Also, uhhh, JSR, are you telling me that the Chinese should produce a JSF-equivalent to cut costs with their aerospace industry? That obviously worked out very well with the Americans.

With the Chinese, honestly speaking, they’re very in-experienced with aircraft and air combat; while the PLA hasn’t seen real action since 1979, 1990 if you count the simmering border war with Vietnam, the PLAAF has never fought an engagement where it was at an advantage and hasn’t really done jack since 1960.

This is why the Chinese have multiple aircraft types, even with similar / overlapping roles. The point is that they don’t know enough about air combat to work with a few consolidated aircraft; all their aircraft provide opportunities for learning experiences on what works and what doesn’t work.

One thing that merits correction, Hobbes; the PLA is not actually a conscript force. By law, China does have conscription, but China is simply so populous and large that a true conscription scheme would not work that well. So functionally it’s a volunteer force.

However, soldiering has traditionally had a low status in Chinese culture and while the militarism of the 20th century has done much to dispel such notions, until recently the PLA typically did not recruit from the professional classes; you were there if you were nomenklatura or some kind of Red aristocracy looking for a sinecure, or you were there if you were a peasant looking for a way off the farm.

The Chinese DID use human wave attacks, however, although not in the classically understood meaning of the term.

There’s two types of tactics that are similar to human wave attacks. The first is assembly on position; where overwhelming amounts of assault infantry are pointed at a underdefended target and pushed towards the position, on the understanding that once the position falls, the next defensive position becomes vulnerable. Because the Chinese typically lacked artillery and air support, this could easily degenerate into a human wave attack if the defender is sufficiently prepared. As a matter of morale, discipline, and training, there is no permission to fall back on failure.

The other attack was mentioned by Peng Dehuai and it’s closer to the classic human wave. He called it the “short attack”, and it’s precisely what it sounds like. It’s an attempt to mass as much power onto a point as possible and get it over as quickly as possible with no concern for casualties. It tends to be used more of desperation or when a strongpoint just won’t give up, and as a desperation tactic it is not very likely to be successful.

Most of these tactics were born out of the fact that the Chinese Communists weren’t willing to lose, the fact that they had inferior artillery and firepower for most of their history, and the fact that they were transitioning from a partisan force, which needs to conserve manpower but is likely unable to make concerted attacks, to a conventional force, where manpower is less at a premium but attacks on positions and defenses of positions must go through.

The rivals of the Communists, the Nationalists, were actually users of human wave attacks and the Communists ended up incorporating many of their units. The reason for that is that an attack in dense formation tends to be better for unit morale, especially with conscripts, even though casualties will likely be much higher. The fact that you’re not alone, and you’re clustered in dense formation, is likely to encourage you and bolster your spirits more than by being a fire team with no one watching your six.

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In terms of suicide aircraft attacks, first, you need to notice that the situation has changed for the Communists.

Most young Chinese these days are the product of the one-child policy. No matter how patriotic, they are likely to be the sole survivor or non-survivor of their parents. This also means that more resources are allocated to their growth and development, and this also means that they are consequently more valuable resources than the uneducated peasants thrown at the Americans in Korea.

Second, the Chinese now have and field drone technology. They’ve been observed siting drone equipment within the cockpit of a J-7. While Chinese people these days tend to be too expensive to waste on human wave attacks, J-7s with afterburners and drone control used as target decoys could confuse their opponents, and in the worst case, manually intercept the missiles targeted at actual human-piloted fighters.

So there’s no actual need to use a human for a suicide attack; you need a human to do command and control and actually win air-to-air combat, but you can put an RC or autonomous robot on the line when you need to sacrifice material.

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With regards to the J-20, no, it’s likely unsuitable as a strike platform due to its small weapons bay. It’s a full stealth aircraft and probably costs around the area of 100 million, meaning that you can’t put untrained pilots into the airframe and expect to get your money’s worth, and when lifting missiles with pylons, you’re compromising your RCS and getting what essentially becomes a really expensive 4.5th generation fighter for 100 million with a highly-trained elite pilot on board.

Against ISR assets, I’d agree on its utility, but as a strike fighter there are better tools for the job.

I think the key thing to note regarding the J-20 is that it has a very poor rear RCS and a mediocre side RCS. This means that shoot and scoot tactics with the J-20 will be more questionable; it needs to face its opponent and eliminate it if it has any hope of getting home alive.

The same with the DSI intakes. That limits its max speed to under Mach 2, meaning that it will not necessarily be able to outrun its opponents on a return path.

It’s essentially similar in spirit to a machine gunner chained to his machine gun; he absolutely can’t fall back. He needs to destroy the enemy or die.

The problem with maneuverability is less being able to completely defeat missiles than to reduce NEZ.

If a highly-maneuverable stealth aircraft engages a less-maneuverable stealth aircraft, and their detection range is within both aircraft’s maximum, but not NEZ, missile range, the more maneuverable aircraft will detect its foe, launch its missile, get targeted by its opponent, then scoot.

The more maneuverable aircraft will be able to scoot away and kill the less maneuverable aircraft without getting killed by its counterparty missile.

