Nothing new for production Henri K had already mentionned in 09/2016 about 40 for 2017 -19.
But i don't think objective for guesstimate J-20 production to rely on the J-10 which is at least three times cheaper.
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J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread V
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But i don't think objective for guesstimate J-20 production to rely on the J-10 which is at least three times cheaper.
And this why China has the phrase, if you don't have have a door, use the window.
没门，有窗户
Hey look: at first sight simply an ordinary yellow J-20A + a Boeing behind,
View attachment 39401
... has clearly a RED 15 written on its main-landing gear doors !!!
View attachment 39402
and? new aircraft??? or something else obvious that I'm missing???
A good question and actually I don't know. I already had including Totoro's reply a few good discussions with others but in the end I have no true clue.
The question now is:
- Is this now the 15th J-20 altogether (following the alleged 13th J-20A spotted in January, including all demonstrators, prototypes and LRIP)
- or is indeed the 15th LRIP aircraft ?? (IMO a bit on the high side, since otherwise CAC must have secretly produced 8 more new J-20 without any notice within the last 4 months)
- or could "15" already mean 1st serial batch, aircraft no. 5?
Questions over questions ....
We'll know in 5 birds. If we see a 110 the first digit is batch number. If we see a 20 but no three digit birds then it's a straight count. That said, if the first digit was for a batch number you'd expect the 5th bird to be 105, not 15.
and as I responded over twitter, I think having 15 LRIP J-20s is not unreasonable nor is 8 J-20s in last 4 months, because at this point IMO we cannot expect to get routine and fast updates of how many J-20s CAC are producing.
In other words, I expect the secrecy situation at CAC to be similar to that at SAC, XAC and Shaanxi AC, and probably even higher, where the Air Force/military is probably quite deliberately wanting to keep how many J-20s they have in their possession under wraps.
IMO, for all "new" J-20s photos, we need to ask whether we know when a photo was taken (i.e.: was it taken a few months ago but only just released, or is it very recent and released shortly after it was taken), because if we do not know when a photo is taken then we do not have any accurate gauge as to what the current situation of J-20 numbers actually is.
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