J-20... The New Generation Fighter III

No one sells production lines of anything siginificant to China without scrutiny and certainly nothing advanced. There is a ban on selling to China anything that can be used militarily. So it's wrong to believe anything high tech produced in China comes from obsolete US factories.

I seem to spot an interesting trend. Every time someone thinks they have spotted a deficiency in China's R&D or industrial base that would explain why China is 20 or 30 years behind the west, odds are, they only think so because they are themselves poorly informed.

I think the biggest difference between Chinese engine manufacturers and American and European ones is down to the civilian side of their business as someone (sorry, forgot who it was ) pointed out in this forum not that long ago.

When a company makes engines by the thousands every year for the civilian market on top of military orders, they gain incredible economies of scale and practical experience for their workers that are simply impossible to match if you are only making a few hundred military engines only.

That is the main reason China's engine industry is struggling to catch up with that of America's and Europe's, and conversely, it is also why China has been able to catch up so rapidly in terms of radar and avionics - because of the massive economies of scale and expertise China's civilian electronics industry lends to their military counterparts. All the T/R modules that make up AESA radars, for example, are made of, and using very similar materials and techniques as the kind of chips that goes into common day smart phones, tablets and other modern consumer electronics.

I personally don't think there is that much of a difference between China's and Russia's engine industry any more these days. The Russians can achieve higher raw thrusts, but seem to do so at the cost of engine life and reliability. The most striking thing about China's work on the AL31 is that not only is China content with making a copy, they massively improved on the MTBO on the engine, to what looks like beyond what the Russians themselves could do, as I am not aware of an AL31 version with a MTBO of 1,500 hours.

I think that if China wanted to, they could quite feasibly develop an AL41 like engine that has massive thrust but poor reliability and engine life compared to western engines, but the main reason they are not bothering is because they have their sights set on western standards with the WS15. It might take a little longer and cost a little more to develop, but in the long run, it will be well worth it.

I feel that in a few years time, when the WS15 is finished, even Russian fanboys are going to have a hard time convincing themselves that Russia is still ahead of China in engines.

Yes Plawolf that is exactly what happened . These guys are poorly informed BTW I found the article that Martian posted long time ago here it is
It is ironic that CNC was listed in ITAR as embargo material but it only spur the Chinese to develop their own CNC industry and now they even export to US . Meanwhile the American CNC manufacturing is struggling

I am the one that posited the reason why China is weak in the Aero Engine. and
Your explanation is right on . Not only that having no Civilian Aero engine limited the number and competition between subsystem supplier. People always blame Liming for the poor quality early in the production but like the old adage you are only strong as your weakest link/ Building aero engine does not exist in vacuum you need ecosystem of subsystem supplier and expertise. It will change over time specially now that civilian company is allowed to bid on national defense project and as the civilian aerospace took off

Foreign companies in China and Taiwan have caught up with U.S. technical capabilities, rendering stringent U.S. export controls moot." (see first paragraph in news article)

Let's do the math. From the seventh paragraph, 45 foreign companies produce advanced five-axis machine tools in the BRIC+Taiwan countries. "China has 20 indigenous five-axis machine tool companies; Taiwan has 22." 45 - 20 (in China) - 22 (in Taiwan) = 3 left in Brazil, Russia, and India combined.

For comparison, "there are six American companies dedicated to producing five-axis machine tools." (see fourth paragraph in news article)

U.S. Precision Machine Tool Industry Is No Longer A Global Competetitive Force

"U.S. Precision Machine Tool Industry Is No Longer A Global Competitive Force

March 5, 2010 Volume 17, No. 4
By Richard A. McCormack
[email protected]

U.S. producers of some of the most technologically advanced machine tools are in trouble, according to an assessment by the Department of Commerce. Sales of high-precision five-axis machine tools are declining. U.S. share of global exports is in a free fall. Foreign companies in China and Taiwan have caught up with U.S. technical capabilities, rendering stringent U.S. export controls moot. U.S. companies are being purchased by foreign rivals. A lack of training programs has created a shortage of skilled workers able to use the complex machinery. Commercial and U.S. government customers prefer foreign machine tools. Export controls are hampering foreign sales. The entire U.S. machine tool industry spends only $1 million a year on research on five-axis machine tools.

