J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VI

[ougoah]

If you're making a case for Russia and China cooperating in current and future projects by "trading notes" and complementing each other's strengths, e.g. J-20 with manufacturing, stealth and other more obvious and observable strengths over Su-57, and Sukhoi with aerodynamics, this may be a fruitful endeavor in theory but there are so many political barriers. Not sure what the article was suggesting about this having taken place and what exactly happened but I share the opinion that it is not something we will see because neither side stand to really gain all that much.

Su-57 is no doubt aerodynamically competent and innovative in some ways whereas J-20's is a little more conservative as far as we can tell. Comparing it to Typhoon and Rafale is not exactly fair since J-20 makes a stronger attempt at reducing radar signature and manages to be a fighter with internal bays which none of the Europeans have yet to do (not saying they couldn't). All moving stabilisers, long coupled canards with LERX, and positioning of stabilisers behind engine nozzles, are all things we don't see on Eurocanards either, or have ever seen on fighters except for all moving stabilisers from PAKFA prototypes. F-23 is quite a bit more aerodynamically "advanced" than F-22 on the surface as well. The USAF picked the F-22 for various reasons. One of them would have been reliability of proven designs and layouts. To conclude Chinese engineers are completely 100% incapable of achieving the aerodynamic advancements represented by technologies used on Su-57 either today or in years time, is definitely not something we can be sure of. Trading notes on one of your military's top pieces of strategic hardware is also something I doubt either party sees benefit in.

China's unfortunate culture of rushing for results through whatever means within a society that is ultra competitive and currently unscrupulous leads to this less than efficient competitiveness on the western level. I don't think this is revealing of future problems since we see trends of improvement and greater standards becoming enforced in all matters of politics and academics. Otherwise how would they have made the undeniably enormous progress they have in the last few decades? Quantum computing and communications, research in renewable energy sources (most patents and highest efficiencies in many fields such as solar), medical sciences, medical engineers, space technologies, IT, semiconductors, transport...... the list is actually endless and impressive for a country that only 30 years ago, did not have any of this or even the basic tools and infrastructure to pursue even one of these fields. It's easy and convenient to use the old excuse that Chinese just steal and copy foreign technologies. That is only a half truth. It ignores the fact that stealing technology is almost impossible and few cases have really been proven. It's not like anyone can just go about snooping on all sorts of technologies and then immediately be able to reverse engineer all of them. Copying and reverse engineering is extremely difficult and if it were easy, everyone would be doing it, yet so very few have proven to be capable of it. If Chinese scientific progress was as fake as some might like to think, not a shred of real progress could have been made. Yes China certainly benefited from Western and Soviet assistance in earlier days but much of the progress has been made on their own steam. To disregard this by writing academic research off as inefficient is too short sighted.

 

[latenlazy]

LOL, no limitations on J-20's use on an aircraft carrier! Kool, so you're going to link and quote at length, an article which proclaims the J-20 is also capable of being utilized on China's aircraft carriers,, that's even more bizarre than the J-20's gross weight is 15 tons, whatever makes you guys happy I guess??

If it's pro-China, it must be true, and Forbin is right the F-22 and F-35s will be kept nice and warm ready to scramble, rather than attempt to start and launch in a "cold soaked" condition! The Russians would love to have the facilities that the US has in order to "keep those birds ready", China does appear to be building hangars to facilitate keeping the J-20 dry and ice free,,, deicing takes LOTS of time and money, in an Arctic environment, where aircraft may accumulate snow and ice, you've got to be very careful, even taking a wet aircraft outside can cause control surfaces and actuators to "freeze".

Do we apply the same standard of skepticism to claims that sound extraordinary from other countries? I think a degree of skepticism is in order for these articles based on nothing less than whether their claims were properly sourced and interpreted, but simply dismissing a claim as out of hand because it sounds incredulous to you may not be the most objective or well reasoned thing to do.

