Chinese air to air missiles

Blitzo

Blitzo

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
lcloo said:
PL-15 will still be used by PLAAF/PLAN-Aviation until (1) they've depleted all inventory and (2) they've upgraded all their fighter jets to adopt PL-16.

PL-15 may still be produced in small scale to meet requirement of export orders, especially to Pakistan AF (J10CE and JF-17), and other operators of JF-17. However, if all foreign users of PL-15 have upgraded their fighter jets to use PL-16, that will end PL-15 production.

Third scenario is PLAAF stop using PL-15 and China stop producing PL-15 right away. All existing inventory of PL-15 be kept in reserve to meet requirement of foreign users. Admittedly, this is very unlikely to happen.
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TK3600 said:
The "make use of full capability of PL-16" argument also apply for PL-15. We know for a fact some older plane could not make full use of PL-15, but can still use it. At minimum PL-15 is better than PL-12 even without the full capability. Same argument apply to PL-16 vs PL-15.
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At this stage I don't see a reason to believe that aircraft that can accommodate PL-15 would need an upgrade to accommodate PL-16.

For the ranges that these missiles are operating in, they should be network centric by design at this stage and all the aircraft that we know can currently operate PL-15s should already be running datalinks that are rather high end and should comfortably accommodate PL-16, I imagine, and at most may just need some lines of software loaded.

But I would be surprised if a hardware avionics or radar upgrade is needed.
 
Wrought

Wrought

Senior Member
Registered Member
lcloo said:
PL-15 will still be used by PLAAF/PLAN-Aviation until (1) they've depleted all inventory and (2) they've upgraded all their fighter jets to adopt PL-16.

PL-15 may still be produced in small scale to meet requirement of export orders, especially to Pakistan AF (J10CE and JF-17), and other operators of JF-17. However, if all foreign users of PL-15 have upgraded their fighter jets to use PL-16, that will end PL-15 production.

Third scenario is PLAAF stop using PL-15 and China stop producing PL-15 right away. All existing inventory of PL-15 be kept in reserve to meet requirement of foreign users. Admittedly, this is very unlikely to happen.
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PL-16 is not available for export, and will stay that way for the foreseeable future.
 
lcloo

lcloo

Major
Wrought said:
PL-16 is not available for export, and will stay that way for the foreseeable future.
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So that mean production of PL-15 will be continue in small scale as long as ther are demands from foreign operators, and if ther are new buyers of JF-17 and J10CE, the demand will be there.
 
phrozenflame

phrozenflame

Junior Member
Registered Member
They could keep some buffer BOM stock, on top of existing back up stocks and call it a day on PL-15 production. This could happen around the time when a more advanced variant of PL-16 or its next gen is ready. That means they can just get foreign customers to move up the chain to the export version of base PL-16 in the future.

Its not like PAF will suddenly run through its stock in 1 week and even if such scenario arises, there would be plenty of back up stock sitting in China that theyd be happy to replace locally with PL-16s rather than sitting there gathering dust.
 
G

gongolongo

Junior Member
Registered Member
Blitzo said:
My understanding is that PL-16 is not only meant to be much more capable than PL-15, but it may be more efficient and lower cost to produce than PL-15 as well due to advances in tooling and production techniques.
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Is the PL-16 that compact PL-15 with the folding wings? Or something entirely new.
 
A

antiterror13

Brigadier
lcloo said:
PL-15 will still be used by PLAAF/PLAN-Aviation until (1) they've depleted all inventory and (2) they've upgraded all their fighter jets to adopt PL-16.

PL-15 may still be produced in small scale to meet requirement of export orders, especially to Pakistan AF (J10CE and JF-17), and other operators of JF-17. However, if all foreign users of PL-15 have upgraded their fighter jets to use PL-16, that will end PL-15 production.

Third scenario is PLAAF stop using PL-15 and China stop producing PL-15 right away. All existing inventory of PL-15 be kept in reserve to meet requirement of foreign users. Admittedly, this is very unlikely to happen.
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Regarding your claim "PL-15 will still be used by PLAAF/PLAN-Aviation until (1) they've depleted all inventory" .... Is it your forecast and/or opinion or the fact or rumour from somewhere ?
 
lcloo

lcloo

Major
antiterror13 said:
Regarding your claim "PL-15 will still be used by PLAAF/PLAN-Aviation until (1) they've depleted all inventory" .... Is it your forecast and/or opinion or the fact or rumour from somewhere ?
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Just an opinion derived from the past observation on PLAAF and PLA Aviation continued to use older missiles even when the new ones were introduced. Example PL-8 is still shown mounted in PLAAF jets in some of the recent photos despite PL-10 has been introduced for quite some time now.
 
plawolf

plawolf

Lieutenant General
I think some of you are getting a little too carried away.

The original story is that they have stopped the AAM version and switched to making the ARM version.

That’s actually a smart way of preserving the production capabilities and skilled workers without buying a silly number of missiles now that a better new model is available, since the differences between the AAM version and ARM versions will be quite small, so it would be very easy and straightforward for production to switch back to the AAM version should the need arise in the future.
 
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