind the modern airforces, without an ability to produce its own.
Then again, how many airforces are preparing for a duel with both the 1st(Usaf) and 2nd(UsN) largest airforces in the world in the coming decade or two?
I think we will keep on going back and forth on this topic unless the role of J20 is ascertained. To that end, whats the known/derived combat loads it can carry internally/externally?
If its going to be strictly confined to air interdiction/superiority role, then a sustained production rate of 24 isn't all that bad, but if its going up against F35 to match its numbers, then there's really no limit.
(Funfact- F22 production rate never exceeded 24/year. I understand it was at a time when usaf production was at a slow burn in absence of near peer competitor, but just putting it out there)
I have carefully avoided introducing this because it's taking this assessment somewhere else. Yes, 50 J-20s ain't much to stand up against nearly 200 F-22s and soon to be hundreds upon hundreds of F-35s. So I guess it's all right this very moment or nothing at all? Or is it CAC better get that production rate beefed up ASAP to prepare for the PLAAF vs USAF war? Do you guys really think the current production rate isn't for good reason and the PLAAF wouldn't want to receive J-20s at a faster rate? The PLAN also has a huge shortage of capable SSNs. What about the enormous nuclear gap between the US and China? Introducing these talking points wasn't the purpose. It's quite simple. PLAAF wants as many J-20s as they can get, as quickly as possible. This just happens to be the current rate and probably for good reasons that aren't going to be explained to us.
Objectively speaking 12 J-20s a year (assumed lower rate) is impressive. There are two countries on this planet currently building 5th gen fighters and bringing them into service. 50 modern fighters is an impressive number for any airforce. 50 5th gen fighters is unheard of outside of the US. This is being objective.
J20s don't have to stand against nearly 200 F-22s and hundreds of F-35s.
They only have to stand against the ones deployed near China's borders.
And even then, I think China's strategy will be to disable the airfields and carriers with ballistic missiles, rather than pitting their expensive and few J20s in a tit-for-tat air-to-air engagement.
The F-35 went into full production with large amounts of defects. Some could be fix by code and others by expensive retrofits. I believe i read a article that the UK F-35 needed 30-50$ million per a plane to bring them up to current standards. There might be 200 F-22, but only about 100 are coded for deployment. The rest are training, backups, in repair, or crippled. All of these stealth planes is costing the US 50-100k per a flight hour. Maybe it is a good thing that China is not burning all this cash at the moment until they have refine the aircrafts and get per-hour cost down with better ram-coating, long lasting engines, etc.
I think the idea that China needs to match U.S. fifth gens one to one is flawed. Fifth gen fighters are intrinsically offensive weapons. You don’t necessarily use them to counter each other directly. In fact countering them with other fifth gen fighters is the least economic way to do it.
Apparently Xu Qiliang (许大帅也去看了) was also present. Must have been a very important test considering both CMC vice chairmen were there.
I think Pupu is referring to the 14.5 tonne thrust WS-10 that was confirmed to be under development during the Zhuhai Airshow. In 2017, Pupu stated the WS-10Bs on the J-20 prototypes had a thrust of nearly 14 tonnes.
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Yes and no. If you can find other ways to close the capabilities advantage so that stealth doesn’t vastly disfavor non stealth fighters then it makes a lot of sense to not match numbers. Short of that though you are forced to mitigate a stealth fighter’s advantages against you by directing those same advantages back at it.
Yes.
The best way to counter a stealth fighter is when it is a sitting duck on the ground.
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