Let's put it this way; China has the world's second highest R&D spending, with a dollar value of research greater than Japan and South Korea combined. Yet what does China get for it? An industry rife with plagiarized and derivative papers. It's not something intrinsic in Chinese culture, but it does represent a lower level of research and development experience.

You’d think that, if Chinese research really were so ineffective, they wouldn’t be posied to compete in so many technically advanced industries. China publishes enough research where a sizable portion could be shoddy and they could still have either the most or second most output filtered by quality. If we’re going to compare absolute numbers, then proportion of bad papers does not erase the absolute number of good papers.

 

[Inst]

A lot of Chinese technological strength is based on China playing catch-up and outright pirating technologies. In cases where China does have the lead, it's often a matter of funding and secrecy: Chinese quantum cryptography successes are based on China diverting funding to the field, whereas fundamental research is more neglected in the West.

In either case, note that the figures for the WS-10 suggest it's a roughly 2015 product that's roughly equivalent to a 90s F-110. The Chinese have been throwing money at engines for decades with little to show for it, whereas the Russians have been able to produce innovative and interesting products despite a massive loss of funding. In terms of cash efficiency, it makes more sense to outsource everything that is not sensitive to the Russians, such as a TVC-capable FCS.

If Sino-Russian relations have improved, there's little to lose by throwing 117S into some J-20s until the WS-15 is ready.

 

[latenlazy]

A lot of Chinese technological strength is based on China playing catch-up and outright pirating technologies. In cases where China does have the lead, it's often a matter of funding and secrecy: Chinese quantum cryptography successes are based on China diverting funding to the field, whereas fundamental research is more neglected in the West.

In either case, note that the figures for the WS-10 suggest it's a roughly 2015 product that's roughly equivalent to a 90s F-110. The Chinese have been throwing money at engines for decades with little to show for it, whereas the Russians have been able to produce innovative and interesting products despite a massive loss of funding. In terms of cash efficiency, it makes more sense to outsource everything that is not sensitive to the Russians, such as a TVC-capable FCS.

If Sino-Russian relations have improved, there's little to lose by throwing 117S into some J-20s until the WS-15 is ready.

If it were just catch up and piracy then they wouldn’t be able to innovate past that base on their own, which they have shown ample ability to do.

There are many technologies where the visibility of progress works like a ratchet more than curve, especially for technologies where the cadence of development is slower.

 

[Inst]

If you're making a case for Russia and China cooperating in current and future projects by "trading notes" and complementing each other's strengths, e.g. J-20 with manufacturing, stealth and other more obvious and observable strengths over Su-57, and Sukhoi with aerodynamics, this may be a fruitful endeavor in theory but there are so many political barriers. Not sure what the article was suggesting about this having taken place and what exactly happened but I share the opinion that it is not something we will see because neither side stand to really gain all that much.

Su-57 is no doubt aerodynamically competent and innovative in some ways whereas J-20's is a little more conservative as far as we can tell. Comparing it to Typhoon and Rafale is not exactly fair since J-20 makes a stronger attempt at reducing radar signature and manages to be a fighter with internal bays which none of the Europeans have yet to do (not saying they couldn't). All moving stabilisers, long coupled canards with LERX, and positioning of stabilisers behind engine nozzles, are all things we don't see on Eurocanards either, or have ever seen on fighters except for all moving stabilisers from PAKFA prototypes. F-23 is quite a bit more aerodynamically "advanced" than F-22 on the surface as well. The USAF picked the F-22 for various reasons. One of them would have been reliability of proven designs and layouts. To conclude Chinese engineers are completely 100% incapable of achieving the aerodynamic advancements represented by technologies used on Su-57 either today or in years time, is definitely not something we can be sure of. Trading notes on one of your military's top pieces of strategic hardware is also something I doubt either party sees benefit in.

