PLA Air Force news, pics and videos

FriedRiceNSpice said:

When I first joined this forum, I often encountered articles ridiculing the PLAAF's pilot training consisting of a measly 110hr/yr while touting how USAF's pilots, with their 180hr/yr were far superior and would crush their Chinese counterparts in battle.

Of course, the current cope is that commie pilots only perform rote practice and are only capable of following orders while freedom-loving American pilots train under real battlefield conditions and are able to take the initiative and innovate to come up with superior tactics to beat the commies. And having to rely on more simulator training to make up for less flight hours is now suddenly a feature, not a bug.

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The guest speaker in the Mitchell Institute podcast on this paper said even the amount of hours in simulators is lacking.

by78 said:

Hardened aircraft shelters.

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Judging by the j16 nose thickness to shelter thickness ratio I would say there is 3 to 3.5 m of concrete there. With over half a meter thick (steel ?) door.

That concrete roof is way more than a sdb bomb can punch through. And could be more than a blu109 penetrator could punch through. Though blu109 is old by now and has been superseded by newer penetrator which might be able to penetrate 3.5m of concrete. Still, those are 2000 lb bombs, and bombs would be hard to reach airbases anyway. Especially heavy ones, like Blu116 warhead equipped ones.

That being said, storm shadow did demonstrate a warhead punching through 3.5 or so meters of reinforced concrete, using its shaped charge precursor warhead.

Jsow c uses more or less the same precursor warhead, though that too is short in range.

Jassm allegedly does not use any shaped charge precursor and might thus not be able to offer significant penetration values. Might/should not be able to penetrate shown shelter.

On the other hand, newer tomahawk missiles (both blk iv and v?) do use a shaped charge precursor and might be able to offer similar penetration to the storm shadow.

Bottom line is - really cheap and plentiful weapons like bombs might not be able to penetrate the shelter. Or their parent aircraft might not reach the target.

Serious Stand off weapons with enough penetration might not be there in sufficient numbers to handle the shelters. Taking into account the sheer number of all the other types of targets, the saturation attack capability limits and Chinese missile defenses.

vincent said:

The guest speaker in the Mitchel Institute podcast on this paper said even the amount of hours in simulators is lacking.

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25:46
not that's the threats, whether or not that's the blue force capabilities that we don't want to reveal in open air, there are things that we can only do in
25:53
simulators. But again, there are things that you only get by flying in the air. And ultimately, when we ask these young
25:59
men and women to go into combat, to go into bad guy land, they're going to be doing it airborne. And so they need to
26:04
have those airborne sorties. Unfortunately, the Air Force is not giving them enough simulator time
26:10
either. They're falling short of the the ready air crew program minimum numbers
26:15
of that as well. There is no facet of this training program that's living up
26:20
to the standards that it should be.