J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII

ACuriousPLAFan said:

To begin with, there are 2 major fighter class in the PLAAF: Heavyweight fighters (those in the 30-ton-ish weight range, i.e. J-11, J-16 & J-20), and mediumweight fighters (those in the 20-ton-ish weight range, i.e. J-10).

As @Blitzo had previously mentioned, the PLAAF has been heavily pivoted towards heavyweight fighters, especially with their growing procurement of the J-16s and J-20s in recent years. The possible reduction or stopping in J-10's production also seems to reinforce this viewpoint.

However, even for the global-reaching USAF, they also operate a sizeable force of mediumweight fighters, i.e. F-16s, despite them having large numbers of heavy-weight fighters in service across the air force as well, i.e. F-15s and F-22s. Had it not been the expensive price tags of the F-22, the USAF could have hundreds of F-22 in service right now instead of just 180. This is considering that the F-22s were meant to play the role of the F-15s as air superiority fighters, while the F-35s were meant to play the role of the F-16s as multi-role fighters.

In my opinion, this shows that even when the focus and scope of operations in the PLAAF have been gradually widened over the past 2 decade from local and national defense to regional power projection and strike capability, there is still the need for mediumweight fighters like the ones of the J-10 for territorial and regional defense roles, which is pretty similarly to those played by the F-16.

Which means, instead of sending mediumweight fighters like the J-10s out to combat enemy forces or conduct strikes in faraway oceans or enemy territories, they would operate closer to China and their home bases. Their main tasks would be to fight and defend against enemy forces that are intruding and attacking targets within China's home soil and PLA's theater of operations in times of war.

Recall that the chief designer of the SAC has mentioned that there would be 4 variants for the FC-31/J-31/J-35 fighter series. I think these 4 variants could be J-35 single-seater, J-35 twin-seater, J-31 single-seater and J-31 twin-seater.

The J-35 variants would be exclusive for PLAN use (since there isn't any navy anywhere that aims to operate carriers on a large scale like the US and China), while the J-31 variants would be for land-based use.

Therefore, I believe that the PLA would introduce J-31s into active PLAAF service, supplementing and gradually replacing the J-10s starting from the 2030s and 2040s, and eventually become the mainstay mediumweight fighters of the PLAAF. Furthermore, since SAC is aiming the FC-31 for export, having the J-31 in service with the PLAAF would definitely be beneficial for promoting the FC-31 to their foreign customers.

Meanwhile, regarding the possible slowdown or stopping of J-10 production, I believe there are 3 possible explantions:
1. The PLAAF is feeling confident enough regarding the number of J-10s in active PLAAF serivce that they don't need anymore new J-10s;
2. The PLAAF is waiting for the possible J-10D to be ready before resuming production; or
3. The possible transfer of the J-10 production line from CAC to GAC has not been completed yet, and that the need for higher J-20 production rates has eaten into the production line that were originally meant for J-10s.

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Blitzo said:

The question he is answering is "what do you think the 2022 production rate of the J-20 is?"

I.e.: how many J-20s will be built in the year of 2022 -- i.e.: January 2022 to January 2023


Additionally, I think it's also important for us to note, that batch production is NOT necessarily the same as airframes produced in one year. After all, a batch can be produced in the tail end of one year through to the beginning of the subsequent year.


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For what its worth, about 60-70 in 2022 seems the right ballpark from my view as well.
Maybe even 65-75, from what I've heard some others say.

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craftfish said:

According to lyman2003 from weibo, CB0XXX may stand for XX or 1XX.( Meaning using repeated number)

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Blitzo said:

Additionally, I think it's also important for us to note, that batch production is NOT necessarily the same as airframes produced in one year. After all, a batch can be produced in the tail end of one year through to the beginning of the subsequent year.

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zbb said:

Also, when were serial numbers like CB00xx, CB01xx, and CB02xx first spotted? If batch numbers correspond to calendar years with batch 3 corresponding to 2022, then batch 2 should correspond to 2021, batch 1 to 2020, and batch 0 to 2019. Was that the case or did we see batch 0 (or 1) earlier than 2019 (or 2020)?

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craftfish said:

According to lyman2003 from weibo, CB0XXX may stand for XX or 1XX.( Meaning using repeated number)

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Blitzo said:

@Deino can probably give that answer the best -- but the issue is that we cannot really confirm how much of a delay there is between us first sighting a serial for a batch and when the batch actually began production.

In any case, it won't really change our assessment going forwards.
If they do further increase annual production capacity, then we may well see a combination of each batch growing in quantity, and/or each batch taking less time to be produced compared to past years.

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Deino said:

Well ... maybe I don't understand correctly what you said, but yes, each batch starts again with XX = 01 and so on!

As such CB0370 means the 70th Batch 03 aircraft.

Or did I misunderstand your post?

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stannislas said:

I have just read his post over this on Weibo, what in that post was his quoting about what 03 means and his guess work of what 70 means, he even asking about what happened what happened if this number go over 100, so clearly he doesn’t have enough knowledge over this, so I think we can ignore this

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