J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII

Inst said:

Just pointing out a general ignorance of Chinese defense affairs.

Most people are confident in the capabilities they have and doubtful of capabilities they lack. For instance, a force that doesn't have stealth aircraft tends to play up the effectiveness of their ground-based air defense in combination with their 4th generation aircraft. A force that is weak in terms of aircraft tends to play up the effectiveness of their ground-based air defense.

I'm pointing out the inadequacy of ground-based air defense and 4th gens vs a 5th gen threat, and why China has a need for a large fleet of stealth air defense fighters like the J-20 or even aircraft like the Su-57, just to offset the F-35 fleet. What free_6ix9ine is trying to say is that the 5th gen gap between China and India doesn't matter that much, because the Chinese aren't going to build a large J-20 fleet. I'm trying to pop that consolation.

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India could buy F-35s if it wanted to. Also, Im not from India. I just don't want to reveal where I live on a public forum like SDF. I will agree with you that a fifth gen fighter is needed to defend the homeland if there is a mass aerial attack by other fifth gen fighters, and that ground-defense may not be sufficient, as it is hard to cover the entire country with SAMs, while the attacking force has advantage of force concentration. However, the number one scenario China is preparing for is not a mass invasion from Japan or India, the more likely scenario is a Taiwan that declares independence, and China needs to show its resolve in preventing that from happening. So missile are a much more effective offensive weapon than using J-20s on strike missions:

1) Missiles are hard to intercept
2) Even if a missile gets shot down, it doesn't risk getting a pilot KIA or captured
3) Missiles require no infrastructure like air bases (which can be targeted by the enemy)
4) Missiles can be hidden underground or moved on rail or moved by trucks and can be launched from anywhere (element of surprise)
5) Missiles can be as accurate as aircraft (see Iranian saudi refinery strike)


There are infinite amount of scenarios that can happen. I am just saying that given limited resources, China needs to prepare for what is most likely to happen.

The iranian missile strike on the Saudi oil refinery with cruise missiles and drones, demonstrates how effective low-flying cruise missiles can be, Saudis had Patriot missiles and other air defense systems but couldn't shoot down one iranian missile. While the missiles hit their targets accurately.

In my opinion this is a glimpse into what future high intensity warfare is like. Instead of dogfighting using manned aircraft, future war will mostly be fought with a combination of high accuracy ballistic missiles and cruise missiles which are essentially unmanned drones. Manned aircraft will still have a limited role in defending against other manned aircraft attacks, but as soon as the adversary realizes the effectiveness of missiles, they will stop investing in manned aircraft as well.

Inst said:

I'm pointing out the inadequacy of ground-based air defense and 4th gens vs a 5th gen threat, and why China has a need for a large fleet of stealth air defense fighters like the J-20 or even aircraft like the Su-57, just to offset the F-35 fleet. What free_6ix9ine is trying to say is that the 5th gen gap between China and India doesn't matter that much, because the Chinese aren't going to build a large J-20 fleet. I'm trying to pop that consolation.

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This brings up an interesting issue. I think it's fair to say that Russia plays up the capabilities of its air-defence systems to maintain the arms markets they inherited from the Soviet Union. Systems like the S-400 might be the best-in-class, but the capabilities of that class itself might be in doubt; the USSR was always economically constrained relative to the US, so they could never match the capabilities, technological sophistication, and numbers of American systems. Just how well would an S-400 fare alone against a squad of F-35s; how much better would that S-400 fare if it was networked with a squad of J-20s and conversely, what does that S-400 bring to the table for the J-20s?

Having thrown a little shade on Russian weapons, I don't want to imbue stealth fighters with quasi-supernatural qualities. There were some rumours floating around a while back of an exercise the J-20 participated in where it wiped the floor with the ground-based air defence/4th gen setup. The word was that a lot of PLAAF generals had theorycrafted that 5th gens could be countered with the SAM/4th setup and the J-20 burned that to the ground. What truth is there to these rumours?

free_6ix9ine said:

Aircraft works for the US because they have the infrastructure: bases, aircraft carriers, tankers, etc. and they are always planning to fight against weak enemies like Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, with no air defense systems. Survivability is not a main concern for the US, reusability is.