These are some of the findings from a "Critical Technology Assessment" conducted by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security.

U.S. producers of five-axis machine tools had sales of $253 million in 2008, down 11 percent from 2005 sales of $284 million. That was before the U.S. machine tool industry suffered a meltdown in 2009, when domestic consumption tumbled by 60.4 percent, according to the Association of Manufacturing Technology.

Sales of five-axis machines to domestic customers from U.S. producers declined by 19 percent from 2005 to 2008, from $242 million in 2005 to only $195 million in 2008. There are six American companies dedicated to producing five-axis machine tools, and at least 20 in China. Five-axis tools are used for the production of precision components in the aerospace industry, in making gas and diesel engines, automobile parts, and throughout the medical, textile, oil, glass, heavy industrial equipment and tool industries. "Many other industries are discovering the advantages of these machines," says the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS).

Yet "only a handful of U.S. producers actually manufacture five-axis machine tools in high volume and most generate less than 10 percent of their annual net finished machine tools sales from five-axis machine tool business lines," according to the market and technology research report from BIS.

U.S. producers of five-axis machine tools exported only $58 million worth of equipment in 2008. In a tally of global exports of all machine tools, the United States -- with exports of $740 million -- accounted for only 4.3 percent of global exports in 2007.
...
BIS also assessed foreign producers of five-axis machines. It found that not one of the 45 companies that are indigenous to Brazil, China, India, Russia and Taiwan use U.S. technology, parts, components or materials. China has 20 indigenous five-axis machine tool companies; Taiwan has 22. None of these companies have to deal with the types of export restrictions facing American firms. As a result, these companies are able to produce all the machine tools that are in demand in China and Taiwan, plus they are "able to produce in sufficient quantity to export to other LRCs," says BIS.

One of China's five-axis machine tool makers has 24 distinct models. China now has 28 companies capable of building more than 1,000 CNC machine tools. There are 130 Chinese companies with annual capacity of more than 100 machine tools. The country is now supplying most all of its own demand, with only 10 percent of the market being supplied through imports. "In 2005, approximately 59,600 units of CNC machine tools were produced in China," according to the BIS report. In 2007, the combined amount of CNC metal-cutting and forming tools produced in China was 126,268, more than double the amount produced in 2005. China is now supplying its own demand for five-axis machine tools used throughout its military.

The BIS quotes the Export Compliance Working Group of the American Chamber of Commerce in the People's Republic of China as saying: "Given the existing domestic and joint venture development and the foreign availability of high-level machine tools, U.S. companies could not make a material contribution to China's military development. China's military demands are already satisfied by domestic and foreign supply."

The United States exported 515 five-axis machine tools between 2005-2007, and only 12 of these went to China. DMTG, China's largest producer of machine tools, exports products to more than 100 countries.
...
The report is located at U. S. Bureau of Industry and Security defenseindustrialbaseprograms/osies/defmarket researchrpts/final_machine_ tool_report.pdf."

Last edited by Martian; 07-29-2010 at 03:44 PM.

plawolf said:

I personally don't think there is that much of a difference between China's and Russia's engine industry any more these days. The Russians can achieve higher raw thrusts, but seem to do so at the cost of engine life and reliability. The most striking thing about China's work on the AL31 is that not only is China content with making a copy, they massively improved on the MTBO on the engine, to what looks like beyond what the Russians themselves could do, as I am not aware of an AL31 version with a MTBO of 1,500 hours.

I think that if China wanted to, they could quite feasibly develop an AL41 like engine that has massive thrust but poor reliability and engine life compared to western engines, but the main reason they are not bothering is because they have their sights set on western standards with the WS15. It might take a little longer and cost a little more to develop, but in the long run, it will be well worth it.
.

Click to expand...

your assertion is very wrong, today Russia has high standards in engines, in fact the reliability is high enough to say Russia is a net exporter of engines world wide including China, but not only China, italy and India also import russian engines.

the truth is that the best Chinese manufacturing tech is still behind the best European and Japanese stuff. No one care about the American machine tool tech they are leaving the market and buy foreign stuff anyways, which is one of the reasons their planes are starting to cost so much and take so long to develop.

