J-35A fighter (PLAAF) + FC-31 thread
- Thread starter ACuriousPLAFan
- Start date
this is not the problem. domestic market is more than enough for COMAC to become globally competitive.
civil aviation is the hardest and most technological advanced industry. millions of components/parts with different precision level.. but fortunately China has industrial depth , resource and talent. and China just overcome the technical barrier. means their journey just started.
COMAC announced to invest 10 Billion RMB in R&D annually for next three years.
on 25th June, 12 largest National strategic investment groups invested Multi Billions in AECC Shanghai. they specifically mentioned civil large turbofan Engines.. this is the single largest known investment in any Turbofan Engine company in modern era.
I think it's important to just explain how big this investment from SAC is.
Guangwei is a major supplier of carbon fiber for AVIC aviation High Tech (中航高科), who suppliers all the military aircraft and COMAC with carbon fiber prepreg, resin based composite material they need. It has 60% of China's military aviation composite material market. Its 2024 income is 5B RMB.
Guangwei's 2024 income is 2.45B RMB.
According to SAC's own poster, it expects to invest 2.7B RMB and get 5B RMB of production value every year.
So I think SAC's composite processing center is going to produce some very advanced material, probably with high end (maybe T1000/T1100 input) and the aircraft it produces are going to significant increase their composite usage. It says next-generation military aircraft. So that would include J35, J-XDS and high end drones. CFRP is likely not going to be the only composite they produce, but my guess is vast majority of value produced will be CFRP.
Guangwei is a major supplier of carbon fiber for AVIC aviation High Tech (中航高科), who suppliers all the military aircraft and COMAC with carbon fiber prepreg, resin based composite material they need. It has 60% of China's military aviation composite material market. Its 2024 income is 5B RMB.
Guangwei's 2024 income is 2.45B RMB.
According to SAC's own poster, it expects to invest 2.7B RMB and get 5B RMB of production value every year.
So I think SAC's composite processing center is going to produce some very advanced material, probably with high end (maybe T1000/T1100 input) and the aircraft it produces are going to significant increase their composite usage. It says next-generation military aircraft. So that would include J35, J-XDS and high end drones. CFRP is likely not going to be the only composite they produce, but my guess is vast majority of value produced will be CFRP.
Not sure if this has been discussed before, but why is the radome so concealed on this jet? Its barely noticeable on 61820 and pretty much invisible on 61821.Self-explanatory.
Excellent colour matching work?
Discernable radio transparent surface aren't an advantage.
Mass export of J-35 is a pipe dream. Too much politics involved which will prevent most countries from buying fighter jets from China.
Only Pakistan is guaranteed to buy it. But I doubt anyone else will buy it. Gulf Arabs can't make US angry. China will not sell to Iran. Asean will also not buy to maintain their neutral stance between US and China. Africa too poor. Latin America again will not make US angry.
China needs major revision of its foreign policy and establish its own China camp before countries will buy such advanced weapons from China.
China already had advanced naval ships and advanced missiles, yet not many countries buy those things. The only weapons China sells are mainly land systems to African countries.
Only Bangladesh and Pakistan are the most loyal customers of Chinese full spectrum of weapons.
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China does not have the alliance system necessary to proliferate J-35 like Mig-21.
Soviets did not sell Mig-21 to random unaligned countries, it demanded at least nominal loyalty, just like the US did for F-4s.
You’re gonna see huge orders from Arabs very soon. J-35 is the talk of the down in the arab defense communities.
China is not the sole meaningful competitor against and alternative to the US on the global stage because the Chinese shy away from messy politics.
Angering the US by purchasing Chinese arms — that alter the regional balance of power — has been a family tradition for the House of Saud since the 1980s, when the father and grandfather of the current Saudi ambassador to Washington arranged for the purchase of 36 Chinese IRBMs while the former occupied the very same position in DC.
From their perspective, provoking Washington by deepening ties with Beijing is akin to manipulating a lover with jealousy. Can't do it too often, but it's a known option of their foreign policy playbook.
Though at this point, the Saudis aren't too far from dumping Uncle Sam for good to be nominally single.
China is not the Soviet Union: the Chinese are not looking to replicate the path or failures of an empire that collapsed onto itself.
TBF, your concern is not unreasonable, but this is a bit of a chicken or egg problem.
China is known to draw in "new friends," or otherwise sow the seeds for geopolitical alignment, by cultivating de facto dependencies without demanding de jure or overt commitments that risk inspiring cold feet.
Once enough dependency on your ecosystem (or supply chains) is established, they'll have to proritize you over the competition whether they want to or not.
It's not going to be "all that easy" for the US to nerf J-35 sales to GCC countries in particular or MENA countries in general.
This isn't exactly a secret, but largely overlooked by most observers: the US has actually been fairly open to selling the F-35 to the KSA in principal.
Problem is the Americans want to sell the Saudis what would effectively be a castrated F-35 (), while the Saudis supposedly not only want a level of access and control comparable to what the Israelis got with the F-35I Adir, but a significant degree of localization in line with the stated objectives of their agenda:
Besides the fact that the Israel Lobby, as well as the Qataris, have been tirelessly lobbying Congress against Saudi acquisition of the F-35 for years, Lockheed is understandably reluctant about the Saudis assembling F-35 fighters themselves, and unlike the Italians or Japanese, the Saudis will need Lockheed to "go out of its way" to achieve any reasonable or respectable level of localization.
OTOH, CATIC — which is the AVIC subsidiary principally responsible for exporting Chinese military aircraft — openly markets its and exporting assembly lines and manufacturing capacity, with a level of ToT that'd be unimaginable with Lockheed.
If the Saudis are to acquire a 5th gen fighter in meaningful numbers — on their terms or something close to it before 2035 — a Chinese J-35 derivative is realistically speaking the only game in town.