Err... do you even math, bro?
I start with a baseline of 20 aircraft per year. 60% increase per year yields the following:
| Year | Number of 5th gen aircraft produced |
| 2021 (baseline) | 20 |
| 2022 | 32 |
| 2023 | 51 |
| 2024 | 82 |
| 2025 | 131 |
US military procurement practices and priorities
- Thread starter plawolf
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I start with a baseline of 20 aircraft per year. 60% increase per year yields the following:
I doubt it.
And as sinopihlia wrote, you are implying they're currently producing 75 5th gens a year.
I'd be pleasantly surprised if they were building 30 a year at this point.
The way you wrote it made it sound like in 2025 there would be a 65% increase relative to 2021, not a cumulative increase of 65% per year.
As for what you wrote here -- I doubt it.
Consistent cumulative expansions of aircraft production rates over successive years generally doesn't happen, with the way factories, tooling etc is set up. Generally you see a bit of a jump between one year and the next as a new factory/line is commissioned, and then perhaps another bit of a jump the next year as the new line gets a bit more efficient.
But what you described -- a cumulative 60% increase year on year, would imply construction of new lines that are also of successfully greater size, every year, which isn't how expansions typically go.
My first reply was posted just as your post with the table came up.
And no, the way you phrased it, made it sound like "production per year" meant "annual production".
I know what you mean now, but the way you wrote it should've been something like "That would require an increase in production rate of 60%, ever year, from a 2021 baseline" or "That would require an annual increase of 60% of production per year, every year, from a 2021 baseline".
Part of the reason it was interpreted like that is phrasing, part of it is also because the idea of annual expansions in production rate of 60% per year, successively over 5 years, is.... difficult to comprehend.
See my reply above where I address your table.
"Absolute capability" is to demonstrate that the usefulness of the F-35 is not only relative to the PLA in 2030.
I disagree, I think the F-35 can do the mission it was bought to do. The mission of the F-35 as originally envisioned is very different to that of the NGAD/PCA.
The victory was described by Defense News as "pyrrhic". If you read the USAF description of the exercise itself:
My underlying point is that the F-35 is a very capable military platform that is capable of fulfilling the national geopolitical goals of the US. The F-35 program itself has had its cost overruns and management issues yes, but the end platform is a very capable one of significant scale that requires respect and to be treated as the greatest aerial threat that will pose to the PLA both now and into the medium term future, which the original post from plawolf did not sufficiently give it.
That's my point. Everything else is window dressing.
I see what you mean, but I had thought that computing an average expansion rate would still be analytically useful. Having taken a look at this
I don't believe that's the case. The reason is that it's too sensitive to initial conditions: If I start from 2011 I get an average annual expansion rate of 40% (and that doesn't match the dates between the starting and ending years well at all), while from 2012 the rate is 20% and still doesn't match the discontinuities in the data. That kind of disparity makes this measure useless.
If we compare the F-35 production numbers with where the PLA is now (~30 aircraft per year), China today is where the US was roughly a decade ago. It also illustrates the point you made about experience - the F-35 first flew in 2006 and reached this milestone in 6 years, while the J-20 first flew in 2011 and reached the 30/year milestone (maybe) 10 years later.
Sadly, I'd have to reluctantly concede the point that it's highly unlikely the Chinese fifth gen numbers will catch up to the F-35 - America just had too much of a head-start. But I'm very optimistic about 6th gens as China will start producing those at roughly the same time as the US (certainly with nowhere near the delay from F-22 to J-20) and will have much more wealth and experience as well as a far stronger industrial base than it did when it made the J-20.
I do agree with the view that the F-35 is the most capable platform relatively speaking for now and in the mid-term. But I disagree with the geopolitical pull to the US that comes with it. If e.g. the Netherlands decides to step out of the F-35 program, it has immediate access to three different 4.5 gen European fighters and in the longterm, two different 6th gen fighters. Other F-35 program partners can step out and have access to not only the European fighters, but also the Russian and Chinese ones, both 4.5 and 5th gen, in the short term.
Turkey has short-term losses but that can be alleviated by investing in unmanned platforms which it is doing atm, and in the long term developing its own 5th gen fighter.
The pain is temporary but the gain is immense. Namely more freedom in geopolitical dicision making.
Turkey has short-term losses but that can be alleviated by investing in unmanned platforms which it is doing atm, and in the long term developing its own 5th gen fighter.
The pain is temporary but the gain is immense. Namely more freedom in geopolitical dicision making.
Although I agree with you that the capabilities and production scale of the F-35 shouldn't be underestimated, I have to take the conclusion of the exercise you posted with a salt mine whose production per year is expanding at a rate of 60% per year.
