Please clarify status of J-7MF & J-7CP projects

and further complicate logistics? Needless to say, building and fielding 2 airplanes in the exact same performance and cost categories doesn't sound very logical.

That's the 10 billion dollar question, how is China going to replace its entire fleet or archaic J-7s and just retired J-6s?

In the short term, you will simply see upgrade of J-7 to J-7G and upgrade of J-8 to J-8F.

What about long term?
My personal view is that J-10 is going to do brunt of the work. Despite the endless complaint about the cost of J-10, it's still only about 25 million each for PLA(although probably much more expensive for export). That's incredibly cheap compared to how much Rafale and typhoon and the Teens cost. J-11 total will probably go to 400, because SAC needs work. And frankly, J-11 is a good platform to build into an attacker. JH-7 series will probably reach 200. That means, you have:
100 su-30
500 su-27sk/ubk/J-11
200 JH-7
I'm guessing you are trying to replace about 1500 J-7/J-8 and 500 Q-5 and H-6 here?
2000 - 800 = 1200
That means, you need about 1200 J-10s. Is that doable? I think so.
Projects like FC-1, F-7MF are not likely to get more than 100 orders.

a one-to-one replacement? Not even the US can afford that. Let's be serious.Even a one-to-two is a very ambitious goal for the PLAAF/PLANAF.

vincelee said:

a one-to-one replacement? Not even the US can afford that. Let's be serious.Even a one-to-two is a very ambitious goal for the PLAAF/PLANAF.

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it's not a 1-to-1 replacement. Remember, the entire J-6 fleet has just been retired. I'm guessing there are still 2000 fighters after that. That's a good number for pla to keep. You have to remember, the early J-10s and J-11s will be retiring at some point too.

My guess is that Su-30 will stay about 100 or so.

J-11s will reach about 200, not including the SKs and UBKs imported from Russia. China will decide if they will continue with J-11s later on.

JH-7A will probably number no more than 100 to 120.

JH-7A is still too dated an airframe to consider continuing production by the latter part of this decade.

FC-1s will number 100 to 150.

J-10s will probably number up to 1500, with about 300 using AL-31FNs and variants. The balance is up for China to decide in any mix if they wish to continue using AL-31FNs or shift to WS-10A.

We might see one or two more H-6H regiments made.

There is probably about over 1000 J-7s and 400 J-8IIs that may need replacing in the next decade or so except for new airframe J-8Fs and J-7Gs. There won't be a lot of J-7G or J-8F made, and probably the line for both may be temporarily halted for upgrades on existing aircraft. Perhaps a few may be built to plug for losses in attrition.

tphuang said:

oh brother, let me see if I can do this:
J-7MF is a plane in the J-7 series, but it's really a completely different fighter.
The intake is now located in the belly.
There is a lot of changes in the wing, tail, vertical stabilizer and such.
Originally, J-7 only had 2 hardpoints under the wings and one under the fuelsage. Now, it has 7 hardpoints.

The avionics on MF has reached modern standard.
It talks a lot about the changes that allowed for better fuel efficiency - better operating radius and such. Also, talked about the aerodynamics in different speed ranges.
6 hardpoints are under the wings and 1 is under the fuelsage.
The payload will be 4.5 tonnes.
The avionics will be dependent on the customer. MF uses a domestic turbojet engine. It says the development period is short+low cost. The progress of MF is behind FC-1. J-7FS is a prototype of MF?

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Typhuang, is this designation "j-7mf" another attempt by the PLAAF to make itself look more outdated than it really is? Even with all these airframe changes and weapons upgrades, this fighter is still technically a upgrade of the old mig-21. To a foreigner, it would appear as if the chinese were still using derivatives of 60's aircraft.

If the russians controled the j-7 program, they would probably have called it the j-29 by now.

I 'm not sure the final cost of the J-10 will be $25 million per plane. But if it is, than 1200 J-10 will cost $30 billion. Let's say that production will run at an average rate of 60 planes per year (not likely to happen anytime soon). that'll take 20 years to fill. Then the price for PLAF procurement will be about $1.5 billion per year. That is not unreasonable, especially when one considers that production will start out slowly for the first few years and as the years go by, China will have alot more money to throw onto their defense budgets.

