Part 2
I say it's more realistic for the PLAN to focus on support platforms (such as IFR drones and aircraft) rather than have Frankenstein airframes on a ship. Of course, we also need to realize that USN carriers are and will be larger, more capable, and significantly more sophisticated than PLAN ones.
Is the Rafale a Frankenstein’s monster of an airframe? What about the F18? Su33/J15? How about the F35C?
Developing aircraft originally designed for land based operations for carrier use is well established and not as unusual as you seem to think.
It is only extremely rare in the US, but that’s more down to inter-service rivalry instead of pure merits.
I would also not bet on USN carriers always being bigger than PLAN carriers.
China’s leaders have never been afraid to think and go big, and as I already stressed, since China isn’t likely to try to match the USN in numbers, quality becomes more important.
And we have yet to see if the PLAN is really content with the size of the J-15 (which, by the way, makes a really tight fit on the Liaoning's elevator), or whether a slightly-smaller FC-31 really takes away significant range (enough so to affect combat operations).
It’s hard to think of any examples where for two fighters of the same country and same time period, the medium weight fighter managed to outrange the heavyweight.
Aircraft are tailored to their vessels, rarely vice versa.
That’s just because carriers last far longer than planes, so odds are when a new generation of carrier fighters are needed, the nation in question already have carriers that will last for decades more.
But it’s hardly unheard of.
The British QE II class was designed for F35Bs as a recent example.
The Liaoning and Shangdong are not really clean slate designed. When China comes to designing and building its own clean slate carrier design, there is absolutely nothing stopping them from spec’ing that carrier to accommodate for J20s if the PLAN wants carrier J20s.
Just how long would it take for the J-20 to reach that level of economy of scale? If you are premising that the naval order for the FC-31 won't be significant, just how big would a naval J-20 order be (hint: less since each ship would carry fewer J-20 vs FC-31s)? Have we accounted for the fact that the J-20 will be bigger in most aspects (larger radar/weapons/engines/etc.) which will significantly drive up the price?
It’s not time that matters in economies of scale, it’s total numbers. And besides, however long it takes J20 production to ramp up to full speed, it will take the J31 far longer on account of how far behind the J31 development is.
The relative unit price difference between a J31 and J20 is currently impossible to reliably quantify. We would literally be pulling numbers out of the air.
But have you considered just how much extra funding would be needed to complete the J31’s development and set up a separate production facility?
The J20’s development costs are already paid for. It doesn’t matter if the J31 only costs 75% as much to develop as the J20, because that’s another 75% of a very expensive prgramme cost that Beijing will ultimately have to foot the bill for when it may only need to invest another 25% of the original developmental funding to make the J20 carrier capable (no matter how much one thinks adapting the J20 for carrier ops, unless one actually think it will cost more than developing another 5th gen, it we will just be arguing about how much more funding the J31 would be instead of whether funding it will be cheaper than going for a carrier J20).
For the J31 to enjoy superior economies of scale would require the relative number difference between a carrier J20 order and J31 order to be greater than the entire PLAAF J20 order.
As a simple illustration of how unrealistic that is, if we assume a generous 33% reduction in carrier fighter wing size between J20 and J31, with a new gen PLAN super-carrier able to carrier 72 J31s or 48 J20s, you will need 12.5 J31 carrier wings (900 fighters!) for J31 production run to match the numbers of a modest 300 PLAAF J20 order plus PLAN 12.5 carrier wings of J20 (300+48x12.5).
Realistically, you will be hard pressed to get 3 J31s in the same parking space as 2 J20s when both have folding wings and other carrier specific mods, so if anything, that 12.5 is an underestimate!
So anything less than 12 carrier wings will mean the J20 will enjoy greater economies of scale with a joint navy and Air Force order compared to both going for different planes.
While not perfect, you can take a look at the F35 unit price movements between LRIP blocks to get a very rough sense of how much economies of scale have impacted on unit price.
Lockmart is claiming a 60% reduction in unit price from LRIP 1 (2 units) to LRIP 10 (355 units cumulatively). While that is obviously a disingenuously generous number cherry picked by Lockmart, i just don’t have the time to do any detailed analysis on this (you can graph all 10 LRIP runs and graph trend lines and decide which outliers to exclude if you got time, but the general principle is there).
The FC-31 is lacking subsystems, which could be installed with relative ease, but it seems to me that its design is near finalization, judging by its closeness to the scale models. Additionally, SAC is still putting out the claim that it can get a production FC-31 to fly by 2019. In fact, given that the FC-31 has dual front wheels and that SAC has far more experience in the R&D of carrier-based jets than CAC, the FC-31 will have a much smoother transition to a navalized model than the J-20.
Unless they got a dozen prototypes hidden in a Chinese Area 51 that have been flight testing like crazy, the J31’s design is far from complete.
Most fighter prototypes get retired at the end of the test programme because they have exhausted all their flight hours. That’s how extensive flight testing is. They don’t do that just for fun (as any test pilot will tell you, 99% of flight testing is anything but fun, and is rather dull in fact).
Given the track record of CAC vs SAC, I would not really bet against CAC, especially since development a 5th gen is significantly harder than developing a carrier version of the same plane you have been making for 20 years and have someone else’s conversion to consult on.
Are you talking about the PLAAF or PLAN? I see no use for the FC-31 in the PLAAF (unless there is no secondary 5th-gen design to replace the J-10), but the PLAN is another story.
Applies the same to both.
Pakistan will not buy the FC-31, and the reason is that the Chinese backtracked on their promise of inducting the JF-17. The fact that the PLAAF is not buying the JF-17 has essentially neutered JF-17 sales (among other factors, of course).
Has Pakistan ever raised that as an issue or expressed anything less than total satisfaction with the JF17 programme?
When has the PRC ever broken its word?
Rather than assume China decided to break a formal commitment to a key ally, I think on balance of probabilities, China and Pakistan simply amended the deal.
The reason is simple - control of the JF17 programme.
It is well documented that the PLAAF wanted something very different out of the Super-7 fighter programme, which became the JF17.
The PLAAF essentially wanted the JL9 or a single seat version of it - a J7 with a modified nose and intakes to allow it to house a good sized radar for BVR that doesn’t cost too much, and which has as much parts commonality with the J7 as possible.
If Pakistan had insisted that China kept to the original deal and ordered the same number of JF17s, China would have honoured its commitment, but there is no way in hell they PLAAF would have allowed the PAF to call all the shots in terms of setting the design parameters for the JF17.
I see two most likely, not mutually exclusive possibilities:
1) With the success of the J10, the PLAAF’s interest in the JF17 cooled massively, and the PLAAF wanted something else from the programme - a trainer. So the JF17 programme was unofficially split in 2 - the JF17 and JL9.
And/or 2) China offered Pakistan a choice - either settle for a true 50-50 partnership where the PLAAF and PAF had equal say in the development process and both forces get a compromised plane, or Pakistan can release China from its commitment for equal purchase in exchange for the PAF getting full control over the programme and iron-clad assurances that CAC would continue to support the JF17 future block developments for a reasonable length of time.
Pakistan is not all over the J31because of budgetary limitations and because it’s not developed by CAC. Not because it got secretly shafted by China.
you see bias here