Good or bad news for SU-30MKK program?

“this may not be great news. this new order seems to suggest that the deal to upgrade the current licence prodction contract from su27 to su30 may have not been very successful yet.”—plawolf.

Well it could be bad, but what’s more important is that it’s not the PLAAF ordering it this time but the Navy.

The requirements of the Navy is much smaller than the Air Force, so for the PLAAF itself to stop ordering SU-30MKKs, does not bode well for the program.

If the PLAAF is not ordering any more, then I don’t see the reason why they would be licensing it in the first place. If it was a PLAAF order, then I would conclude the licensing may have hit some snags. But since the order is not PLAAF, there is reason to believe that there are changes in the tastes of the Air Force.

This does not bode well for the SU-30MKK program or the J-11 license program as a whole, but one can say it bodes very well for the J-10, as well as J-10 heavy fighter alternatives.

I mean the SU-30MKK is a very expensive plane. But if you look at the alternatives, the appetite for licensing the SU-30 has dimmed considerably since the imminence of the J-10. I don’t see much interest in licensing the SU-30 now compared to about two years ago.

The SU-30MKK still possess a range advantage (1500km radius vs 1000km radius), and a narrow payload advantage (8 metric tons compared to the J-10’s 7 metric tons). But other than that, especially from the cost and avionics standpoint, the SU-30MKK does not offer anything over the J-10. In fact, from the electronics view point, it is inferior. When I first saw the specs on the Type 1473 radar of the J-10, I knew it was coming. It was better over the N001VE radar on the SU-30MKK, and can be compared more to the more powerful radars like the Zhuk MS. It has the same range, but it could track more targets (16 to 24), and engage more targets (4 to 8).

If you have seen the avionics in the last Zhuhai (the avionics in the show is of much greater profound importance than any display of FC-1, J-10 or SU-30 in gauging the advancement of the Chinese aviation industry), you could see the Chinese has gone very far very fast. For example, there is this SAR/IRST pod that can get you a 3m resolution from 15,000 feet. That’s much better than the ground resolution of the SU-30MKK radar (or of any NIIP product), which is probably about 15 to 20 meters, and your SAR no better than 10 to 5 meters (only Zhuk MS can obtain 3 meters). In fact, I think the SU-30 still has problems detecting and resolving ground targets. I saw a ground resolution image advertized in the Irkutsk website taken from an SU-30 or SU-30KN, and it frankly does not look good.

In terms of avionics the Chinese is very close to cutting the umbelical cord. There is no point in licensing a product (which you will be contracted to build for a number of years) that is basically already obsolete to what you can already build indigenously.

This is where the other batch of rumors make sense—that the Chinese want to put their own radars into the J-11 licensed production. Something like an SU-27 sized version of the Type 1473 radar on the J-10. I think that’s what Shenyang wants to be competitive with Chengdu’s J-10 and offered this proposition to the PLAAF as well. It appears for me that at this time, the SU-27/30 program in the PLAAF is in some crossroads, and this year may well decide its future.

Now on the PLANAF, there is a good reason to stick to the SU-30. The maximum search and scan range of the J-10 appears to be good only for 160km. That’s shorter than some of the AshM missiles like the extended range 200km Kh-31A or the 250km C803. The Chinese apparently designed themselves into a corner with the J-10’s nose and overall size (you need a big diameter nose to house a big diameter long range antenna). That’s why I think they’re scrambling to design a “big” J-10 but that won’t be in service for years, in which case the big nose SU-30 with radars with search ranges up to 300km/400km only provides the best short term alternative.

In any case, if China wants to license the SU-30 at all, they should not be licensing the original series SU-30MKK (which I believe the Russians would already be willing to offer this time) as that is already teethering near obsolence already and wait for all the specs to narrow down, wait past the SU-30MK2 and go for the SU-30MK3 instead (which will be revealed in August MAKS2003).

In the meantime, the Chinese might attempt to put their own radars into their J-11s secretly (it’s may be against their license but how can you catch them?) or the Russians may offer a modest upgrade similar to the SU-27SM proposal, which perhaps is the single seater SU-27 fitted with the SU-30MKK’s N001VE multirole radar. This would make the plane more useful even though it’s still a little behind the times. But remember, the Chinese only want something the Russians would implement on their own airforce. If the Russians have begun to implement the SU-27SM (as the recent articles have shown), the Chinese could strongly consider this direction.