J-20... The New Generation Fighter

Re: New Generation Fighter

Huitong's site says

"It is possible that J-10B may serve only as a testbed for various advanced technologies adopted by the 4th generation J-20 (see below) currently under development at CAC thus may not enter the mass production."

Which I first speculated about a few pages back as I applied common sense to the reports that J-20 is going to fly soon.

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There is a chance J-10B will not enter service, but that's very small. If J-10B does not enter service, they will just produce more J-10s or another variant of J-10s. Get it through your head, you can't go from first flight to IOC in 2 years for a 4th generation fighter jet. Look at how long it took J-10, F-22 & F-35 to go from first flight to IOC.

The date we've speculated all along is first flight at around 2011 and achieving operational status at around 2017 to 2019 (according to deputy commander of PLAAF). Even when it enters service, it will take several years before they can get a few regiments of it. They will still need to produce more J-10/J-11 regiments at that time.

Zhong Fei said:

Which Brings back my Original Point in making modest sums of j-10s. If j-8ts can do some roles of J-10s.

Personally I think I'd scrap about3/5 of the J-8s or store them and enough parts for maintenance if needs be. J-10s should be made and J-XX priorities.

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What is it about this thread that all the fanboys are coming out?

I don't know if they are still producing J-8Fs, but we did see a photo of a new JZ-8F recently, meaning they still produce J-8IIs of certain variants. Why are they producing it still? It is cheap to produce and good to have a platform where pilots can train on a fighter jet capable of high supersonic speed and BVR engagements.

On top of that, they kept on producing J-8s to keep SAC busy.

As for J-8s can do some of J-10s roles, yes they can. But J-10s can do some of J-20's roles too. You produce a number of each class of fighter jets based on its need.

One of the production issues with J-10 is engines. They could not produce J-10 for over a year there because they ran out of AL-31FN. They will also run into that problem with J-20 at some point, because WS-15 would not be fully ready until 2020. So what are they going to do when the masses of J-7 regiments start retiring? What are you going to replace them with?

Then How come the PlAAF is still Funding aircrafts like J-8s? I think China if they need 400+ 4.5 fighters right now they should hastily scrap the J-8s as fast as they can make and train pilots for J-10s.

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do you understand that there is a limitation to the number of aircraft that China can build? You have to think about all of the suppliers (especially engine suppliers) and how many parts they can supply to CAC for assembly every year. Then you have to consider the cost of building the infrastructure, maintenance network + training pilots for J-10 on top of actually paying for the plane. As a result, we are unlikely to see more than 2 regiments of J-10 funded per year. As for scrapping J-8s, what are those pilots going to fly then? Are you just going to suddenly disband 1/2 of the air force because you think they are obsolete?

Re: New Generation Fighter

Some thought on the entire 4th generation fighter jet development for PLAAF.

I think that CAC has shown in the recent year that it has the engineering force and the youth/energy to really develop quality fighter jets. We all know about J-10, JF-17 and J-10B. But they have also assisted in other design bureau's aircraft projects and developed numerous UAVs for PLA. At the same time, they are not the only part of the equation for a successful 4th generation project. Even if they can come up with a good design with good modern architecture, they still need quality suppliers to supply the avionics, sensors, missiles, materials and engines. I would say that with all the advances they made in electronics/computing and missile technology, they should be able to produce quality avionics and weaponry. That still leaves materials to be used on a stealth fighter jet that needs to be tough, light and easy to maintain. They still need world class radar absorption material to help with stealth. And most importantly, they need to be able to produce their own next generation turbofan engine, since we don't know where the Russians will be with their 5th generation engine project. And as shown with WS-10A, it takes a long time for a modern turbofan engine to go from testing stage to mass production. Hopefully, they will at least be able to use an advanced variant of WS-10 in the beginning, so that the testing program will not be delayed.

Aside from that, there is also the issue of production/assembly for the Chinese aerospace industry. It certainly has not reached the stage of the shipbuilding industry where it can crank out a large number of aircraft when it wants to. So even when a quality 4th generation fighter jet is developed in China, it will only slowly come into service with different regiments in PLAAF. And I hope that with the continued experience from the different civilian projects, the military arms will be able to gain experience in mass production.

So even though CAC is doing well with its design, there are many challenges lying ahead.

