Shenyang FC-31 / J-31 Fighter Demonstrator
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by78
General
I wouldn't be so sure. The Chinese arms industry is not as centralized as one is led to believe. Centralization is a matter of degrees, and there are further variations of centralized control within the Chinese arms industry. The aviation industry is, by all accounts, less centralized than the industries associated with the army. Moreover, the general trend for all is toward less centralization and more commercialization, at least that's their announced aim.
The JF-17 project is a very good example here. It was never 'endorsed' by the air force and never picked up. Chengdu ran it as a private project, funded in house, before Pakistan's participation.
I see J-31 as something similar to JF-17 in that it's a design shunned by the air force and therefore being funded 'privately' for the time being. This is why Shenyang is positioning it as an export fighter and seeking foreign customers.
Second this. Centralization by itself is just a very crappy, vague, and largely meaningless word to describe aspects of control in complex systems without further context and descriptions.
SAC and CAC can certainly proceed on their own funding and hope that eventually they get funding from PLA or other nations. Capitalism is alive and well in China. In the case of J-31, it probably did receive funding from PLAAF, even if it was not made an official PLAAF project (this is based on what the big shrimps said). Now, my personal view is that 5th gen projects cost a lot of money. I tend to think that J-31 did receive funding, because it would be a huge ordeal for it to use purely its own fundings for this when it has so many other more profitable projects going on.
Engineer
Major
SAC didn't receive any money from PLAAF, which is also what big shrimps said. SAC used profits of other aerospace companies to fund the 31001 project.
You obviously read different ones than I did.
ladioussupp
Junior Member
AVIC official website chopped the bottom part of the photo.
What exactly do those guys think they are trying to hide here. It ain't gonna work, not in the information age.
by78
General
I hope they are not trying to hide the fact that J-31 exists
Anyhow, AVIC probably caught the wind that this photo was stirring up speculations about J-31 being 'endorsed' by the government, which AVIC wanted to deny. For obvious reasons, AVIC was never gonna put out a press release stating that J-31 has no 'official' support and that it's an in-house project, so the next best thing is to crop the very photo that caused the speculations in the first place.
That kit looks like a custom paint job, made in a very similar fashion to Hasegawa's Idolmaster line of model kits. The character seems to be an anime personification of the J31.
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