Aircraft doesn't work for China, because China doesn't have the infrastructure, ie bases, carriers, tankers etc. Or very limited amount of infrastructure compared to the US. Lastly, China is worried about confrontation with strong nations like the US or Japan etc. which have very advanced air-defence systems and air-superiority fighters. So unlike the US, survivability is extremely important for China, more so than resuability. Thats why ballistic missiles are more suited for China's purposes and aircraft less so.

Different countries, different needs, different strategies. So I agree with the assertion that China will not go crazy and build hundreds of J-20s, because it doesnt fit in their doctrine.

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Maybe since 1991, but during the Cold War, I'm sure the Americans had no expectations of a cake walk over the notoriously dense Soviet SAM networks. And don't forget that the Soviets had a large and relatively well equipped airforce that would have also been causing problems for the USAF. I would say you got it backwards - it's not that the US prep for weaker enemies, but the strategic landscape since the fall of the Union has habituated them to that.

ZeEa5KPul said:

This brings up an interesting issue. I think it's fair to say that Russia plays up the capabilities of its air-defence systems to maintain the arms markets they inherited from the Soviet Union. Systems like the S-400 might be the best-in-class, but the capabilities of that class itself might be in doubt; the USSR was always economically constrained relative to the US, so they could never match the capabilities, technological sophistication, and numbers of American systems. Just how well would an S-400 fare alone against a squad of F-35s; how much better would that S-400 fare if it was networked with a squad of J-20s and conversely, what does that S-400 bring to the table for the J-20s?

Having thrown a little shade on Russian weapons, I don't want to imbue stealth fighters with quasi-supernatural qualities. There were some rumours floating around a while back of an exercise the J-20 participated in where it wiped the floor with the ground-based air defence/4th gen setup. The word was that a lot of PLAAF generals had theorycrafted that 5th gens could be countered with the SAM/4th setup and the J-20 burned that to the ground. What truth is there to these rumours?

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Russian GBAD is misconstrued as somehow intending to fight the USAF with no support from other assets. In reality, the Russian airforce will be covering the GBAD's coverage gaps. Yes, we know the Russian airforce isn't particularly strong, but it's inaccurate to say that Russian GBAD will be alone in defending against a USAF strike.

free_6ix9ine said:

1) Missiles are hard to intercept
2) Even if a missile gets shot down, it doesn't risk getting a pilot KIA or captured
3) Missiles require no infrastructure like air bases (which can be targeted by the enemy)
4) Missiles can be hidden underground or moved on rail or moved by trucks and can be launched from anywhere (element of surprise)
5) Missiles can be as accurate as aircraft (see Iranian saudi refinery strike)

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Except that missiles are day-1 weapons. China was roughly bulking DF-15s vs Taiwan at a rate of 200 missiles per year, with an average payload of 500 kg. Once the missiles are fired off, you're waiting on the production of more missiles.

If we look at US operation costs, a F-35 costs about 35,000 USD per hour to operate. Let's say, Chinese fighters based in Fujian have about the same cost per operating hour, and a flight to Taiwan is about 2 hours round-trip. That's 70,000 USD per launch of a payload of perhaps 1000 kg, vs 500 kg for a likely 1 million USD missile. And the bombing trips can continue until the Chinese are out of bombs, which, let's face it, are simpler to produce than missiles that require a rocket engine or a turbofan per delivery.

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In an ideal circumstance, you're better off combining aircraft and missiles; the job of missiles is to wipe out air defenses and hit high-value and some medium-value targets. Once the opponent can no longer resist, you just do bombing runs with dumb bombs once a day per fighter.

The sustained volume of fire capable from aircraft, as opposed to missiles, tends to justify their cost.

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On the other hand, we can actually point to the US also employing missiles. There's a massive development program of US strategic or theater missiles for deployment in Taiwan and Okinawa underway. That doesn't mean that the US stops using aircraft themselves, it just means that the missiles, as with the Taiwan operation, are used as adjuncts to take out Chinese naval ships and air defenses.

ZeEa5KPul said:

This brings up an interesting issue. I think it's fair to say that Russia plays up the capabilities of its air-defence systems to maintain the arms markets they inherited from the Soviet Union. Systems like the S-400 might be the best-in-class, but the capabilities of that class itself might be in doubt; the USSR was always economically constrained relative to the US, so they could never match the capabilities, technological sophistication, and numbers of American systems. Just how well would an S-400 fare alone against a squad of F-35s; how much better would that S-400 fare if it was networked with a squad of J-20s and conversely, what does that S-400 bring to the table for the J-20s?

