PLA Air Force news, pics and videos

Totoro said:

The whole hardened shelter thing doesn't make much sense if it can't defeat at least one of three weapon types:
SDB (which is usually credited with penetrating 1 meter of reinforced concrete under 1 meter of soil/earth)
Tomahawk CM
JASSM CM

Did not find any penetration data for those missiles but there was a Raytheon text from 2008 - they tested a tandem warhead (Tomahawk block V will use a tandem warhead) with a precursor portion of warhead being 24 inches in diameter. And the precursor burned through 19.5 feet of reinforced concrete with compression strength of 12600 lb/in2, which is a lot.

Probably similar tech is used in tomahawk warhead, though that warhead is smaller, at 18 inches in diameter. block V remanufacture will commence shortly but it may be a few years until entire tomahawk arsenal is remanufactured.

JASSM warheads, however, are of similar dimension and they already possess a similar tech pentrating warhead.
So JASSM today may already be able to penetrate 3-5 meters of reinforced concrete, and tomahawks may be expected to perform similarly within several years from today.

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I think that trying to up armour shelters to be essentially bomb proof is a fools game because it’s much easier to upgrade warheads than to upgrade shelters. You can make the entire shelter out of tank grade composite armour and it would still be possible to defeat it with a dedicated warhead on something as big as a tomahawk.

What these shelters are primarily designed to do is protect aircraft against submunitions. That means a single tomahawk class weapon cannot take out entire flight lines as would be possible without hardened shelters.

Against special warhead heavy cruise missile class attacks, these shelters would have achieved their purpose if they can contain the damage so nothing other than the single shelter targeted is damaged in the strike, which is pretty much the best you can realistically expect to achieve.

This would massively increase the number of weapons an attacker would need to launch to try to take out the fighter strength at an air base, doubly so when you factor in air defences, and also means the damage would be very limited in case the odd enemy weapon did manage to punch through air defences.

Totoro said:

All that being said, it's certainly POSSIBLE the rumored ramp-ups have indeed happened. But that'd imply some tectonic changes, as well. It'd imply that PLA is really worried and potentially expecting a hot war within just years; and that they've decided to increase the overall PLAAF size by dozens of percent in a very short period of time.

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About time really, you never know when war will come and everything done beforehand will appear too little when it does. The PLA in general as being languishing in complacency for far too long.

I remember there was a huge factory being built, but I don't remember if it was for a SAC or XAC. We had a picture of it on sinodefence. Maybe it's because of it SAC can ramp up the production? Anyone can find it?

ILikeChina said:

I remember there was a huge factory being built, but I don't remember if it was for a SAC or XAC. We had a picture of it on sinodefence. Maybe it's because of it SAC can ramp up the production? Anyone can find it?

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Yes, it was at Shenyang.

I'm not entirely sure but I think it was the orange one, which is new.

Pretty much all Chinese manufacturers have been increasing the areas of their production facilities.
SAC had an expansion in 2011 to 2013, adding 3 building with total added area of 1.48 square km.
Then of course in 2018 to 2019 they added that one more, long building, roughly 0.98 square km in area.

CAC increased its facilities continously. Even more so than SAC.
The list below is NOT necessarily just CAC facilities. It's just a list of structures erected right next to the runway, as it's hard to tell apart just what's part of CAC and what may be other non-CAC related buildings.

Between 2008 and 2010 they added at least 7 new buildings. With added total area of 3.66 square km. These may not be part of CAC, as they're quite south of the runway.
Then in 2013 they added another large hall, 0.69 square km.
Then in 2014/2015 they replaced an area with several older smaller halls with one huge hall of 0.91 square km.
And in 2016/2017 added several smaller buildings, roughly 1.5 square km in size in total.
And finally in 2018/2019 they added two huge buildings, totaling 1.52 square km. It does appear these ARE part of the airbase complex.

XAC has also been expanding quite a bit. They seem to have switched the production where JH7s were made for H6 production, and to the west of the complex a bunch of new halls were made. Some of which now make Y-20 airlifters.

But one has to keep in mind that area of buildings itself doesn't necessarily corelate with production capacity. Even if does to some extent, there's no way of knowing which building is used for military production. SAC, CAC and XAC all make parts of commercial airliners, and that business has been ramping up quite a bit in the last decade or so.

plawolf said:

I think that trying to up armour shelters to be essentially bomb proof is a fools game because it’s much easier to upgrade warheads than to upgrade shelters. You can make the entire shelter out of tank grade composite armour and it would still be possible to defeat it with a dedicated warhead on something as big as a tomahawk.

What these shelters are primarily designed to do is protect aircraft against submunitions. That means a single tomahawk class weapon cannot take out entire flight lines as would be possible without hardened shelters.

Against special warhead heavy cruise missile class attacks, these shelters would have achieved their purpose if they can contain the damage so nothing other than the single shelter targeted is damaged in the strike, which is pretty much the best you can realistically expect to achieve.

This would massively increase the number of weapons an attacker would need to launch to try to take out the fighter strength at an air base, doubly so when you factor in air defences, and also means the damage would be very limited in case the odd enemy weapon did manage to punch through air defences.

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I agree.

But the economics of a Hardened Aircraft Shelters versus cruise missiles doesn't look too bad.

A HAS costs $3.2M in Korea, whilst a Tomahawk or JASSM is around $1.3 Million.

So if air defences can shoot down 70% of incoming missiles, it's about break-even in terms of the incoming cruise missiles versus HAS protected by SAMs.

Inst said:

30 implies 2.5 per month, which is a relatively low rate considering that F-35s are hitting service at around 10 per month.

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Remember it is way easier to destroy F-35s on the ground than by using J-20s in the air.

Inst said:

30 implies 2.5 per month, which is a relatively low rate considering that F-35s are hitting service at around 10 per month.

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Considering F-35 production is more or less at the peak rate at which the program was aiming for, while J-20 production rate is still relatively early, I think 30 per year, merely 4 years after starting LRIP is quite a fantastic production rate to be honest.

Bltizo said:

Considering F-35 production is more or less at the peak rate at which the program was aiming for, while J-20 production rate is still relatively early, I think 30 per year, merely 4 years after starting LRIP is quite a fantastic production rate to be honest.

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Real question is how many is the goal.

latenlazy said:

Real question is how many is the goal.

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Yes, IMO the relevant questions include:
1. What is the peak of J-20 production rate that they are aiming for, and how long will it take to get there and how many years will that peak rate be sustained for?
2. Eventually, for the 5th gen naval fighter (J-XY/J-35 whatever its name will be), will there be a land based derivative that the PLA adopts and what sort of peak production rate would it be aiming for and how long will it take to get there and how many years will it be sustained there for.