China could use its old Q-5 as Azerbaijan used their An-2. As drones to find AA batteries.
The Q-5, J-7, J-8 and older PLAAF aircraft
- Thread starter adeptitus
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China could use its old Q-5 as Azerbaijan used their An-2. As drones to find AA batteries.
Today, we see 100 of the retired J-6s were converted into unmanned drones for target practice and for SEAD over Taiwan. Note the J-6s don't have a useful weapons payload for ground attack.
But the J-7 has a payload of 2 tonnes on 4 underwing hardpoints, and could carry 4 low cost JDAMs ($26K each) or other bombs. That is a useful ground-attack payload.
And it looks like 150 J-7s were retired early in the past 3 years.
Plus if China continues to produce around 100 fighter aircraft per year, the remaining 250-odd J-7s will be retired within the next 3 years. Yet most of these airframes still have years of life left.
So if 100 J-7s were converted into a ground-attack role for Taiwan with 1 sortie per aircraft per day, you would be looking at 12000 JDAMs dropped on fixed targets over the course of a 30 day campaign.
In terms of cost, we see the US converts its surplus F-16s into unmanned drones for $1.3 million each. If the J-7 conversion cost is similar, it means you have an extremely low cost (and therefore completely expendable) drone with a significant 2tonne weapons payload. Note that a new J-16 would cost approx 61x more than a J-6 drone conversion. The latest JASSM cruise missiles are also about $1.3 million each.
Operating costs for a J-7 drone would also be minimal since they are kept in storage until needed.
Side question. Any ideas on the maintenance hours/costs for a J-7 or F-5?
For that type of drone, would see a one way ticket for AA defense saturation, turning in circle until shutdown and maybe crashing on something while running out of fuel.
A J-7 would still cost in the region of $1.3M to convert into unmanned.
So you might as well recover it once it has dropped the ground attack payload.
I see a figure of $4500 per hour being suggested as the operating cost for the equivalent Mig-21, which sounds plausible.
So in terms of maintenance, there might just be 12 check flights per year at $5K each.
And if they actually had to be used, each J-7 sortie might cost $5K, with the 4 1000lb JDAMs dropped each costing $26K each.
That's a ridiculously low cost and high payload compared to any guided missile with a range of 300km+
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For SEAD purposes, I see a Harpy coming up as either $79K or $800K each.
So you would have some of these flying around when the unmanned J-6 or J-7s trigger the air defences.
Whilst SAMs can afford to ignore unmanned J-6s that just fly around stupidly at high altitude, it is a lot more difficult to ignore J-7s dropping guided bombs on important targets. Especially at the beginning of any air campaign.
USAF used five old Firebees with GPS guidance flying in circle arround Bagdad in the gulf war. The Iraquis shot them for hours until the last one run out of fuel. Probably expanding ten time the amount in ammunition than the cost of the jet. J-7 could still be used for close air patrol in time of war when top of the line aircraft are reloading and in maintenance. I would keep a bunch of them battle ready.
The J-6 drones can carry bombs and serve as crude cruise missiles on top of decoy drones. From what I've heard the entire batch are controlled simultaneously and the automated system is designed in such a way that when you launch them, they head automatically towards pre-designated targets in Taiwan. The J-6 drones have been around since the late 90s/early 2000s and when one of the PLAAF top brasses came down and requested a demo flight, the operators told him that should they can't go airborne until "that day" comes.
What sort of bomb payload can they carry?
And it sounds like those J-6s are designed for a one-way flight to Taiwan.
Whereas an unmanned J-7 could also be reused. But these have a higher payload and you'll need to do the work to integrate GPS and JDAMs anyway on a drone piloting system. The J-7 just serve as a bomb truck, with the JDAM bombs guiding themselves in, as long as they are dropped in the general area.
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The J-7s are the oldest and most obsolete aircraft in the Chinese Air Force.
There's no point keeping the J-7 around as an air defence fighter.
They either wouldn't be used (as they are in second-line areas) or would be ineffective in that air defence role if they did have to be used.
And there are new modern aircraft coming off the production lines which can replace all the J-7s
But the J-7s can have a second life as an unmanned bomb truck drone.
It saves the Chinese Air Force from having to use the newer (and more expensive) fighter jets for air-to-ground attacks on Taiwan.
Single unguided bomb.
That's quite cool ! Some kind of automated killer robot.