Hi guys, I believe that at this stage the Chinese fighter export industry still lags behind the US, Europpean and Russian industries in what I’sd call “export tradition” and post sale support. I belive the only “considerable” air force that has opted for chinese fighters is still Pakistan with Iran and Egypt coming relatively further down the road from Pak… I sure can’t see Chinese fighters breaking into, and in relevant numbers, the South American and/or South Asian fighter markets… Maybe some 15 years ahead… If Egypt decides to buy a slew of J-10Bs for instance and/or Iran goes for the J-20 this would certainly open the doord for many new clients such as Indonesia and Malaysia or even Venezuela… Until then Russia with the Su-35S and the PAK/FA would certainly be the ones to be beat in the 3rd world fighter market.

This is just my 2 cents…

Coments?

Regards,

Hammer

One of the key reasons that Chinese fighters are lagging in the export game is because of the PLAAF’s policy of not allowing their current best fighter to be exported until they have a better toy.

The Iranians expressed serious interest in the J8II, but that fell through because the PLAAF would not allow SAC to export the same version as what the PLAAF was using, and the Iranians did not want a dumbed down version.

Similar thing with the JF17, its less attractive because everyone knows that the J10 is better.

The Russians, otoh, are more than happy to export gear better than what their own forces are using.

China is only just starting to catch up with Russia in terms of overall technology, so it isn’t any wonder that the Russians are doing better on the export scene?

I always believe quantity is a quality by itself.
the key is per unit yuan/dollar fighting power.

a mid sized fighter with a healthy focus on air2air may do 80% of what J-20 does and cost 50%. that’s more per unit yuan/dollar fighting power.

If that is the rationale, then you should support my argument for J10Bs instead of some watered down J20-lite.

Since the J10B is being used to test out avionics for the J20, and is based on the J10A airframe, most of the development cost would be on the avionics and radar. That should be covered under the J20, so the costs of the J10B would not be that much higher than fly away cost plus a little R&D re-coup.

While we cannot say how much the J20 would cost, the $100m mark should make for a rough estimate. Now with the J10A at $25m, if we add another $5m for the AESA radar, new WS10G or WS15 engines and all the other bits, we can see that a J10B might cost about 30% what a J20 would. But the J10B would have a radar and avionics that should be on the same tech level as the J20, it is already deadly close in, and with the WS10G/WS15, might even be able to supercruise with a modest AA load.

It could easily be argued that a J10B+ would have at least 60% of the fighting potential of the J20 for 30% the price. Doesn’t that mean more fighting power per $/Yuan than your 50% cost 80% capability J20-lite? :p

But the most important factor is that the J10B+ would be ready in a few years, while a J20-lite will probably not be ready for at least another decade. Maybe as late as a decade after the J20 start entering service (a la, the F22 and F35).

Would the PLAAF be happy with just J10As and J11Bs until the J20 comes along?

Face it, the PLAAF would need an interim fighter anyways to keep pace with regional development and also start replacing their oldest Su27s and J11s way before the J20 becomes available in any number.

The J10B+ logically falls in that niche, and would perform even better with J20 support.

Then, there is logistics. But 2025/30, the PLA would be operating the J11A/B (J15 naval flanker and Su30s all fall in this category) , J10A/B, JH7 and J20, assuming all J7s and J8s have been retired by then.

Adding another fighter type would add a lot of logistics problems and costs.

The PLA is far better ‘making do’ with the J10B+ and J20 as their primary AA assets, and skip the J20-lite and focus more on 6th gen assets. And 6th gen does not necessarily mean UCAV btw.

china don’t have global comittments of us. but it does have alot of well-armed neighbors on all of its sides. it can’t take its time and concentrate its resources. so quantity must come into play. or rather there must be enough quantity as a baseline. because I don’t foreseen in a two fronted crisis china can shift its limited top of the line assets around fast enough to garantee a minimum level of deterent.

Again, this feels like a copy and paste job of US strategic requirements. Under what circumstance would China be fighting on two fronts? Which two fronts?

Currently and in the near future, only the Asian NATO (ATO cos Im lazy) of Japan, SoKo and America, Russia and India would pose any serious threat that the likes of a J10B+ would not be able to comfortably handle without J20 support.

Russia is never going to go to war with China, so that can be dismissed. Japan and SoKo are more likely to fight each other than join forces against China, even if they do, they will form the same front as the Americans and would not require China to divert fighters away.

So the only way your scenario would make sense is if America and India both attacked China at the same time. If that was the case, China would be pretty screwed J20-lite or no J20-lite. And would loose if it tried to fight both sides at the same time.

Under such circumstances, the PLA would likely priorities all its air assets to the East to protect its key coastal cities and give ground to the Indians. Let them advance enough inland that they start to outrun their air cover, and then the PLA can use its superior ground forces to on them. Just like how the Russians defeated the Nazis.

The Key would be to inflict enough casualties on the Americans that they could not longer stomach to fight any longer. Once the Americans bow out, the PLA can turn its full might and attention to recovering lost ground and exacting some payback, I’m sure the Pakistanis would be more than happy to help out.

But India would have to be completely stupid to attack China. Unless they expect to be able to march into Beijing, there will be a reckoning some day. The more damage they did to China, the worse that reckoning would be.

If China and America went to blows, India’s best bet would be to sit back and hope they inflict enough damage on each other that India will inherit the dominating position by default.

Planning for such an unlikely scenario is exactly what bankrupted the USSR and crippling the US military. China does not need to follow those examples.

