Chinese air to air missiles

jobjed

Captain
I can understand a make work decision like the FC-31, which isn’t beyond how Chinese SOEs operate, but a missile is an entirely different matter. You don’t just make a missile whose primary reason for existing is to be able to fit 6 into the J-20’s weapons bay with an off hand shrug. There are systems integration factors to consider. You’d need to coordinate with the J-20’s development to make sure that it can mount 6 of those missiles, or else that completely defeats the point of the missile, and features like how many mounts the weapons bay can hold are strictly dictated by the PLA. In order for the J-20 to mount 6 PL-12s, the J-20 needed to be able to have 6 mounts in its weapons bay, and if the J-20 was developed with 6 mounts in mind that had to have been something decided by the PLA early on.

AVIC wants six PL-15s for the FC-31 anyway even if the PLA didn't ask for it for the J-20, and we don't know if the PLA asked for it. Pb didn't elaborate on why the PLA isn't insisting on it, only that there's a possibility the PL-15 folding-fin version mightn't enter service.

Also, the PLA doesn't control the design parameters of their equipment, only the functional requirements. The institutes, all owned by AVIC, decide the design parameters. Things like fire-control system architecture and design of internal pylons are out of the PLA's control. Whether the list of functional requirements include six PL-15s is ambiguous as the PL-15 is a class above the AIM-120 and the PLA's original goal for the J-20 was to match the F-22, later changed to matching the F-35, and neither Fs have a PL-15-type missile, only the PL-12-type AIM-120. The likely functional requirement issued by the PLA was six PL-12s, matching the F-22's six AIM-120s. The PL-15 came afterwards.
 

latenlazy

Brigadier
AVIC wants six PL-15s for the FC-31 anyway even if the PLA didn't ask for it for the J-20, and we don't know if the PLA asked for it. Pb didn't elaborate on why the PLA isn't insisting on it, only that there's a possibility the PL-15 folding-fin version mightn't enter service.

Also, the PLA doesn't control the design parameters of their equipment, only the functional requirements. The institutes, all owned by AVIC, decide the design parameters. Things like fire-control system architecture and design of internal pylons are out of the PLA's control. Whether the list of functional requirements include six PL-15s is ambiguous as the PL-15 is a class above the AIM-120 and the PLA's original goal for the J-20 was to match the F-22, later changed to matching the F-35, and neither Fs have a PL-15-type missile, only the PL-12-type AIM-120. The likely functional requirement issued by the PLA was six PL-12s, matching the F-22's six AIM-120s. The PL-15 came afterwards.
Pretty sure weapons load out would qualify as a crucial component of the functional requirements. And of course there probably wasn’t an original requirement to fit 6 PL-15s when the PL-15s didn’t exist, but if the PL-15s and the PL-12s share roughly the same dimension then an original requirement to fit 6 PL-12s also means it should be possible to fit 6 PL-15s, hence my original question (probably best to end this particular point of discussion here, since I think we’re now talking in circles...)
 

Klon

Junior Member
Registered Member
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A type of testing machine tests and shoots the PL10 target. After a missile is alerted, a new intelligent target is converted to remote operation AI assistance. When the target is XXX kilometers per hour and the 9G mobile dodges, the testing machine launches PL10 at an angle of XX, and the missile uses Mach X. The off-target probability is XX% when the available G value is XX. . . . After improving the guided rate control system to optimize the missile's angular velocity and interception path, the off-target rate was reduced to XX%, and 12 times of 12-odd achievements were obtained from multiple test and target shooting.
 

weig2000

Captain
Chinese Missiles Are Transforming the Balance of Power in the Skies

By
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May 7, 2018, 4:00 PM EDT
  • U.S. air dominance challenged by China, Russia technology
  • China air-to-air missiles viewed as world class by Pentagon
For a quarter century, the U.S. and its allies owned the skies, fighting wars secure in the knowledge that no opponent could compete in the air. As tensions with Russia and China surge, that’s no longer the case.

Rapid technological progress in China’s aerospace industry, particularly air-to-air missile systems fired from an aircraft, is changing the game for Western air forces and the global arms trade. It’s also altering the picture for China’s neighbors such as India.

Russia took the lead in modernizing its air force, and has been more willing to use it. In the longer term, however, China’s roughly $13 trillion economy and growing wealth mean it is likely to pose the greater strategic challenge for the U.S. and its allies. In 2017, Chinese defense spending rose by 5.6 percent in constant U.S. dollar terms, while Russia’s fell by 20 percent,
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the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. China spent $228 billion last year and Russia $66.3 billion, SIPRI said.

