Re: New Generation Fighter
From what I have read so far, China does not have the capability to develop 5th generation fighter. It is still busy digesting the lessons learned in 3rd generation (eg. J-7, J-8, and HAIG L-15) and 4th generation (J-10) fighter design. It is still upgrading and improving the J-8 III and touting it because that's what it is most capable of currently. The next 10 years will probably see a lot of improvments to the J-10 (J-10 II, J-10 III?? like the J-8 naming series?) as it start to learn and work out all the flaws and discover new ideas for it, it is until then, that China will finally be able to get on with J-XX series of fighter. A look at other aviation development like the American with F-14, F15, F16, F18 series can tell you it took american decades for them to digest and learn and work out various flaws in the design (various incremental improvments eg. F-14 A~D, F-16 A~D (various blocks), .....F-15 A~E, F-18 A-F... etc etc), and finally matured and move on to the next generation fighters (with ground work on various experimental design, and bombers like F-117, B-2). Same can be said with the Russians, with their Su-30 Series (Su-30, Su-33, Su-35, Su-37) and Mig-29 Series (Mig-29, Mig-35... etc), although Russian started design of next generation fighter a decade ago (Mikoyan Project 1.44), but it was premature effort in my opinion, it did not have the knowledge base and technological infrastructure, and finance to do it. But right now, I think Russian finally can move on, there isn't anything much to improve on the Su-30 or Mig-29 series, unless they move on to a new airframe or powerplant.