I think it's more or less flamingo logic: more hull, fuel and warhead costs almost nothing.
As a bonus, if you save on smart navigation and seeker, you can just fit a much bigger fuck off warhead.
PLAN Anti-ship/surface missiles
- Thread starter tphuang
- Start date
As a bonus, if you save on smart navigation and seeker, you can just fit a much bigger fuck off warhead.
FriedRiceNSpice
Major
Well, if its cheap enough to enable saturation attacks at extended ranges where adversial air defence has not been sufficiently degraded/suppressed (cheap enough to be cost effective against even lower end air defense), then I am all for it.
China already has such though, just a matter of roles. The AKF-98A for example is smaller stealth cruise missile meant for fighters. Although, its again stealthy so not a standard smaller unstealthy cruise missile as you're asking. There's also some older and smaller KD/KF/YJ series cruise missiles. But those are older, and could possibly already have replacements meant for their fighters but haven't been seen or are known.
We all know its relatively rare for China to display PGMs on their fighters. As for the KD-20/CJ-20A, those are much larger, more powerful, and longer ranged munitions to hit distant targets and probably more reinforced targets to be launched from bombers. Such missile you're asking for possibly already exists or is in development.
FriedRiceNSpice
Major
Not so much that I'm asking for such a missile, but rather questioning why produce a large, long ranged missile like the CJ-20A without survivability features (either signature reduction or high speed), which @Gloire_bb adressed above.
I assume you mean a stealthy cruise missile similar in size, kinda of like JASSM-XR? Well again, who knows, one could possibly already exist but is not known. There's again the YJ-18C, which while smaller, should have long range (wouldn't be as long or powerful as KD-20/CJ-20A) and the H-6 could carry six as well, if not more. China has a much greater on supersonic/hypersonic platforms to penetrate degrade an opponents IADS and strike their targets. Once that's done, then you can roll in with the subsonic munitions. Another thing to note, while all these platforms are "new", I wouldn't be surprised if something like CJ-20A hasn't already been in service for like 5+ years now given how basic it is. The only difference compared to a KD-20 is likely just newer electronics and a better, more efficient engine which would extend its range even further.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
The survivability feature is that China can produce 20 of these for every SAM its adversaries can produce. It’s no exaggeration to say that China can pump these out faster than Russia and Iran can make Shaheds. Probably even by orders of magnitude.
Not everything needs to be fancy cutting edge.
There will be bottlenecks in production of fancy hypersonics, and stealthy missiles, so every additional missile like this that can be made with other much more plentiful resources is a massive bonus.
FriedRiceNSpice
Major
The CJ-20A shown in the parade is air launched.
Well remembered!
YJ-15 seems to be a smaller YJ-12 without sacrificing speed or range. J-15 carried means carrier wing has a supersonic anti-ship missile. This is the world's first carrier borne supersonic AShM. Air launched brahmos only comes off Su-30MKI which is not a carrier capable aircraft.
YJ-12 comes off a H-6 and I'd imagine a J-15 can potentially give the YJ-15 more initial energy compared to H-6 for air launched YJ-12.
Impressive improvement but in light of how much stride the rest of PLA has taken, this just pales so much in comparison. Becomes a massive meh who cares lol.