“We had an environment where we could do whatever we wanted in the air, and what the Chinese have done is to say you no longer can,” said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. As a result, U.S. commanders now have to take into account potential loss rates for pilots and aircraft that they haven’t had to face since the 1980s.

The U.S. air force remains the strongest by far. Yet the Chinese advances come at a sensitive time, as the U.S. appetite to continue its role as global policeman fades. Meanwhile President Xi Jinping has set ambitious goals to dominate advanced industries like robotics and artificial intelligence and to assert Chinese interests in the disputed South China Sea and beyond.

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An F-117 Stealth fighter awaits preparation at a secret base for another run on Iraqi targets in 1991.

Photographer: Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
The catch-up by Russia and China has been a long time coming, triggered in each case by shock at the ease with which the U.S. air force demolished opponents in the 1990s, according to Vasily Kashin, a specialist in military aviation at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics at the National Research University.

For China, that moment came during the first Gulf War, when an American air campaign swiftly crushed the Iraqi military, at the time better equipped than China’s. For Russia, he said, the wake-up came in 1999, when a U.S.-led bombing campaign forced Serbia to withdraw troops and tanks from its own province, Kosovo.

Taiwan (which China considers a province) has
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a factor for Beijing. The U.S. called in two aircraft carrier battle groups to support the island during a dust-up with China in 1996 and has provided $18 billion in arms since 2008.

China Rising
U.S. still dominates, but China's defense spending is rising steadily

Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)

Note: In billions of constant 2016 U.S. dollars

Some of China’s biggest strides are coming in air-to-air missiles, the weapons that for one or two million dollars can destroy a $150 million aircraft. That’s a cost efficient way of trying to level the playing field with the U.S.. China’s defense budget is well over three times as big as Russia’s or India’s, but still much lower than the $610 billion the U.S. spends, according to SIPRI.

In March, the U.S. Air Force awarded a half-billion-dollar contract to supply close allies with Raytheon Inc.’s latest long range air-to-air missile, capable of hitting enemy planes from 100 miles (160 kilometers) away. The Meteor, a new European equivalent, may be even more deadly. But China’s latest offering, the PL-15, has a greater range than either.

Airborne Warning
The PL-15 also supports an active electronically-scanned array radar that makes evasion difficult for the most agile of fighter jets. Russia has yet to succeed in equipping its own missiles with the technology. When the PL-15 was first tested in public, then-U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command chief Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle was concerned enough to call on Congress to fund a response.

Another Chinese air-to-air weapon in development, provisionally known as PL-XX, would strike slow-moving airborne warning and control systems, the flying neural centers of U.S. air warfare, from as far away as 300 miles. At closer quarters, China’s new PL-10 missile is comparable to the best “fire-and-forget” equivalents, meaning any dogfight would likely end with a so-called mutual kill, a significant deterrent.

“In the United States we’ve been on holiday for 25 years and maybe a little bit more,” Michael Griffin, under secretary of defense for research and engineering, said in a recent address to the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank. “We failed to continue to fund the practices that had gotten us where we were, which was at the very top of the technological heap.”

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A J-20 jet at the Zhuhai Air Show in 2016.

Photographer: AFP via Getty Images

To be continued
 

weig2000

Captain
...continued

Griffin said he was especially worried by Chinese and Russian progress in developing carrier-fleet killing hypersonic missiles that the U.S., as yet, lacks the space-based capacity to detect in time to shoot down. The planes to deliver China’s new armory of missiles have also improved dramatically, with new fleets developed from Russian air frames. This year, the air force is set to receive the last of 24 state of the art SU-35S fighters from Russia, while China has begun deploying the Chengdu J-20, a home-grown stealth fighter.

Combat modeling by think tank Rand Corp. found that China last year, for the first time, had achieved parity with the U.S. in air superiority for any conflict close to its mainland, including over Taiwan.

To be sure, China still has a long way to achieve conventional -- let alone nuclear -- parity with the U.S. at a global level. Its jet engine technology remains weak and reliant on Russia, while its suite of new weapons are largely untested in combat. So are its pilots, still considered inferior to their Western counterparts in training and tactical skills.