China's unfortunate culture of rushing for results through whatever means within a society that is ultra competitive and currently unscrupulous leads to this less than efficient competitiveness on the western level. I don't think this is revealing of future problems since we see trends of improvement and greater standards becoming enforced in all matters of politics and academics. Otherwise how would they have made the undeniably enormous progress they have in the last few decades? Quantum computing and communications, research in renewable energy sources (most patents and highest efficiencies in many fields such as solar), medical sciences, medical engineers, space technologies, IT, semiconductors, transport...... the list is actually endless and impressive for a country that only 30 years ago, did not have any of this or even the basic tools and infrastructure to pursue even one of these fields. It's easy and convenient to use the old excuse that Chinese just steal and copy foreign technologies. That is only a half truth. It ignores the fact that stealing technology is almost impossible and few cases have really been proven. It's not like anyone can just go about snooping on all sorts of technologies and then immediately be able to reverse engineer all of them. Copying and reverse engineering is extremely difficult and if it were easy, everyone would be doing it, yet so very few have proven to be capable of it. If Chinese scientific progress was as fake as some might like to think, not a shred of real progress could have been made. Yes China certainly benefited from Western and Soviet assistance in earlier days but much of the progress has been made on their own steam. To disregard this by writing academic research off as inefficient is too short sighted.

Design-wise, the J-20 is for me a kitchen-sink fighter. Excluding the missile rail, every aspect of the J-20 has been tried on some other aircraft, every aspect of the J-20 could have been developed simply from incorporating some other aerospace complex's work. It's somewhat more similar to a masters thesis than a doctoral dissertation; it's a synthesis of existing design concepts and paradigms, and a reasonably successful one at that, but it is not striking original in the same way the Su-57 or F-22 are original. That's not to say that Chinese aerospace design will always be this way: the J-20 is either the last or penultimate Chinese fighter that is marked more by its derivations than innovations.

 

[Air Force Brat]

Do we apply the same standard of skepticism to claims that sound extraordinary from other countries? I think a degree of skepticism is in order for these articles based on nothing less than whether their claims were properly sourced and interpreted, but simply dismissing a claim as out of hand because it sounds incredulous to you may not be the most objective or well reasoned thing to do.


You’d think that, if Chinese research really were so ineffective, they wouldn’t be posied to compete in so many technically advanced industries. China publishes enough research where a sizable portion could be shoddy and they could still have either the most or second most output filtered by quality. If we’re going to compare absolute numbers, then proportion of bad papers does not erase the absolute number of good papers.

YES, I do apply the same standards, an article that is so poorly researched, making claims that clearly are untrue, shouldn't be used to formulate your own thinking on the opposition..

but as I said, whatever? I don't agree with the negative posts against China or the J-20 on the same principle, as I've said before the J-20 is an amazing aircraft, the engineering is forward thinking, but to be honest, the J-20 has NOT been designed as a Naval fighter to operate off China's aircraft carriers....

aft mounted delta designs, are not the first choice for generating low-speed lift, even with canards it takes more airspeed to "pitch the aircraft" to produce maximum lift.. so while you could no doubt catapult the J-20 off the deck, recovery would be more complex....

to illustrate, I suggest that we look at the video's showing the Concorde coming in for a landing, it requires such a high angle of attack, that the cockpit section was hinged in order to allow the aircrew to see the runway, canards help, but cannot completely compensate for the center of lift being that far aft.

anyway, most of these posts are far off-topic, and not a single pretty picture to back up any of it, other than the J-20 sitting outside a hangar.. end of off topic and back to the J-20

 

[FORBIN]

LOL, no limitations on J-20's use on an aircraft carrier! Kool, so you're going to link and quote at length, an article which proclaims the J-20 is also capable of being utilized on China's aircraft carriers,, that's even more bizarre than the J-20's gross weight is 15 tons, whatever makes you guys happy I guess??

If it's pro-China, it must be true, and Forbin is right the F-22 and F-35s will be kept nice and warm ready to scramble, rather than attempt to start and launch in a "cold soaked" condition! The Russians would love to have the facilities that the US has in order to "keep those birds ready", China does appear to be building hangars to facilitate keeping the J-20 dry and ice free,,, deicing takes LOTS of time and money, in an Arctic environment, where aircraft may accumulate snow and ice, you've got to be very careful, even taking a wet aircraft outside can cause control surfaces and actuators to "freeze".

