They are not talking about the Comac ARJ21 ? maybe a stretched variant ? ''arj21-700'' is clearly written...
Shenyang FC-31 / J-31 Fighter Demonstrator
- Thread starter RedSky
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It’s just a debate about designation. We don’t know if the aircraft designation is J-21 or J-31 or J-35 — they refer to the same aircraft.
It's not like SAC have the right to choose the actual J-designation for the PLA. It is the PLA which makes that decision.
SAC/AVIC designated it as FC-31, which is inconsequential because that is not a J-designation for PLA use.
The reason this discussion is being had at all imo, is the J-35 designation was used for so long by the PLA watching community, but imo this whole time there's been little serious discussion about whether it was the true designation of the aircraft from the PLA or just something the watchers came up with.
Interview with 赵霞 of SAC. She was the deputy chief designer of J-15. She is talking about her experience working as chief designer of a new fighter. She specifically says this aircraft will have four variants.
Assuming this is FC-31, the common guesses for the four variants are:
- PLAAF
- PLAN carrier based
- PLAN land based
- export
Isnt that a lot of variants though? Hopefully they can manage to have commonality of parts between the variants so that they can reduce logistic and manufacturing complexity.
I think two seated variant or electronic warfare variant are more likely than PLAN land based variant.
Why the heck are they bothering with a PLAN land based variant? Just make that, the PLAAF variant, and the export variant the same.
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