China Flanker Thread III (land based, exclude J-15)
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
Warms my dark little Cold War heart.
Report from 2022-12-13, more than 20 2nd Gen fighter pilots from a certain Brigade under the STC are undergoing conversion training at Huizhou AB which is the home base of the 26th Brigade also under the STC
Recent report about the ground crew of a certain AB under the STC
Recent report about the ground crew of a certain AB under the STC
What's up with employing unguided rockets on a large multirole jet in 2022? Can someone explain how is that useful in training for modern age combat?
If the enemy has been degraded to the point that you can actually pull something like that off, your side has already won the war. The hard part is getting to that point, which is the sort of training they should be doing. Frankly, the fact that they continue to do this sort of training it has me concerned.
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1: using unguided munitions requires the crew to accurately plan and execute attack courses and have good control of the jet during the attack. No last-minute jinking, no sloppy attitude controls, everything needs to be spot on to have good accuracy. This in and of itself is good training
2: there are huge stockpiles of unguided munitions that are lying around, better to use them as training and kill two birds with one stone
3: apparently PLAAF has rather strict control on publicizing their (at least newer) air to ground capabilities, resulting in a lot of photos and videos of unguided munitions employment and only a few guided ones. This doesn’t necessarily suggest that PLAAF doesn’t train with guided munitions nor is it an accurate representation of their current weapons stockpile. For near examples look no further than Zhuhai 2022, where a guided and powered sub-munitions dispenser/ cruise missile (ADK-98) Just appeared out of nowhere, as well as 1000kg anti-bunker guided bomb and a new variant of yj-83 with folding wings, just to name a few.
If they were flying an A-10, I’d understand. But is this a realistic scenario for a Flanker? If not, it’s a waste of time. Yet it has become iconic of the PLAAF.
However, they don’t have the same restrictions towards AAMs. There has to be more to it than the 2 reasons you listed.
Furthermore , it makes for rather bad publicity as it portrays the PLAAF as a force who’s ground attack doctrine is still stuck in the 60s.
Question is how much actual time is actually spent on doing this kind of training, might be very low, and it being iconic is just due to there only being videos of that.
I dunno about how much the PLA cares about publicity, or well to be more precise, they care about it, but at the same time has an interest in not revealing too much.
Not to mention, it could also be some 'lasting' remnants of older policy that just haven't been changed (not revealing PGMS etc.)