Having thrown a little shade on Russian weapons, I don't want to imbue stealth fighters with quasi-supernatural qualities. There were some rumours floating around a while back of an exercise the J-20 participated in where it wiped the floor with the ground-based air defence/4th gen setup. The word was that a lot of PLAAF generals had theorycrafted that 5th gens could be countered with the SAM/4th setup and the J-20 burned that to the ground. What truth is there to these rumours?

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I'd give credence to these rumors for the simple fact that the enemy of a stealth fighter isn't a counterstealth radar, but an entire kill-chain.

When you look at say, the Su-57 design, it's not fully stealth optimized as American aircaft are and Chinese aircraft may one day be, and hell, even stuff like the F-35 and F-22 aren't fully stealth optimized as they deviate from the "hopeless diamond" shape. The point of these partially-optimized VLO designs isn't to be completely invisible, since there are bands on which they can be seen, but to be untargetable by enemy AAMs.

The stealth optimization on F-35 etc is primarily intended to frustrate high-band seeker heads on enemy AAMs, which, by virtue of their size, can never be effective at anti-stealth. And then you have IR optimization or countermeasures, as on the Su-57, whose purpose is to prevent the aircraft from being hit by an IR missile.

What's even worse is that the IR missiles are almost always short-ranged missiles, barring a few medium-ranged missiles like MICA. Since the 4th gens will be seen first by 5th gens, the 4th gens have to first survive into WVR range to fire their IR missiles, and if there are enough enemy fighters, as with the F-35, they won't survive into the merge given a sufficient volume of enemy long-range missiles, or if they're facing something like the F-22, Su-57, or J-20, the enemy stealth fighter will just disengage the moment they've launched their missiles, head home, and never get into IR missile range.

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As for SAMs like the S-400, what I'm more interested in are massive Chinese counterstealth radars, like the ones that take up tens of KM, and purport to be able to counter the stealth signature of B-21s etc by virtue of their bands. SAMs like the S-400, on the other hand, are of more questionable use, since against a stealth target you need a seeker on the missile that can track the target. You can, of course, go to counter-stealth radar and data-link it, but the question with counter-stealth radar is whether you can get a sufficiently accurate track for the missile to home in.

Moreover, you have to note that the PL-10 claims the ability to intercept Patriot missiles. It stands to reason that next-generation AAMs in development by the US, including the AIM-260, will have this missile interception capability.

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I'd personally think that with the S-400 acquisition, China's primary interest is getting a hold of the rocket motors the Russians are selling. EODAS and IR-methods are much more effective at tracking stealth aircraft than small counter-stealth radar, even if they're huge platform radars like the Chinese use. The future of ground-based missile air defense isn't going to be SAMs guided by counter-stealth radar, but SAMs working in combination with air-based assets that can datalink into the SAMs and guide them to hit the stealth targets.

Just out of curiosity, what’s the status on older prototypes such as 2001/2002? We spotted 2014 a while back when it tested external weapons pylon but what of the earlier prototypes?

Inst said:

Except that missiles are day-1 weapons. China was roughly bulking DF-15s vs Taiwan at a rate of 200 missiles per year, with an average payload of 500 kg. Once the missiles are fired off, you're waiting on the production of more missiles.

If we look at US operation costs, a F-35 costs about 35,000 USD per hour to operate. Let's say, Chinese fighters based in Fujian have about the same cost per operating hour, and a flight to Taiwan is about 2 hours round-trip. That's 70,000 USD per launch of a payload of perhaps 1000 kg, vs 500 kg for a likely 1 million USD missile. And the bombing trips can continue until the Chinese are out of bombs, which, let's face it, are simpler to produce than missiles that require a rocket engine or a turbofan per delivery.

===

In an ideal circumstance, you're better off combining aircraft and missiles; the job of missiles is to wipe out air defenses and hit high-value and some medium-value targets. Once the opponent can no longer resist, you just do bombing runs with dumb bombs once a day per fighter.

The sustained volume of fire capable from aircraft, as opposed to missiles, tends to justify their cost.