No matter how much US military capability expands over the next decade, it's unquestionable that the Chinese capability will proportionately expand far more. To be clear, what I'm saying that the growth of (2030 China vs 2020 China) will be far greater than the growth of (2030 US vs 2020 US) - I'm not saying anything about 2030 China vs 2030 US - which makes me deeply skeptical of the results of this exercise when contrasted against the 2018 exercise.I think it's part of the Pentagon grift. People rightly claim that DoD officials fearmonger to scare up higher budgets, but part of the chicanery is also selling hope. You have to sell the hope that the extra money is going to fix the problem. Then, of course, it doesn't and you go back to pushing the fear - rinse and repeat.
Although I agree with you that the capabilities and production scale of the F-35 shouldn't be underestimated, I have to take the conclusion of the exercise you posted with a salt mine whose production per year is expanding at a rate of 60% per year.
I think it's part of the Pentagon grift. People rightly claim that DoD officials fearmonger to scare up higher budgets, but part of the chicanery is also selling hope. You have to sell the hope that the extra money is going to fix the problem. Then, of course, it doesn't and you go back to pushing the fear - rinse and repeat.
In terms of the overall military gap between the PLA and the US, I certainly expect it to shrink between now and 2030, even despite US efforts to modernize and reorient their forces.
But none of this takes away from my overall argument about treating the F-35 as an important threat and adversary capability to be respected and not disparaged.
The F-35's production scale and the structure of its program is somewhat the exception. The reason why they were able to see a gradual annual increase of production rate year on year, is because of the sheer scale of what their planned full production rate will be (over 160 aircraft a year!)
So I definitely wouldn't use F-35's production scale as if it is a reasonable benchmark for what most fighter production scales should be. Remember F-35 is an aircraft that is expected to have a production run of nearly 2500 aircraft for the US alone.
In the case of J-20 and J-XY circa 2025 -- well...
1. J-XY is likely to only begin production in 2025 (at the earliest), and regardless of what its planned full production rate will be, it is going to start off fairly low. In 2025 I would be impressed if they produce 20 J-XYs.
2. That means of your 120 5th gen fighters produced in the year 2025, about 100 of them would inevitably have to be J-20s. In which case, you are essentially trying to argue that China can produce 100 J-20s a year by 2025.
As for what a more likely J-20 production scale may be -- here are two projections for production ramp up for F-22, the top table being for a circa 1998 planned total production run of over 330 aircraft, the bottom table for some 176 aircraft after subsequent reviews and cutdowns of total fleet size.
You can see how in both of the tables, from 1998 to the early 2000s, initial production in the first few years was small, before reaching a gradual "steady state peak" of some 36 annual aircraft and 22-24 annual aircraft, respectively, for a few years. Production didn't continue to expand beyond a "steady state peak" indefinitely, simply because the total production of F-22 in both instances wouldn't have necessitated it.
I very much expect J-20's total production to be greater than what F-22 ended up being, and to possibly approach the original fleet size requirements for the ATF program (i.e.: some 700+ aircraft) before it was gradually cut down over successive reviews to the final 180ish total number of F-22s they ended up with.
Assuming a 600-700 strong J-20 production run across all variants, and assuming production would close up shop by the early 2030s, I would tentatively suggest that they could reach a "steady state peak" of 60 aircraft per year for a number of years (say, 4-5 years) in the mid/late 2020s.
Assuming they are able to build 30 a year in 2021, something like this might be plausible (just take it as a general trend, the specific yearly numbers don't matter that much -- e.g.: it might be that the build up between '21 and '26 will be less gradual than that and there will be two years where there is just a sudden significant increase in annual production rate as a result of a new line being commissioned or something, and where the peak sustained rate is 70 instead of 60, etc):
Total cumulative number produced between starting production to mid 2021 -- 50-60 airframes
'21 - 30 airframes
'22 - 35 airframes
'23 - 40 airframes
'24 - 50 airframes
'25 - 55 airframes
'26 - 60 airframes
'27 - 60 airframes
'28 - 60 airframes
'29 - 60 airframes
'30 - 60 airframes
'31 - 55 airframes
'32 - 40 airframes
'33 - end/transition to 6th gen production
The total run here would be 665 airframes for J-20.
Note, the above doesn't include J-XY, which, if it begins production in 2025, depending on how ambitious the PLAN and PLAAF are with it, may or may not achieve a satisfactory production rate by 2030. If it can, then I expect the greatest number of annual total 5th gen deliveries for the PLA may be 2030 and the early 2030s when J-20 production will be at its relative peak and where J-XY production will be ramping up.
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