You have got me confused now Deino, Why was it that the J-20 won when SAC’s proposal was much better? Is this the Chinese equivalent of the ATF program where the better plane lost. :confused:
It was definitely not better. I believe it was much worse. It was slightly bigger and the tri-plane config ballooned the RCS. A later proposal removed the canards but that was at the expense of maneuverability. I am not sure whether it had an advantage in maneuverability even with the canards. CAC won over the PLAAF despite SAC having a lot of political clout. In fact, SAC managed to force their way into the J-20 program as a sub-contractor when it was selected. I am wondering whether this is the reason we got to see a big improvement when going from FC-31 V1 to V2, whether SAC actually managed to get some ‘know-how’ CAC.
ATF example might apply to PLAN. Navalized J-20 would probably be too big and too costly for the PLAN. And even if CAC came up with a technically superior alternative to SAC FC-31 based fighter, China might not have been too comfortable with giving CAC such huge monopoly.
Sign In