===

On the other hand, we can actually point to the US also employing missiles. There's a massive development program of US strategic or theater missiles for deployment in Taiwan and Okinawa underway. That doesn't mean that the US stops using aircraft themselves, it just means that the missiles, as with the Taiwan operation, are used as adjuncts to take out Chinese naval ships and air defenses.

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Yes I agree, sustained volume of fire require aircraft. Missiles are for the initial offensive. Even though they are more expensive, we cannot discount that their survivabiity and capability compared to 5th gen aircraft. Manned aircraft will always have a role to play, but China should not lose track of the future warfare, which is a combination of ultra low flying AI-powered smart missiles and high flying hypersonic ballastic missiles, that has the ability to hit anywhere in the world without risk to the pilot.

free_6ix9ine said:

Yes I agree, sustained volume of fire require aircraft. Missiles are for the initial offensive. Even though they are more expensive, we cannot discount that their survivabiity and capability compared to 5th gen aircraft. Manned aircraft will always have a role to play, but China should not lose track of the future warfare, which is a combination of ultra low flying AI-powered smart missiles and high flying hypersonic ballastic missiles, that has the ability to hit anywhere in the world without risk to the pilot.

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Future warfare isn't going to be wholly dominated by missiles for one simple reason. Missiles are one way. Every time you fire a missile, you waste a rocket engine or a turbojet.

You can look at China's moves into the drone market as an example of what's eventually going to happen. Drones are going to be the weapon employed in the future for these types of bombing runs; you don't have to include a pilot pod so that the controller can be on deck, and you no longer have a human body whose sustained G-load cannot exceed 9G.

So you essentially have cost and performance advantages over manned aircraft, and reusability advantages over missiles.

Inst said:

Future warfare isn't going to be wholly dominated by missiles for one simple reason. Missiles are one way. Every time you fire a missile, you waste a rocket engine or a turbojet.

You can look at China's moves into the drone market as an example of what's eventually going to happen. Drones are going to be the weapon employed in the future for these types of bombing runs; you don't have to include a pilot pod so that the controller can be on deck, and you no longer have a human body whose sustained G-load cannot exceed 9G.

So you essentially have cost and performance advantages over manned aircraft, and reusability advantages over missiles.

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Yep I agree. Drones will have a huge role to play in the future, I am glad that China is not over-investing in one platform such as the J-20. Yes it is important China has a fifth gen fighter, it does fill certain roles. But keeping their eyes on the ball is more important. The US will always have an advantage against China in terms of 5th gen fighter numbers. However, manned fighters are becoming less and less relevant. It is better to develop asymetrical capabilities instead that will redefine how wars are fought. Same goes for aircraft carriers as well, there is no need to invest in 10 aircraft carriers to achieve parity with the US. One or two is good enough.

The overinvestment in the J-20 is going to happen, or if not with the J-20, it'll happen with the J-31, and possibly even the Su-57. There is no way to do effective air defense vs stealth aircraft except with stealth aircraft. You need to be able to get close enough to the target not to get shot down by BVR missiles, and you need to be able to datalink-guide a missile to hit a target designed to be nearly impossible to target.

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There is definitely going to be considerable spending in missiles, not least because you want to be able to hold American missiles under threat; hell, I've proposed myself elsewhere a build-up of thousands of DF-21s with the aim of completely overwhelming CVBG ABM defenses (and Hongjian has discovered how powerful DF-21 spam can be in the context of overwhelming ABM defenses). But assuming that China will ignore airpower, when airpower is the most effective counter to airpower and is a way to deliver massive amounts of munitions, is an error.

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In some other strategic simulation, we, for whatever reason, decided to start from China. Airpower was prioritized because China had a dual naval / land border; ships might present defendable defenses at sea, but if you overinvested in naval power, you became vulnerable at land. The same applied to land borders; you had too many land forces, you were completely vulnerable at sea.

China then became a natural air power; air power, for the Chinese, could provide comfortable intervention whether it be a terrestrial conflict or a maritime conflict.

Applied back to real life, J-20s, in comparison to missiles, which are difficult to redeploy and single-use, could be used to tear apart Taiwanese and Japanese air defenses, and THEN they could be deployed to the Indian border to crush whatever 5th gen force they could muster and then systematically dismantle Indian air defenses.

In short, it's the sheer flexibility and mobility of aircraft that makes airpower so important.