The prime minister of China recently announced that China aims at replacing the dollar as interrnational currency by the chinese currency. At the same time they are developing 5th gen. fighters, and billions in other new military toys, and they have a foreign policy scavenging e.g. Africa for basisc materials with the same moral standrards as the old imperialistic powers of the west.

All ingredients for a ladge future conflcit are unfolding and growing here

WO II involved a total population (all countries involved) of 800 million people?

China alone has 1.2 billion or something like that?

Completely off topic and plain wrong in many regards. But since this is so OT, I will refrain from saying any more.

I would suggest others follow suit.

Yes, why do you think F-22 was capped at under 200 aircraft? It was too expensive to replace the hundreds of F-15s and F-16s, hence, the reason for the F-35 as a lower cost 5G to replace all those thousands of F-16s around the world and in USAF service….although that seems unlikely at this stage due to cost escalations with the F-35.

Well maybe you didn’t get the point I was making, which was, why is it necessary to have a fully fifth gen fighter fleet in the first place?

I would much rather the PLAAF bought a lot more of the best fifth gen China could make and use conventional fighters to make up the numbers rather than settle for a tiny force of your best and waste their budget getting huge numbers of a watered down fifth gen that would not be as good in AA and have a stealth capability that will not be needed for 99% of strike missions.

I am sure there are plenty that wished the USAF had never bothered with the F35 and instead bought a few hundred more F22s and developed either something like the Eurocanards or a ‘silent eagle/hornet/whatever’ to make up the numbers.

well for once thoose CGIs were onto something.

yeah now I think about it more, WS-15 is not that a huge dimension step up wise compare to WS-10 or a AL-31FN ( actually I think WS-10 is wider in diameter than AL-31FN, they had to redesign the rear fuselage to fit in AL-31F)
theoritically they can design a stealthrized J-10(C?) with a slightly scaled up wing and redesigned rear fueslage, and a stealthrized front. may be by that time capitalize on what J-10B already has plus J-20’s gain in avionics and stealth. with some good conformals on the body for may be 4-SD-21s and two IR missiles…a2g stores all external. 2025 entry into service?

nice eh? looks extremely good bang for the buck wise.

back in the day PLAAF brass was fantasizing a all flanker force. but apparently with J10s in “operation” the feed back front pilots has been very good. PLAAF line pilots actually likes the J-10 alot. nothing wrong with following up with a better version of what you already like. 😀

While that sounds like a very interesting project, I do wonder if CAC has the resources to do that on top of their J20 and UAV projects.

I think the J10B is about as far as they will refine the airframe, as doing much more would significantly change the way the plane flies and would require the same level of testing and certification as building a completely new fighter.

Going past the J10B may just be too much hassle for too little gain.

While a ‘silent Eagle’ or ‘Silent Flanker’ project might make sense given the massive RCS of the normal versions of these planes, would an already low RCS plane like the J10 really benefit enough from a half-hearted attempt at stealth application to be worth the extra testing, delays or likely unit price hikes as a result?

Making endless incrementally improved re-hashes of an existing design seems more SAC’s style than CAC’s anyways. 😉

If China wants to get into the Fifth Gen selling game, they will likely design a new fighter after the J20 is ready for mass production, much like what they did with the JF17, which benefitted significantly from the technologies and expertise developed with the J10 programme.

The J20 itself won’t be for sale until China has something significantly better, which will be quite some time in the future, and pretty much so far into the future it might as well not be a possibility to be worth discussing atm.

However, there is a huge question over whether there is much of a market for such a fighter-bomber.

All the western centric nations are already signed up on the F35, and Russia has a huge lead over any possible export Chinese Fifth gen with the PAK-FA.

Even if we assume that the new J20-lite takes considerably less time to develop because of less ambitious design goals and using ‘off the shelf’ technologies from the J20, it will still likely come out quite some time after the PAK-FA hits the market. The J20-lite will also likely be considered to be inferior to the PAK-FA even if it is not. That will hurt its export potential.

There is also the matter of the price. How much the J20 would cost is up in the air, as is any possible J20-lite, but one thing is for certain, it won’t be cheap.

Probably not F35 or PAK-FA costs, but it probably won’t be that far off. How many countries can realistically afford fighters at that price? And how many would they be able to afford even if they do buy them?

Considering that the PAF are saying that China has agreed to a J10B export in a few years time, I wonder if that may be CAC’s interim plan and focus – to sell the J10B as a 5th gen-. It does not have full stealth, but with AESA, IRST, sensor fusion and all that jazz, they could easily sell it as a serious alternative to the Eurocanards at a fraction of the cost that will be available in less than a few years.

Not everyone can afford to jump on the fifth gen bandwagon, and to these air forces, the J10B might be seriously tempting.

Another possible Chinese fifth gen export aircraft might come SAC. There are a lot of rumors floating around that even though they lost the PLA contract to CAC, they are still carrying on with their own design, funding it out of their own pockets.

If that does reach fruition and the PLA has no interest, it may be offered up for export, although I’m not to sure how well a PLA reject would sell internationally…

U sure? In Martinez pics one can clearly see the flap joints etc.

Only in that one picture where the angle of the light created a reflection that made the joint obvious. What more, in that picture, you could also clearly see the lines for the weapons bay.

In all the HQ shots of the underside of the plane that people are using as ‘evidence’ that there is no weapons bay, you could clearly see that the flop joints are also not visible.

….

Decided it was too boring to bow out gracefully? :p

Since much of what your last post covered was not directly related to the J20, I decided to PM you my response to not risk derailing the thread.

If the moderators feel that those points fall within the J20 discussion, I would be more than happy to repost those comments here.

If you feel that our discussion might be of interest to other members, feel free to start a new thread and forward my reply there.