J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VI

[Deino]

Guys, either you come imedeatly back to the topic - which is the J-20 - and stop with all this China vs USA, F-35 vs J-20 stuff or I'll clean the last pages.

 

[manqiangrexue]

...there's a valid reason we haven't seen J-20 production ramped up......

so far no one here has adequately explained it? it may simply be PLAAF priorities, or it could just be "real life" 5th Gen aircraft development/production issues??

or it could be as simple as the money?

Uh, the engines, did you forget? The engine swap from AL-31X to WS-10X was discussed at the most obvious and most likely reason for the production lull. It was discussed in this post... you even gave it a like, so you had to have read it.

https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/j-20-5th-gen-fighter-thread-vi.t8169/page-547#post-564079

 

[Pika]

Anyone can give a strong estimate of how many J-20s produced so far? Including Prototypes and initial series production.

Probably < 30?

 

[siegecrossbow]

Anyone can give a strong estimate of how many J-20s produced so far? Including Prototypes and initial series production.

Probably < 30?

I thought Bltizo sort of answered it in his article: a minimum of 13 in service.

 

[Pika]

Yeah he said only 13 can be confirmed from serial numbers, but the actual count may be more.

He never provided an estimate.

 

[plawolf]

I find the idea that CAC simply paused J20 production because of engine changes to be extremely unrealistic.

Anyone remember the lines of Flankers sitting at SAC airfields waiting on engines?

It simply make no sense to pause production altogether because of a single or even multiple sub-component bottlenecks.

Even if CAC could not finalise the redesigned engine bays until tests are complete with WS10s, there is nothing stopping them from continuing production with the rest.

They could just build only the unaffected parts of the J20, then once the new engines are finalised, they can change shift patterns to make more redesigned rear fuselage sections to mate with those existing front sections without any wasted time.

 

[Air Force Brat]

Anyone can give a strong estimate of how many J-20s produced so far? Including Prototypes and initial series production.

Probably < 30?

13 is a strong estimate Sir, anything else at this point is conjecture. Some such as Mr. Blitzo believe there are a few more? there may be, but there is little evidence to substantiate that?

 

[Blitzo]

I thought Bltizo sort of answered it in his article: a minimum of 13 in service.

13 is a very hard floor.

But as I alluded to in the piece, I consider it very much a hard floor. It is rare for us to have all of the confirmed serials of a new type of fighter aircraft in the first few years of it entering service.

There should almost definitely be more, we just don't know how many more.

 

[Blitzo]

With 13 known tail numbers of production standard aircraft, it would do well to remember that 5th Generation aircraft at the top end are very difficult to bring to fruition, and almost as difficult to maintain, its a little premature to assume that its all a "done deal" here on the front end of J-20 production.

Like those early F-35's that will likely never be fully combat coded and permanently assigned to test and eval, you move forward and do it as you are able, there's a valid reason we haven't seen J-20 production ramped up......

so far no one here has adequately explained it? it may simply be PLAAF priorities, or it could just be "real life" 5th Gen aircraft development/production issues??

or it could be as simple as the money? and China has lots of high end projects such as aircraft carriers that are taking up a similar amount of engineering, time, and money???

so we shall see???

Did you read the piece?

It explains why we haven't seen J-20 numbers "ramp up". It's because we don't have anywhere near regular photos of the factory anymore, and because we don't have pictures of all of the in service aircraft but only a number of them.


For all we know they might have been producing a couple of dozen J-20s a year (not that I think they currently are) and we might not know it.


In other words, we don't yet know what J-20's production rate is, so we don't know if' it's already been "ramped up" yet or not, because if it has we probably wouldn't know about it either.

 

[Air Force Brat]

Did you read the piece?

It explains why we haven't seen J-20 numbers "ramp up". It's because we don't have anywhere near regular photos of the factory anymore, and because we don't have pictures of all of the in service aircraft but only a number of them.


For all we know they might have been producing a couple of dozen J-20s a year (not that I think they currently are) and we might not know it.


In other words, we don't yet know what J-20's production rate is, so we don't know if' it's already been "ramped up" yet or not, because if it has we probably wouldn't know about it either.

I did indeed read it, I also realize that F-22, F-35, Su-57, FC-31 have all had well published issues which have required time, money, and engineering to resolve... and have indeed resulted in production slowdowns, and even stoppages... each of these programs have resulted in fewer airframes over a much longer period of time than initially anticipated??

Its naïve in the extreme to believe the J-20 has not had similar issues as a "hot off the drawing board, clean sheet design", as well, I'm going to stand by my own observation that even when we haven't gotten J-20 pictures, we've had a great deal of anecdotal evidence when a new bird was rolled out...

I realize China has clamped down on the release of pictures and information, but that has not stopped more credible information from reliable sources...

So thirteen serialized birds that we know of? in each post I have allowed that there could indeed be more, but honestly, I'm extremely skeptical of the "rumors"..

I think the more likely scenario is that the J-20 continues to be like all the other birds, and is requiring more time, money, and engineering to "break through" a threshold, and there will be many more "thresholds" that need to be breached???

as well, the idea that this production slow down is simply the result of "changing" production to the domestic WS-10 does not fully explain it away, changing engines has been very well thought out and planned, just a J-20 maintenance hasn't been a real surprise to the Chinese engineers and technicians, they are very well prepared for all of these eventualities?