Chinese purchase of Su-35

Deino said:

My point is simply that since the alleged signing of that contract such reports are regularily popping up all over from time to time ... just like this one from August 3. That however does not mean they are delivered:

My point is simply that "China receives 24 Su-35 fighters" is different to "China will receive 24 Su-35 fighters some day in 2017"

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Let me clarify something, Su-35 flew in 2008, it started initial deliveries in 2011 and it finished the first contract in 2015 to the VVS with 48 aircraft.

Su-35 has around 5-6 years of being marketed to China, but only one year since the Russian officially said China signed the contract.

Su-35 is a very complex aircraft even for Russian standards, it was built in numbers of no more than 12 aircraft a year, consider that just recently Russia delivered the 100th Su-34, so this aircraft are no MiG-21s, they are expensive and complex machines, specially the Su-35 that incorporates 5th generation technologies.

The report of August 3rd 2016 is by Rostec, and Chemezov its CEO is the one quoted, so pretty much i can say the deliveries will be in a time frame of 2017-2020

b787 said:

... so pretty much i can say the deliveries will be in a time frame of 2017-2020

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Then that is what they should say.

...and not, "China receives 24 Su-35 fighters."

Can you see the difference?

One states it has already happened...that's their official wording. You then translate/parse that for the rest of us and tell when it is going to happen.

That's a huge difference, and does not do a lot for any confidence I have in what they say.

Like I have said numerous times...at this point I will only believe it when the Chinese announce it with pictures of the aircraft on Chinese soil.

SteelBird said:

Old question, when J-20 is almost operational, why Su-35?

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Well, the reason should be the balance of trade between the two countries, you may need to look at a bigger picture.

To Russia, besides natural resource, military hardware exportation is one big source of income for their economy since the Soviet era, Putin definitely dont want Russia to become a third world country which can only export natural resource, he want Russia has an industry, to keep their industry a-float, they need exportation.

But probably the only industrial products the Russia can produce now is weapon so for the sake of balancing trade China may have to import some Russia industrial outputs other than oil/gas/wood/ores.

And Russia do need China's import of Russia weapon, not just for the money, but also for the adversiment effects.

For China, military exportation is not a big deal in their economy, so maybe China think its OK to do that from a political point of view, especially considering the semi-alliance status between the two countries recently.

You have to give something after take something, espeically if it is a country you regard as a potential ally.

However, PLA may not need these weapon very much and CATIC/China defence industry hate the idea because it will hurt their exportation (which produced 10x more profits than sell weapons to PLA at a strictly controlled price), and these people have political connections in China too.

Thats why despite of maybe the leadership agree to import some Russian weapons now it still take such unusual length of time to just finish the deal.

Jeff Head said:

Then that is what they should say.

...and not, "China receives 24 Su-35 fighters."

Can you see the difference?

One states it has already happened...that's their official wording. You then translate/parse that for the rest of us and tell when it is going to happen.

That's a huge difference, and does not do a lot for any confidence I have in what they say.

Like I have said numerous times...at this point I will only believe it when the Chinese announce it with pictures of the aircraft on Chinese soil.

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English is not my first language, but the wording of the phrases says China will recieve Su-35s, or it is a fact it receives (has ordered; are in order) basically they are saying their plan is to get the aircraft and already have ordered the jet aircraft, if the english is not correct then consider the English was taken from Rostec which is a Russian website owned by the Government of Russia, so probably English is not their first language, but who knows they might have translators from the USA or England

b787 said:

... basically they are saying their plan is to get the aircraft and already have ordered the jet aircraft, if the english is not correct then consider the English was taken from Rostec which is a Russian website owned by the Government of Russia, so probably English is not their first language, but who knows they might have translators from the USA or England

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I would think that they would have English speaking people who would not make sucha basic mistake.

Huge difference in English between saying that someone has received something already, and that they have ordered them and will get them later.

That's pretty easy to say.

My experience over more than ten years dealing with these various websites for companies like this, and particularly Russian ones, is that they almost always gin up the story...that means that they make it say something that they hope will happen in the near future as opposed to reporting or saying what is actually happening.

SteelBird said:

Old question, when J-20 is almost operational, why Su-35?

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I think it is pretty straight forward.

35 SU-35s is not going to make a huge difference in the overall balance of things, especially when the Chinese are putting aircraft like the J-20 out, the J-16, the J-11D, J-10C, etc., etc.

I believe what the Chinese really want are those engines...and Russia is desperate enough for the business and the money to make the sale...knowing full well that the Chinese will dive into those engines, figure them out in detail, and help their own engine development program.

But those are just my thoughts on the matter.

There are two months until November, which is when Zhuhai Airshow takes place. As is the case of previous years, the Russians have to make some noise about Su-35 to feel relevant.

Engineer said:

There are two months until November, which is when Zhuhai Airshow takes place. As is the case of previous years, the Russians have to make some noise about Su-35 to feel relevant.

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It's like Hollywood. They put out teasers, trailers and teasers to trailers and hire newspapers to write about them...

Jeff Head said:

I think oit is pretty straight forward.

35 SU-35s is not going to make a huge difference in the overall balance of things, especially when the Chinese are putting aircraft like the J-20 out, the J-16, the J-11D, J-10C, etc., etc.

I believe what the Chinese really want are those engines...and Russia is desperate enough for the business and the money to make the sale...knowing full well that the Chinese will dive into those engines, figure them out in detail, and help their own engine development program.

But those are just my thoughts on the matter.

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Acording to the reports i have read the 117 engines on Su-35 are not the most advanced engines Russia has now the PAKFA has a different version of the 117, but type 29 is the the test bench as we speak, the Russian reports i have read and what Pierre Spey and Chuck Yeager have said, is stealth is not as good as said so Russia is working on a different strategy, Su-35 is a threat to nations like Japan and the Philippines because the SU-35 has range that no J-11/Su-27 made in China has and no Chinese aircraft will supercruise

Jeff Head said:

I think oit is pretty straight forward.

35 SU-35s is not going to make a huge difference in the overall balance of things, especially when the Chinese are putting aircraft like the J-20 out, the J-16, the J-11D, J-10C, etc., etc.

I believe what the Chinese really want are those engines...and Russia is desperate enough for the business and the money to make the sale...knowing full well that the Chinese will dive into those engines, figure them out in detail, and help their own engine development program.

But those are just my thoughts on the matter.

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I believe there are quite a number of things China could learn from the Su-35, such as how the Russian handles advanced radar and information integration, and how they achieve super maneuverability with advanced flight control. China may have similar system themselves but it will always help to see how others tackled the problem (to a certain degree, not that they will get all the source code and know-how). It may also give them more ideas on how to squeeze the most out of future J-11/15/16 variants. Last but not least, they will have a high-performance target to benchmark their own products with.

As for the engines, I'm sure they'd be interested to take a look and get some valuable knowledge about how the Russian develops a newer generation engine. But this may not be any more important then other aspects of things. I'm saying that because the development cycle for engine is very long, and it'd be way too late if they really wanted to use this to aid WS-15 development (if that is the case then this deal would not have dragged so long). Every different turbonfan is a tightly integrated system that its parts could not be easily interchanged, given that newer Chinese engines are not based on the same core and configuration of the 117s, there won't be much they could take from it and apply on current projects.