J-35 carrier fighter (PLAN) thread

[Tam]

Is there any competition for warship design in the US and the UK? .. how about nuclear subs?

US FFG(X) had a total of six entrants. Lockheed Martin with a Freedom class derivative, Austal USA with an Independence class derivative, Huntington Ingalls had a Legend class cutter turned frigate, then the FREMM, the Navantia F100 variant backed by General Dynamics, and then a dark horse from Thyssen Krupp that offered a MEKO derivative. LCS had three entrants, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Raytheon. The contract was given for two leaving one out.

UK Type 31 had three entrants, one from BAE, one from Thyssen Krupp with a MEKO derivative, then from Arrowhead with an Iver Huitfeldt derivative.

The reasons why the Type numbers skip for the UK, like Type 22 and 23 ---> then to Type 26 --- then to Type 31 --- is that these numbers in between, like Type 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, are competing proposals that were eventually not accepted.

 

[taxiya]

I would doubt that it is due to 23's lack of competence on the S band, as they also happen to do entire search radars with this. I also won't compare corporate culture to military culture either. Chinese business culture is very, very competitive, and that is why they succeed in business, and as an economy as a whole. Even whole cities compete with each other, e.g. Chongging vs. Chengdu.

Competence of 23 and 14 are only our guesses, I was only providing an alternative explanation, I won't attempt to make a judgement.

As of corporate culture, you are right about private companies, but remember CAVIC is not ordinary company, it was part of the militarized institution and still managed directly by the political chain. CAVIC was a evolution of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th ministry of machinery, then reorganized to ministry of aviation, then broke away from the ministry to be SOE. It is company today but does follow direct orders from the central government without any room for negotiation. Their "corporate" culture is limited to whatever the central government allows them to have.

Other examples of such SOE "companies" are:

1. Construction arm of Ministry of Railway, from Railway Engineering Corps of PLA since 1984. Now they are various local companies.
2. 中国新建集团公司 Xin Construction Corporation, aka Xinjing Production and Construction Corps, still organized in army structure, but filled with civilians. It is pretty much an agriculture company with very little military role.
3. China State Construction Engineering Corporation, CSCEC. Former Engineering Corps of PLA. They are the builders of various dams, roads and my house in China in 1980s.
4. 中国安能建设总公司 An Neng Construction Corporation, aka PAP Hydro-electricity corps.
5. China National Gold Group. A company merged from Gold Administration Bureau and PAP gold corps.

I am not saying that these SOEs are not adopting culture of commercial company from the private sectors, but I must emphasize that they carries out state policies just like a state entity as PLA. This will never change as long as CCP is in power. They will never be like a company in the sense of independent free market entity.

As of Chongqing vs. Chengdu, they were allowed and encouraged to compete because the CCP political bureau broke Chongqing away from Sichuan province. Another good example is CRRC which was just merged by China South Railway and China North Railway, who in term were broken from Ministry of Railway earlier. You can see that the central government dictate absolutely when, who and to what extent can compete. After all the central government owns these "companies" 100% that makes the central government the real company, nobody else.

 

[Deino]

Can we come back to the topic please?

 

[gelgoog]

I doubt there is a competing concurrent program still happening. Soon enough Type 003 will be launched.

Whichever aircraft was chosen the selection must have been made years ago. Unless China is developing two deck based aircraft plus the J-15T to boot. Which I doubt. It makes little sense to develop two deck based aircraft plus the J-15T. I expect China to make some J-15T or derived fighters for initial use on the Type 003 with the J-XY coming into service a couple years after that. This will allow the full test of the J-XY airframe and to iron out any issues the new engines might have. J-XY is not that critical considering how delayed the whole naval F-35C rollout has been.

 

[gongolongo]

I doubt there is a competing concurrent program still happening. Soon enough Type 003 will be launched.

Whichever aircraft was chosen the selection must have been made years ago. Unless China is developing two deck based aircraft plus the J-15T to boot. Which I doubt. It makes little sense to develop two deck based aircraft plus the J-15T. I expect China to make some J-15T or derived fighters for initial use on the Type 003 with the J-XY coming into service a couple years after that. This will allow the full test of the J-XY airframe and to iron out any issues the new engines might have. J-XY is not that critical considering how delayed the whole naval F-35C rollout has been.

Also wasn't the FC-31 V2 shown a few years back? It seemed to have made a lot of progress which I don't think SAC would do without some government commitment.

 

[latenlazy]

Come on ... to speculate why it went of is the completely wrong conclusion. We have several rumours, reports and even confirmation from AVIC/SAC, that all sums up to the single conclusion, that the FC-31 was chosen to develop the PLAN's next-generation carrier-borne fighter. IMO we can take this for granted!

And even if there have been reports during the last 6 years, that CAC proposed a J-20-based design or even a new single engined type, these came all to and end the more the SAC-related reports shifted from rumours, reports to finally confirmation.

As such - and I can only agree with @Bltizo - it makes no sense that there si now again an open competition, a fly-off between two different designs ... and in fact if true this would ruin all my believing in PLA-watching.

So in consequence and even don't know the source nor do I want to question @huitong's words, I would rate these latest rumours simply as unlikely rumours (at least as long as we don't know the source) and I'm still waiting for the public debut of the J-35 (?) as the PLAN's sole next-generation carrier-borne fighter.

Just my 2 Cents.

I’m reminded of all the talk of EMALS being selected, then being subjected to competition against steam catapults, before being selected again.

 

[supersnoop]

Just being a Devil's advocate here...
Is there any possibility that both institutes could be working on a design derived from FC-31?
Perhaps the "J-20-based" is some sort of evolution of something like "taking knowledge/inspiration from..." or "changes based on..."
Or would this be more "crazy pill" stuff?

 

[taxiya]

I’m reminded of all the talk of EMALS being selected, then being subjected to competition against steam catapults, before being selected again.

Yeah, maybe it is just the netizens playing drama in their head.

 

[latenlazy]

Yeah, maybe it is just the netizens playing drama in their head.

There’s been a whole lot of that in this hobby. Happens every time some new development doesn’t line up with the wishes of a particular group. I think some netizens, or maybe the people who feed them this stuff, believe they can gossip a particular outcome into existence. Early program and decisions making details get turned into games of telephone where the story gets distorted into a live and present situation. This rumor feels a lot like to me some group unhappy with an outcome trying to create last minute noise for grandstanding purposes.

People here are sometimes far too quick to conclude credibility when rumor aggregators with reputational standing decide to amplify some new bit of news or information, and this problem doesn’t just apply to Huitong but to all of us who’ve been doing this hobby for a long time. Those of us who collect fruit from the grapevine are not infallible, and this broader community would do well to remember that and exercise some critical reasoning before jumping up and down at every new rumor. A good record is not the same thing as a perfect one, and even our most venerated big shrimp have been far from perfect in their calls and predictions. This is ultimately a human intelligence gathering exercise, so we should all be mindful of the potential for human failures.

 

[stannislas]

Just being a Devil's advocate here...
Is there any possibility that both institutes could be working on a design derived from FC-31?
Perhaps the "J-20-based" is some sort of evolution of something like "taking knowledge/inspiration from..." or "changes based on..."
Or would this be more "crazy pill" stuff?

That is not a devil’s advocate at all, j-20 rear section and vertical tail is partially designed and finalized in sac, so I will expect the same happens again