But I should caution that 20 years is a long time, and in that time the price per plane will rise up considerably. Future upgraded versions (and there will be an upgraded version every 8 years or so) may cost double or triple its current value.

crobato said:

My guess is that Su-30 will stay about 100 or so.

J-11s will reach about 200, not including the SKs and UBKs imported from Russia. China will decide if they will continue with J-11s later on.

JH-7A will probably number no more than 100 to 120.

JH-7A is still too dated an airframe to consider continuing production by the latter part of this decade.

FC-1s will number 100 to 150.

J-10s will probably number up to 1500, with about 300 using AL-31FNs and variants. The balance is up for China to decide in any mix if they wish to continue using AL-31FNs or shift to WS-10A.

We might see one or two more H-6H regiments made.

There is probably about over 1000 J-7s and 400 J-8IIs that may need replacing in the next decade or so except for new airframe J-8Fs and J-7Gs. There won't be a lot of J-7G or J-8F made, and probably the line for both may be temporarily halted for upgrades on existing aircraft. Perhaps a few may be built to plug for losses in attrition.

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I highly doubt the j-10 will ever number more tahn 300-400. The plaaf might aquire 100 or so per upgraded batch. Wit the al-31 m1, m2, and m3 being the basis for each upgrade, i see no more than 300 j-10. Perhaps future vairents using ws-10a or a derivative will come out as the j-xx comes out.

The existing fleet of flankers will be modified and improved until probably 2015 or 2020, which is when the plane should be outdated, and the airframes will have no hours left.

jh-7a will probably cease production almost immediately now, as jh-7b is comming soon.

The remaining force of j-7gs and j-8fs will serve as standard interceptors for the plaaf until around 2015.

Migleader is right,

There will not be alot of J-10's. Future orders will be around 300 to 500. China does not want to put all their eggs in one basket. To keep multiple projects going requires spreading your production orders. This means China will procure significant numbers of FC-1's and J-11's. Particularly the naval variant of the J-11. The J-12 is expected to come out around 2015-2020 and orders for the J-10 will cease by then.

Not likely, J-10 is considered to be the superior airframe by people in plaaf, despite being cheaper (due to its smaller size and one less engine). Also, you are seeing innovations by CAC on J-10 that simply cannot be matched by J-11. You have to remember that CAC developed this thing, so it knows J-10 inside and out. Just by looking at the upgrade done by CAC on JF-17, you can think about the changes done for the next variant of J-10. It's been said that SAC still has not fully grasped su-27 even after 10 years of licensed production. Basically, J-10 will most likely get more orders than J-11 in the future due to the superior design capability of CAC over SAC.

Alright, I'm adding more now.

A summary of J-10's advantages over J-11 at this point:
1. cheaper price
2. production quality of J-10's assembly line is better than that of J-11. Actually, it's mentionned that even J-7's assembly line is better. Why is this? Apparently, the Russian workmanship wasn't great to begin with. When they gave us the assembly line, it's quality wasn't that great.
3. The production speed of J-10 is most likely greater due to its smaller size and such.
4. CAC developers are much more familiar with J-10 than SAC is with J-11. They have went through the experience of developing a 4th generation fighter. This means they will be able to apply changes much faster. It's been said that each bunch of J-10s coming out is improved from previous bunch. I believe Deino recently pointed out the door change to J-10.

To be fair, a list of J-11's advantages:
1. it's a heavy platform that allows for greater range and payload, it's something that plaaf has never had.
2. it can be used to be developed into a fighter-bomber like su-34

I do want to point out that J-10's range is probably not as short as some people have suggested. The range of J-10 with and w/o external tanks have not been published, but I think it's been greatly understated. I will just leave it as that.

If you look at the current production rate of J-10 and J-11, the ratio is probably 70-75 to 15-20 per year. It's clear to me that J-10 is going to get the majority of orders in the future. Also, I think J-8F/H will last in PLAAF a lot longer than most people would think.