Just some feedback. This kind of post, where you tell someone what "Chinese military watching" is and how it should be done, comes across as trying to force the frame of the conversation and sometimes the conclusions. Similarly for talk about a "consensus" (who agreed and when?).
Coincidentally, I think it was one of your posts on reddit that introduced me to this forum.
@manqiangrexue Sorry for misspelling your username above.
I yes, I did not see that. So
1. Was the claim that JF-17's AESA export radar performed on par with F-35 radar despite being smaller? I don't think that was the claim. I think they said that it was equivalent, which I interpreted to mean on technological parity with F-35 radar but smaller so scaled down. Thus, it could be an equivalent of the F-35's radar even though it would not perform as well in a direct comparison. The claim was also vague so if some performance parameters were there, you could claim equivalence; of the ones that aren't there, you might argue that they're less important. If it consumed 1/3 the power and performed 1/3 as well, you might also say they are equivalent. There's no solid, exact claim to accept or dismiss. So I believe that the claim is very possible at least along some of these lines and aspects. The specific details on how they compare and how the conclusion that they are equals is clearly not known.
2. Sino EM is a very recent design compared to EMALS. EMALS has many known issues including low reliability (1/400 fail rate), lack of power, causing abnormal vibration of external fuel tanks, etc... When Yin Zhuo said the Chinese design was superior, he may say that because the Chinese ground version is a newer design that doesn't have these inherent flaws, thus, he could conclude that it is a much better system. However, it is on the ground while EMALS in on a carrier so whether the Chinese EM starts to develop issues when put out at sea remains to be seen. I don't know if EMALS also didn't have these problems on the ground but they became noticeable at sea or if those issues were always there and they just decided to move forward hoping they could fix/ameliorate them on the carrier. But given America's generous transparency regarding issues and China's meteoric rise in technology and design, I absolutely do not dismiss that the Chinese
could have come up with a newer and inherently superior design.
3. J-20's weight discussion goes like this: a semi-trustworthy source said 15 tonne range, meaning 15-16 tonnes. That was well below what everyone had thought and although nobody takes it as an official guarantee, we began thinking of how it
might be possible. There are manufacturing updates to decrease weight such as 3D printing and material sciences (aircraft composition 20% titanium vs 40% in F-22, lighter, thinner new RAM) to reduce weight but also, the design was different. Larger empty fuel tanks further support the possibility that density could be less than that of the F-22 (and those tanks don't have to be fully loaded when on missions). Smaller wings (rely more on body for lift), smaller pelikan fins (including the ventral fins) were all considered as well as the lighter engines without stealth TVC nozzles. Then we thought there could be design compromises and sacrifices to reduce weight further, trading away capabilities for a lighter aircraft and those capabilities could be added later when the WS-15 gives more thrust. So structures could be lightened if strike capability was removed (lightening the load-bearing structures that could hold large bombs) and the gun
could have been removed as well. Certainly, the engineering team had more ideas than we did by the boat-loads. But ultimately, we don't know how much they come up to but some rough calculations did work out to 15 tonnes range although rough calculations by laymen rarely mean much when applied to top secret military projects. We are, after all, using a very small knowledge base to try to work an equation to see if it could fit a known answer, which is not at all the same as developing an equation to figure out the answer. Whether those savings actually add up or whether they did choose to make those trade-offs is only known the the makers at this point, so in the end, my answer is I'm uncertain but believe there is a possibility mostly relying on the magazine source.
In general, I believe in new design advantage, especially from a country with the most capable supercomputers to be used in those designs. But in the end, all that adds up to for me so far is that I don't dismiss the claims though I don't have the hard evidence to embrace them either.