The idea, of course, with stealth aircraft is that all detection engagements between stealth aircraft will occur within NEZ. When you consider GaN AESA and radically improving electronics, though, it’s possible that maneuverability will still matter because detection and targeting ranges will exceed NEZ and the more maneuverable aircraft will have a smaller NEZ zone when targeted by the enemy missile.

I don’t agree with the J-20 being an interceptor or strike fighter. The reason I disagree with that is that the J-20 makes too many compromises against stealth to be a pure interceptor or strike fighter. You can point to the Valkyrie against the canards, which limit side stealth and according to APA’s RCS studies, create a huge frontal RCS, but in the J-20’s case, the canards are relatively large and combine in a dihedral-anhedral mode with the main wing. The killer is the canard-lerx-delta planform; you could strain the argument that the canards are stabilizers as in the Valkyrie, but why pair the canards with a non-stealthy lerx? Isn’t that a bit excessive for pure stability functions?

Besides, the J-20 has a lower wing loading than the J-31. If they’re both fighter types, and the J-31 lacks aerodynamic bells and whistles compared to the J-20, for the J-31 to be more air superiority-concentrated it should have a higher wing loading than the J-20.

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I don’t think it’s remotely nationalistic or fanboyish to claim that the J-20 is air-superiority oriented. IIRC, there’s a paper floating out there on the internet by the J-20’s designer which explains the design principles underlying the J-20. To the outside observer, the J-20 makes a few compromises that seem to suggest it is not a true air superiority type, but one wonders why these compromises exist. The reason the J-20 is a compromised aircraft is because it’s designed to work within the constraints of Chinese technological limitations. The relatively low aspect ratio exists because the aircraft needs to achieve supercruise with the relatively underpowered engines at the disposal of the Chinese, not because the J-20 is designed for interception.

You can look at a comparison between the J-10 and the Rafale as an example. The Rafale has this huge wing and relatively small close-coupled control canards, while the J-10 has this small wing and large control canards. The smaller wings limit the sustained turn of the J-10, but notice the key difference. The Rafale has access to the Smecma M88 engines, and composite materials to reduce weight, while the J-10 is stuck with Russian AL-31FN engines that have less than one fifth the MTBO of Western equivalents and is made mainly out of aluminum and iron to reduce costs.

If the Chinese had access to the same engines and composites the French had, would they have built a J-10 with such a low aspect ratio? Or would it there be larger wing size in the airframe as greater engine thrust would allow them to overcome drag?

Now, I suppose I have to take back what I said about the J-31 being a knock-off of the F-35 and F-22, but the J-31 IS the stealthy JF-17. Consider the basic planform, the JF-17 is a light LERX-Delta. What about the J-31? Medium delta with a curved LERX-like inlet housing.

Since the J-31 is a far less ambitious project than the J-20, with smaller radars and less emphasis on air superiority, it’s possible the J-31 will be able to hit the market sooner than the J-20.

All the J-31 needs to complete its role is the ability to achieve a reasonable degree of stealth, first-generation AESA radars, and a decent payload. If it’s fighting 4.5 gen fighters, hopefully it’ll be able to outnumber its counterparty and kill it in BVR. If it’s completing other missions, it presents a minimal stealth capability, allowing it to bypass or destroy air defenses and destroy airfields.

The J-20, on the other hand, is either an interceptor or designed for air superiority (bear with me here, look at the canards, look at the rumors of TVC; interceptors don’t need TVC). It needs strong engines, LPI AESA, and a TVC capability that hasn’t yet been proven. All of these are technologies the Chinese don’t have; they are either reliant on Russian engines or using overclocked domestic engines with absurd MTBFs; we aren’t even sure if the Chinese have an AESA; we see papers about it, but the only picture is of what may be a PESA, and the Chinese have no aircraft with TVC capability.

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IMO, both the J-31 and J-20 are development projects and their first iterations will not fully show the capabilities of the airframe. The first iterations of the J-31 will probably be significantly inferior to the F-35 not only in AESA but also in aerodynamic maneuverability. This is mainly because the J-31 has a rather conventional aerodynamic formula and the J-31, unlike the F-35, lacks the 11:1 TWR engine of the F-35. Later versions of the J-31 should have better engines, allowing it to bridge the gap, but aiming for parity is a realistic hope.

What the J-20 really wants is mature TVC. Since it’s for air superiority roles, it’s basically crippled without good engines, and on a stealth basis, having a total of 8 control surfaces isn’t very good. If it were to have mature TVC, on the other hand, it would be able to ditch the stabilizers and approximate the planform and maneuverability of a 6th generation aircraft.

“I doubt lockheed-martin would network anything sensitive in a position where it can be “hacked” through the internet.”

This is why the Lockmart hacking incident is so embarrassing.

Off on other forums, we already have the J-31’s specifications; it’s about 11.5 meters in wingspan; announced by the ******* trucking company!

Wing loading on the J-31 is likely going to be less than on the F-22 and more than the F-35; it’s the low-end aspect of the J-20/J-31 mix.