Re: New Generation Fighter
It is always more difficult with country to develope something that was a pioneer in the technology (meaning that no one in this world had ever done it before). That is why US went about developing of the F-117 and B-2 first.
When the technology is ripe and they are more confident and experience in the stealth design did they actually go about F-22 and F-35.
My personal opinion is that once US had developed the F-22 and showed it off to the world, others can basically copied the shape of the aircraft, model it and see how the geometry of the design help in reduction of radar cross section.
However it is quite another matter to develope similar material, engine and avonic of the aircraft.
I think the Chinese's developement of the WS-10A would give them some insight into more model engine design and their experience with modern fighter like the J-11 and J-10 series of fighter also gave them some experience with modern avonic and software developement. However material might still be a weakness in the Chinese aerospace industries.
They might come out with a very stealthy design, but in terms of very specific details, the new fighter might still not be on par with the F-22 or F-35. It might be approaching the standard of these two fighters...
Anyway, that is just my two cents.
I dont think stealth material would be a problem, Chinese have manage to grab some F-117A's material during the last Yoguslavia's war, and they found the stealth coating on F-117A is merely on par with what they have had since 5-6 years ago.
They also get AESA radar ready (check the post I posted earlier), the chief designer of the AESA radar is quite confident about his radar, and one thing needed to know is AESA radar may not even be the best China has since the insitute who developed this AESA radar is well known to be ranked as No.2 in this area.
But of cause, the AESA radar is likely still be inferior to the american's counterparts.
The biggest concerns for the XXJ is the engine.
WS-15, even under the most optimistic scenario, wont be ready until 2015, therefore, the maiden flight will likely using under-powered engines like WS-10 or AL-31F.
The problem with last generation engine like WS-10/AL-31F or even American's F-135 is that these engines has too high a bypass ratio to allow the fighter to do super-cruise.
In general, a super-cruise-capable engine should not get bypass ratio beyond 0.3 or so, whilst last generation engines like WS-10/AL-31F get a bypass ratio of 0.6-0.7+, which means no chance for super-cruise.
My best bet is:
The PLAAF would rather prefer to install WS-10/AL-31F etc on the early batch of fighters (XXJ with WS-10/AL-31F is still vastly better than J-11/Su-27 with WS-10/AL-31F, whilst the latter may not cost a whole lot cheaper so the choice is obvious), and laterly get vastly updated version of XXJ when WS-15 finally ready.
Russia has done that before with their MiG-23, they have done that to an even more extreme degree: the earlier batch of MiG-23 can be called a MiG-21bis with MiG-23 aerodynamic layout, but 3 years later, they get a vastly updated MiG-23, with a 30% more powerful engine.