As severals others
Hendrik_2000 know only China a chauvinist... ignore all for others Military Forces in more arrogant
no respect for others countries etc.. for proof F-22/35 stealth coating and a time say USN have 60 CG/DDGs they have almost 90 recently Europe can't build a new fighters usual garbages with almost each time a vicious presentation to begin the post it is a shame
I can add others things but i don't want lost my time with this guy
Not objective and neutral... and intolerant the Western bashing is obvious and since a while.

In more without moderation or almost sure the problems arrive...

 

[ougoah]

J-20 may be kitchen sink aerodynamically so to speak but it's the first complete Chinese mass produced fighter product not 100% based on or completely derived from another existing platform from Flankers to Lavi. It is also the first stealth platform in PLAAF. Let's just say kitchen sink or not (F-22 is also kitchen sink by that definition), it manages to do many things never done in China in its entire history. That alone shows the progress. Also I can't understand the relevance of J-20's supposed standard, non-innovative aerodynamics. So what about it? The PLAAF didn't want advanced aerodynamics as priority. The program's main priority is deliverying a VLO platform which it managed as far as we can tell. I don't have any doubts that CAC engineers could have delivered something like Su-57 if they wanted to. If they can sort out FCS for planes like J-20, J-10, and all the drones we see, Su-57 aerodynamics isn't really all that difficult on top of these projects (although none of us can be sure). The biggest struggle would probably still be engines and not FCS or the frame. Anyway I don't see the point of aerodynamics here. J-20 aerodynamics are capable enough. Only limiting factor is thrust. So again what's the relevance of aerodynamics?

 

[ougoah]

As severals others
Hendrik_2000 know only China a chauvinist... ignore all for others Military Forces in more arrogant
no respect for others countries etc.. for proof F-22/35 stealth coating and a time say USN have 60 CG/DDGs they have almost 90 recently Europe can't build a new fighters usual garbages with almost each time a vicious presentation to begin the post it is a shame
I can add others things but i don't want lost my time with this guy
Not objective and neutral... and intolerant the Western bashing is obvious and since a while.

In more without moderation or almost sure the problems arrive...

Stop being so sensitive. As soon as the word Europe is mentioned you automatically assume we're bad mouthing Europeans. Please take time to read properly and understand the context. When I said Europe hasn't managed to build internal bays. That's true and a fact. I also said (in case of sensitive people) that European companies probably can achieve this. The point being made is that J-20 has managed to do many things not done before in China for sure and also places that usually lead this industry. Example, internal bays, all moving stabilisers. So if we are to take Su-57's LEVCONs as some holy divine aerodynamic technology because it's never been done before, we should also say the same for internal bays in J-20 etc for China. Comparing typhoon and rafale (Inst) to J-20 and saying J-20 is underwhelming aerodynamically because canards have been done before is completely ignoring the fact that CAC did this while integrating new avionics, electronics, sensors, internal bays, better frame for stealth, all moving stabilisers, different dimensions and weight distributions on top of the canard layout. This was done in a country and by an organisation that has never done anything like this before.

 

[FORBIN]

the F-22 and F-35s will be kept nice and warm ready to scramble, rather than attempt to start and launch in a "cold soaked" condition! The Russians would love to have the facilities that the US has in order to "keep those birds ready", China does appear to be building hangars to facilitate keeping the J-20 dry and ice free,,, deicing takes LOTS of time and money, in an Arctic environment, where aircraft may accumulate snow and ice, you've got to be very careful, even taking a wet aircraft outside can cause control surfaces and actuators to "freeze".

More interesting,
Russian AF don't have air bases with shelters fighters are outside
In Europe with Cold War and a eventual War majority of Air bases as for Taiwan, Japan, South Korea close USSR... also have hardened shelters
Chinese air bases with recent birds have shelters, air bases with old no when you see new shelters almost sure the base have or received for soon a new type.