J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII

Blitzo said:

I suspect much of this expanded production space will benefit an earlier ramp up of 6th gen fighter production as well relative to how long it took for J-20 production to scale up.

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Blitzo said:

I wouldn't make such far scale predictions with specific numbers just yet.

Too many unknowns including just how true our suspicions are, as well as whether all of the new factory space being built will be fully allocated to J-20 or split among other projects (high end UAVs, UCAVs for one).







So, I have a working theory.

It's underpinned by a three premises.

First premises, is that the J-20 production we've been seeing over the last few years has been mostly a result of this particular factory building, let's call it site "A":
View attachment 101731


That building was only structurally completed in like late 2015.

This is what it looked like in mid 2014:
View attachment 101728

And it looks to me like it was properly finished in late 2015 and settled in about early 2016 -- which is when serial J-20 production began (pic below from Feb 2016)
View attachment 101730



The second premise, is that J-10 production has fully been carried out at "older buildings" (i.e.: ones that existed in prior years).
I say this, because obviously CAC has had lots of factory space for J-10s prior to the new factory building was complete, and they were building serial J-10s since the mid 2000s continuously through various variants.



The third premise, is that J-10 production has been getting partially converted from J-10 to J-20 -- they are certainly still building J-10s, but perhaps of the number of J-10 lines they have running, over the last year one or more of those lines have been converted to J-20s, as they are in the process of shifting J-10 production to Guizhou.


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So, to put it altogether, here is an overall image:
View attachment 101733

So taking it altogether, between 2016 to now, my working theory is:
- the factory building site A, finished in early 2016 has been intended for only J-20 production from the start, and has been steadily increasing J-20 production over the years from 2016 (note, they would've had to slowly add additional lines as they are essentially expanding production of an aircraft type that is much more complex than anything they've done before), and I think it's only over the last year or so that they may have gotten fully running at 100% capacity.
- over the last year, in other older factory buildings used for J-10 production, some of their J-10 production has been converted to J-20 production, which partially accounts for why J-20 production over this year seems to be higher than previous years.
- factory building site B (which was structurally complete mid this year) I personally suspect has yet to properly kick in with J-20 production but they might build some J-20 airframes in the current last quarter of the year (due to time needed to properly tool up), however site B may also contribute some construction
- factory building site ?C (which is yet to be confirmed but looks like foundation work is being done on), may see structural completion by mid to late 2023, and after that time between mid 2023 to mid 2024 may start production as well.


IMO the biggest questions we face are:
- how much of site A and B will be used for J-20 production (most of us reasonably expect their full capacity will be used for J-20s)
- will site C definitely emerge and if it does, what will it be used for?
- how soon will J-10 production at CAC be shifted to Guizhou (if it will at all), and how much of that will be converted to J-20 production (if at all)



But IMO, either way we have lots of evidence to suggest that the overall factory has seen significant expansion and is likely to see further expansion in the future.
A greater rate of J-20 production and high end UAV/UCAV production capacity is likely to be the fruits of this work, but going into the late 2020s and early 2030s, I suspect much of this expanded production space will benefit an earlier ramp up of 6th gen fighter production as well relative to how long it took for J-20 production to scale up.


Edit: the other thing which can't be ignored, is what I will dub as site D

That building is massive as well, and was only completed in mid 2021, however given its location I am not fully sure if it should be considered as factory space for actual final assembly of completed airframes given the distance it takes to the primary airfield and the rather complex road and navigation hazards on the way to the airfield.
In fact I'm not even sure if it's on the same property as the overall factory.
If it is part of CAC, it could be for producing subcomponents at scale before transport to the final factories?

View attachment 101735

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tphuang said:

That's great. I would guess D is sub components. It makes sense to have some of the supply chain nearby. BYD does that with its factory sites.

It probably takes 6 month or even longer from factory completion to trial production to actual start of production. After that, it probably takes at least another year to fully ramp up to peak production level. Based on that, I think we can expect additional capacity come online throughout 2023. Whether they will actually be utilized to produce J-20 is a different question. I could see them starting the year at maybe 6 a month and ending with 9 a month. Maybe this new factory (B) will also have a dedicated J-20B assembly lines.

If C completes by end of 2023, then it would reason that production wouldn't start until middle of 2024 or even later. Based on that timeline, that will probably allow them to start UCAV production in 2 years. That seems like a reasonable timeline if they want to produce WL-3 and WZ-10 and who knows what else.

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ZeEa5KPul said:

Any thoughts on the wingman drone to J-20 ratio? Will every J-20 eventually be assigned drones or will it just be a subset (for example, just the AS variant)? The co-pilot in the J-20AS obviously gives it the advantage here since that's what it's designed to do, but can the J-20A/B also effectively command drones?

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tphuang said:

SAC significantly increased their factory size IIRC, so I think they can produce 75 to 100 aircraft a year if they wanted to.

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tphuang said:

Have they done large scale factory expansion at CAC recently? I would think they need to do that in order to get J-20 production to 100 a year. SAC significantly increased their factory size IIRC, so I think they can produce 75 to 100 aircraft a year if they wanted to.

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antiterror13 said:

Do you think there is bottleneck in WS-10C production that a limiting factor to how many J-20A can be produced a year?

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antiterror13 said:

Do you think there is bottleneck in WS-10C production that a limiting factor to how many J-20A can be produced a year?

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tphuang said:

No the bottleneck is probably just air force and funding related at this point. You can only train so many people a year. Once they get up to 100 J-20s a year + another 75 flankers and a bunch of large aircraft, that's a lot of new pilots to train and convert. A lot of units to change and set up new bases to support operations. Probably a lot of bases that need to be enlarged to be able to field more aircraft in each of the brigades. Maybe more bases built or reactivated also. Even in terms of replacing old J-7, JH-7 or J-11 units, you need to think about what to do with all those aircraft. All of these things also cost money. At this point, I don't think production rate of the engine or the aircraft is a limiting factor anymore.

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