Re: New Generation Fighter

Zhong Fei said:

Which Brings back my Original Point in making modest sums of j-10s. If j-8ts can do some roles of J-10s.

Personally I think I'd scrap about3/5 of the J-8s or store them and enough parts for maintenance if needs be. J-10s should be made and J-XX priorities.

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Two primary reasons stand out. The first is that they're not able to produce J-10s fast enough (remember this isn't like consumer goods, there are quality control and assembly training requirements that need to be met). This is compounded by the 2nd reason, which is that they only had a limited number of turbofans (AL-31FNs) up until recently (with the WS-10A finally going into a full production run).

In other words, they're upgrading the J-8s because they have had no other alternatives and therefore need a cheap interim to fill the gaps.

EDIT: Ninja'ed by tphuang

Re: New Generation Fighter

tphuang said:

Aside from that, there is also the issue of production/assembly for the Chinese aerospace industry. It certainly has not reached the stage of the shipbuilding industry where it can crank out a large number of aircraft when it wants to. So even when a quality 4th generation fighter jet is developed in China, it will only slowly come into service with different regiments in PLAAF. And I hope that with the continued experience from the different civilian projects, the military arms will be able to gain experience in mass production.

So even though CAC is doing well with its design, there are many challenges lying ahead.

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Production and assembly of advanced fighter aircraft is innately a long and difficult process, even for the wealthiest most developed countries. Even the US only churned out 180 F-22s in 5 years.

Re: New Generation Fighter

latenlazy said:

Production and assembly of advanced fighter aircraft is innately a long and difficult process, even for the wealthiest most developed countries. Even the US only churned out 180 F-22s in 5 years.

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Well, to be fair the F-22 program did not have the same kind of urgency the J-XX program has. The US already has a decent fighter fleet that can face most other air forces, China doesn't.

Re: New Generation Fighter

Ok let us have some educated guesses here.

Do you guys think that the J-XX will adapt a delta-canard or a conventional configuration?

Re: New Generation Fighter

siegecrossbow said:

Ok let us have some educated guesses here.

Do you guys think that the J-XX will adapt a delta-canard or a conventional configuration?

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Based on all the rumours, I think the "evidence" overwhelmingly points to the former.

Re: New Generation Fighter

I think a delta canard. China is unlikely to field a fighter having a stealth performance on par of that of F-22 so I think as long as it meets their standards it is acceptable.

China has lower performance engines so more focus will be on better aerodynamic layouts.

And lastly china has gained lots of experience with J-10. It would not make sense for them to throw away what they learned and their advantages and copy a US type layout.

Re: New Generation Fighter

no_name said:

I think a delta canard. China is unlikely to field a fighter having a stealth performance on par of that of F-22 so I think as long as it meets their standards it is acceptable.

China has lower performance engines so more focus will be on better aerodynamic layouts.

And lastly china has gained lots of experience with J-10. It would not make sense for them to throw away what they learned and their advantages and copy a US type layout.

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Err, if the PLAAF does have significantly different stealth requirements, what does that exactly have to do with J-20 being a delta canard?
The J-20 is obviously schedualed for a supercruise engine (WS-15) comparable to the F119's of the F-22, so they don't really need a super-awesome airframe to compensate or anything. And it's not like there are any proven advantages of delta canards over conventional layouts (that we know of).

I agree with your third point whole heartedly though; CAC is more experienced with delta canards (J-10, and to a lesser extent, J-9) and that is probably the main reason PLAAF is going with it instead of the Americans or Russians, who have went conventional (some of the ATF proposals were originally delta canards, and I believe the USAF decided to choose a "less radical" route, for them. For the PLAAF of course, delta canards are the more mature, more known path)

Re: New Generation Fighter

Canards do tend to provide better nose pointing ability than a conventional layout. Although that comes at the cost of increased drag. The Americans also seem to think canards are bad for stealth, but they seem to be alone in this view.

As to the layout, the safe bet would be a delta canard as a evolution of the J10 design concept. But there have been interesting rumors that the design is pretty radical, and is more like the Dark Sword UAV model displayed a few years back.

What the truth is we can only tell in time.

Wrt that photo showing how close the public can apparently get to CAC's runway. Well considering how well they have managed to keep the J10 secret before, this would seem to be a new development, or that CAC has at least two runways.

One close to the public areas where they keep the declassified stuff, and one kept out of sight so that new developments are not paraded before snooping cameras.