Longaxe said:

No one care about the American machine tool tech they are leaving the market and buy foreign stuff anyways, which is one of the reasons their planes are starting to cost so much and take so long to develop.

Click to expand...

I would have to disagree with you here. It actually save time when you get technology that is already available in the market, be it internationally or domestically, rather than keep trying to reinvent the wheel. We are now in the era of globalization, and there is simply no one country that build their product all the way from zero to fruition, even the European and the Japanese.

The Korean, the Russian and the Chinese are the same too. If you have assess to even their highest technological weapon system and tear those systems down, you are sure to find components that are actually not a product of their own researches and are bought from overseas too.

R&D is not just done to create something out of nothing... a huge part of it is system integration and system integration means to integrate different systems - be it hardware or software, into a complete product. and these systems that are chosen to be integrated can either be developed in the country itself and/or co-developed with other nations, and/or developed by other nations totally.

We see Chinese companies buy US general aviation aircraft manufacturers and engine manufacturers, no doubt in order to produce parallel in the US and in China and thus increase the variety producers of aircraft and engine orientated enterprises. This will grow the aerospace ecosystem in China, while in the US parts of the ecosystem are withering.

MiG-29 said:

your assertion is very wrong, today Russia has high standards in engines, in fact the reliability is high enough to say Russia is a net exporter of engines world wide including China, but not only China, italy and India also import russian engines.

Click to expand...

Today, Russia's engines are still Soviet Union's. Russia hasn't made significant breakthroughs in engine technology since the Soviet days and I don't blame them, quite hard to research stuff when you have little money. I think it has been established that China is only buying Russian engines for economical reasons so that they don't need to overhaul ALL their J-10s to fit the WS-10.

delft said:

We see Chinese companies buy US general aviation aircraft manufacturers and engine manufacturers, no doubt in order to produce parallel in the US and in China and thus increase the variety producers of aircraft and engine orientated enterprises. This will grow the aerospace ecosystem in China, while in the US parts of the ecosystem are withering.

Click to expand...

Well, lets see how many proposed purchases actually gets past American politicians out to score some cheap points.

It never ceases to amaze me how American politicians can have the cheek to reject multi-billion dollar offers from Chinese companies to buy American firms on flimsy and ridiculous 'national security' grounds (not to mention all the potential high-tech commercial trade that gets rejected because of the arms embargo and dual use items), and then go and attack China for running a big trade surplus with America.

I really hope that one day Chinese diplomates get media savvy enough to just make a list of all the deals that American politicians killed off for no good reason and all the items China wanted to buy but which were not allowed to be exported because of their 'dual-use' nature, and just read that out when the Americans bring up trade surplus again and re-calculate the balance of trade if those deals have been allowed to go ahead, compare that to the actual trade surplus and just let the numbers do the talking.

jobjed said:

Today, Russia's engines are still Soviet Union's. Russia hasn't made significant breakthroughs in engine technology since the Soviet days and I don't blame them, quite hard to research stuff when you have little money. I think it has been established that China is only buying Russian engines for economical reasons so that they don't need to overhaul ALL their J-10s to fit the WS-10.

Click to expand...

PD-14 is not from Soviet times, 117 is not from soviet times, Al-41F-1 and Al-41F2 are new engines in fact they have an upgraded the Al-41F because the miniaturized the Al-41F when they designed Al-41F-1, you just want to follow a myth that Russia has not created new engines but the reality they have.

In fact now Russia has 117 of 15000kg of thrust on PAKFA, 117S of 14500kg of thrust on Su-35BM, Al-31M2 of 14500kg on tests, type 30 on PAKFA on tests of 17000kg, and Al-31M1 of 13500kg on Su-30SM.


PD-14 on MS-21 on tests

[video=youtube;JVJny6UL6V8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVJny6UL6V8&feature=channel&list=UL[/video][video=youtube;wsJyC5g4IBo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsJyC5g4IBo&feature=related[/video]