Modern aircraft need a lot more maintenance to keep them in full capability. Flying them intensively is grindy and they become Hangar queen in no time. We had 24 CF-18 in war simulation training at green bay, only two aircraft were flyable after one week and an half.... imagine an aircraft with ram that need to be care off with big electronic suit to maintain, etc.
More than 40hrs maintenance per hours of flight for a f-22, around 20hrs/flight hours for f-18 f-16 and around 12 for mig-29 and F-5.
F-117 was over 100hrs per hours of flight...outch.
J-7maintenance hours is probably at low end, maybe around f-5 time. It make it capable to fly numerous time in the same day. A top of the line fighter, flying more than once probably make it unavailable for the next day...
Keeping j-7 could be a life saver in a long term campaign.
Today, we see 100 of the retired J-6s were converted into unmanned drones for target practice and for SEAD over Taiwan. Note the J-6s don't have a useful weapons payload for ground attack.
But the J-7 has a payload of 2 tonnes on 4 underwing hardpoints, and could carry 4 low cost JDAMs ($26K each) or other bombs. That is a useful ground-attack payload.
And it looks like 150 J-7s were retired early in the past 3 years.
Plus if China continues to produce around 100 fighter aircraft per year, the remaining 250-odd J-7s will be retired within the next 3 years. Yet most of these airframes still have years of life left.
So if 100 J-7s were converted into a ground-attack role for Taiwan with 1 sortie per aircraft per day, you would be looking at 12000 JDAMs dropped on fixed targets over the course of a 30 day campaign.
In terms of cost, we see the US converts its surplus F-16s into unmanned drones for $1.3 million each. If the J-7 conversion cost is similar, it means you have an extremely low cost (and therefore completely expendable) drone with a significant 2tonne weapons payload. Note that a new J-16 would cost approx 61x more than a J-6 drone conversion. The latest JASSM cruise missiles are also about $1.3 million each.
Operating costs for a J-7 drone would also be minimal since they are kept in storage until needed.
Side question. Any ideas on the maintenance hours/costs for a J-7 or F-5?