Chinese purchase of Su-35.

There has been some news that China is to buy 48 Su-35s from Russia for around 4 billion dollars.

What are these for?
What purpose will these serve?
Where will they be located? (Situated near Japan or India? e.c.t.)

What advantages do these have over the J-10 and J-11 China already has?

 

The news had comfirmed to be faked...

Google Translate

PRC defense spokesman had come out and deny such deal is going to take place. Everything is false rumour...

PRC will never buy Russia combat plane again unless they demonstrated to have produced something superior to J-20.

 

Why would China even bother. For all intent and purchase, China already have Su-35!

Remember Su-30MKK? China demanded structural improvement for heavier payload, so the Russian based the structure on Su-35. So Su-30MKK, while ostensibly less advanced than Su-30MKI, has more advanced structure.

J-11B took the Su-30MKK structure, add more composite -- which China is better then Russia due to commercial works, used domestic avionics -- which is better then the Russian, in general, and use WS-10A, which is better than stock AL-31F. So J-11B has more or less the same capability as Su-35. So why should China buy something that it already have?

 

I'm not sure if you can compare it that way, but my thoughts are, China is mostly self-sufficient already so even if China doesn't have one, they won't dread for it, because they know they will soon have one or something similar of their own. This is the story of materialism: You buy things that you can't have, or that the costs to getting them in other methods are too great.

 

how do you know that?

 

higher thrust and longer service life.

 

I do not remember seeing WS-10 thrust and service life. Can you care to post them? Thanks.

 

Service life I don't know, but thrust is slightly higher than the AL-31F (122 kN vs 125kN). But this is only the basic AL-31F you get in the Su-27SK. Su-35 has the 117S (Al-41F-1S?) with 142kN max thrust. The engine in the Su-35 is more powerful than anything the PRC currently has plus it has an MTBO of 1,000 hours and life span of 4,000 hours (up from the the 3000 hours of the AL-31F).

 

Agreed! After a series of successful domestic development programs, such as JH-7A, J-10 and J-20, China now should have the confidence to develop anything that any other nation can come up with. even if the foreign plane is slightly better, China should have the confidence that they will better the foreign plane on their own.

If they decided to stay out of PAK FA and to develop their own J-20, why would they go backward and buy some Su-35? Makes no sense at all...

 

I think the future is UCAVs and China knows it.