Yet Chinese pilots, planes and weapons don’t have to be better than their U.S. counterparts to radically change battlefield calculations. The J-20, for example, has poor engines and is thought by aviation experts to be more easily detected from the rear and sides than a U.S. F-22 “Raptor”. But it would be hard to spot on approach and has a large weapons bay capable of hiding anti-ship missiles. That makes it a considerable threat.

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S-400 Triumf surface-to-air missile systems.

Photographer: Sergei Malgavko/TASS via Getty Images
China’s new aircraft, combined with the latest air-to-air, cruise, anti-ship and Russian S-400 air-defense systems (considered the world’s best) “have made the ability of the U.S. to operate in contested areas very high risk,” said Tim Heath, a senior international defense researcher at Rand.

This shift isn’t just important for the U.S.. India has watched with trepidation as Russia supplies Beijing -- and Beijing supplies Pakistan -- with more sophisticated weaponry.

China and Pakistan have co-produced the JF-17 fighter since 2007, with Russia providing high quality engines. In March, Chinese media reported the JF-17 will be upgraded with active array radar, allowing it to detect and fire on targets from a greater distance.

According to Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, Russia’s potential approval for China to resell its jet engines to Pakistan was the most frequent topic of discussion at weekly meetings of the National Security Council when she was assistant secretary to the NSC Secretariat from 2003-2007. If Pakistan’s jets were equipped with the new radar and China’s PL-10 missiles, now available for export, India’s aging Russian MiGs would struggle to compete, she said.

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Pakistan’s JF-17 Thunder fighter jet.

Photographer: Rizwan Tabassum/AFP via Getty Images
The arms sales are symptomatic of a much more worrying regional realignment of Russia – traditionally India’s biggest arms supplier – with China, said Rajagopalan, now head of the Nuclear and Space Policy Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank. “The Russians are in a weak position now, and they feel it is better to be in the Chinese camp,” she said.

India last month put out an international call for bids for a $15 billion contract to provide 110 new combat aircraft. Pakistan has just over 100 JF-17s and is producing 25 new ones a year.

Beijing’s technological progress is also having knock-on effects beyond South Asia. China has moved from its traditional position as a provider of cheap small arms to poor nations, to become the world’s number three arms trader in volume terms. That includes the sale of armed drones to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and other nations to which the U.S. declined to sell its Reaper drone technology.

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An MQ-9 Reaper drone.

Photographer: Isaac Brekken/Getty Images
Some missiles China developed with Russian help are now considered as good if not better than the originals, and are on the international market.

Russia, at least, isn’t overly concerned by competition from the expanding military capabilities next door, according to Kashin. “They are certainly a growing power,” he said of China. “But they are not omnipotent, and they are Russia’s partner.”
 

Figaro

Senior Member
Registered Member
Sigh lol...
To be fair, the article is still considerably better than those published by Alex Lockie of Business Insider or Kyle Mizokami. The claims made by them make this article sound well-reasoned :p
 

SinoSoldier

Colonel
Sigh lol...

Did we ever get confirmation that the J-20 cannot be armed with ASuW weaponry? I get that the size and depth of the bay may proclude the loading of certain munitions, but one would think that such a capability is more dependent on the development of future AShMs than the configuration/size of the J-20.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
Did we ever get confirmation that the J-20 cannot be armed with ASuW weaponry? I get that the size and depth of the bay may proclude the loading of certain munitions, but one would think that such a capability is more dependent on the development of future AShMs than the configuration/size of the J-20.

Any AShM capable of being internally loaded in the J20 isn’t worth shooting, since it would have a very short range and small warhead, putting the J20 at significant risk for little gain. Any AShM worth shooting at enemy capital ships with won’t fit in the J20’s bays.

The J20 never was designed for and never will be used for anti shipping. Currently that is the role of China’s bomber and striker fleets, although the rumoured JHXX stealth striker would be an obvious candidate for internal carriage of worthwhile AShMs for surprise attacks.
 

SinoSoldier

Colonel
Any AShM capable of being internally loaded in the J20 isn’t worth shooting, since it would have a very short range and small warhead, putting the J20 at significant risk for little gain. Any AShM worth shooting at enemy capital ships with won’t fit in the J20’s bays.

The J20 never was designed for and never will be used for anti shipping. Currently that is the role of China’s bomber and striker fleets, although the rumoured JHXX stealth striker would be an obvious candidate for internal carriage of worthwhile AShMs for surprise attacks.

Then this, as I've stated above, would be a function of the PLAN's future AShM development rather than an inherent limitation of the J-20.
 
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