Jura The idiot
General
and in the meantime, they got to:
(source: )
yet another game-changer, LOL
US F/A-XX and F-X 6th Gen Aircraft News Thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
yet another game-changer, LOL
Brumby
Major
Clouds are subject to attitude and weather conditions.
By the time the Chinese or Russians actually have long range stand off threats, the USAF can adopt plenty of disposable decoys like Britecloud on those tankers/AWACS.
Considering that an F-16 can easily accommodate 12 of these, a tanker/AWACs probably can accommodate a few dozen of these to counter a few long range missiles which historical has zero Pk success rate. .
You probably could. However, do any of us doubt the Chinese have stopped at 20? That number was reported a year ago and I cannot imagine the PLAAF suddenly deciding to stop production. We're probably talking about 30 or more J-20s now. Given the readiness rates of the F-22 and the lack of F-35s in the area, I would call that significant.
Jura The idiot
General
Brumby
Major
We don't know whether the Chinese have temporarily stopped J-20 production or not. No new pictures have surfaced for some time. This is not normal given the PR value associated with it. It is plausible if they ran into some serious issues. The recent Pentagon report did indicate that they ran into difficulty with the radar. The J-20 will have the same readiness issues as any 5th gen platform i.e. around 50 %. We don't know whether the J-20 is even ready for combat.
To be fair we've seen many of the usual sources on Chinese military images/news shut down in the past few months. FYJS is shutdown permanently and CJDBY was closed for two weeks and only back in a limited capacity. There is a paucity of photos and news even after the latter was brought back online. I wonder if this is the beginning of a new era of crackdowns on military leaks.
I never stated or even intended to imply that they were stopping production at 20 birds, but Chengdu is right in the middle of town, and we really haven't seen more than 5 J-20's together at any one time, and that my friend is odd, given all the satellite photo's floating around, I'm going out on a limb and stating that there should at least be anecdotal evidence had production continued apace, were we were seeing 4 new J-20's added to the fleet each year??
Siege there's no doubt there has been a significant lock down on information, but even if there are no photo's people do talk. I'm inclined to believe that the Chinese, like the US, like the Russians may very well be having issues with their only 5gen, remember, this bird is a stand alone project, its number one, and its not only possible, its more than very likely they have encountered issues as everyone else has attempting to bring their 5Gen bird online??
My apologies for the lack of posting on the thread. It's not a stomp off from losing an argument. I had my laptop stolen out my hands while I was on BART in the SF Bay area. sigh. I was tired and knew better, but...well, it'd been a long day. I have another now. sigh.
That said, I was told there was an amendment to the USAF request specifically for the NGAD. The AOA is apparently done and they are doing a reset. The budget request for 2020 was slashed in half to $500M from $1B. Assuming this is true, the PCA or whatever NGAD will become has been pushed back at least a couple years, assuming they haven't just scaled back a more ambitious aircraft program. As soon as a link emerges, I'll post.
That said, I was told there was an amendment to the USAF request specifically for the NGAD. The AOA is apparently done and they are doing a reset. The budget request for 2020 was slashed in half to $500M from $1B. Assuming this is true, the PCA or whatever NGAD will become has been pushed back at least a couple years, assuming they haven't just scaled back a more ambitious aircraft program. As soon as a link emerges, I'll post.