BlitzoBut even if it is a newly redeveloped version using all the stuff You mention, a F-16E will never be a fifth generation fighter like the F-35, a Su-35 will never be a fifth generation type like the F-22 or T-50 and also a Il-476 will never be a more modern transport like the Y-20; period.
Deino, lol give it a break and do what everyone else does and put him on your ignore list :p
BlitzoNot only that.. they can’t seem to bring even J-11D into service, while the Russian counterpart Su-35S has already been built in dozens and combat deployed… But when it comes to 5th Gen, China can easily outrun Russians by several years? That’s strange.. :confused:
J-11D only made its maiden flight last year, while Su-35S made its first flight in 2008, surely it’s a bit much to expect an aircraft which first flew seven years after to have the same level of development?
O_O
We’ll probably see J-11D enter service in 2018 or 2019, depending on how things go.
In the meanwhile, J-16s have entered service and production should be ramping up (J-16’s development schedule is slightly more similar to Su-35S — but even then, J-16s first flight was in 2011), not to mention J-16D development as well, and likely a new J-15 variant. So SAC have quite a few flanker airframe variants to juggle.
BlitzoDid Pakistan try though?
Not sure, but maybe they knew better than to strongly push for it?
Its the only option left now.
I think adding additional avionics and weapons suite to JF-17 was always on the cards.
That said, I think if PAF had the money, they could probably buy a squadron or two of J-10Bs for service by 2020, if China is willing to sell them.
I thought the PAF was putting LGBs and all sorts of A2G kits on J-10s? Why would they use it as A2A when they have the J-11?
By PAF do you mean PLAAF?
A few J-10s have been seen carrying LGBs and targeting pods yes (possibly for integration tests or trials), but not in a consistent or anywhere near common capacity.
It’s a long discussion as to why the Chinese Air Force may right now prefer to use J-10s as an A2A platform rather than a more multirole platform, but if I had to distill it down from my understanding of it, I’d say there are two reasons.
1: Chinese military aviation has quite a large fleet of strike capable aircraft already; some 200-240 JH-7/As which are single role strikers, and also the 100 or so Su-30MKK/MK2s which are multirole strikers, and also the new multirole striker J-16s. There are also some 50 or so H-6Ks (increasing by the year) for carrying standoff ALCMs and many dozen older H-6 variants that can also carry some ALCMs. (Q-5s dont’ really count as modern strikers by any definition fo the word). So by itself, that is quite a large fleet of strike capable aircraft. One can argue that it would make sense for the Chinese military aviation to seek more strike capable aircraft anyway, but that leads us to the second major point……..
2: ……. Chinese military aviation is probably focused on fighting enemies with capable air defences and capable air forces, and they have a limited budget. The Chinese Air Force does not to be too keen on fielding a large family of “direct attack” PGMs — think JDAM equivalents, or Paveway equivalents or even SDB equivalents — despite multiple families of weapons being developed and marketed like crazy by three or four companies. And those types of weapons would typically be the kinds of weapons that a fighter the size of J-10 would carry if it were oriented for a strike role. The reason why the Chinese Air Force has yet to commit to direct attack PGMs, I think, is because they recognize that their potential adversaries would have very capable air defenses as well as air forces of their own, meaning if they wanted to conduct strike against those enemies it would make most sense to rely on longer range stand off munitions and also to throw more resources into reducing the threat of the opfor’s air forces first. With the limited budget that the Chinese military does still have (considering the formidable foes it faces), I think keeping the medium size J-10 fighter as a pure A2A fighter which could not contribute significantly to carrying stand off weapons (compared to say JH-7/As) makes more than a bit of sense, and the lack of enthusiasm for J-10s carrying direct attack PGMs makes even more sense. The costs at this point may simply be not worth the incremental gain in strike capability (costs would include integration of additional A2G weapons, purchase and support of the weapons themselves, and of course flight hours and training to use those weapons).
I suspect we will only see J-10s and other fighters fielding more direct attack PGMs consistently once the Chinese Air Force has enough A2A fighters and enough stand off and SEAD capabilities to strongly overpower potential opposing air forces and air defences… or possibly once JH-7/As start being retire as a matter of necessity, but that would likely be a decade to two decades away.
BlitzoQuestion though is how much of that Mirage fleet is even serviceable today? And would PAF not have been better off investing in the more capable J-10? At the end of the day, its assembling the JF-17 locally from Chinese kits with some local input in airframe and other assembly to pick up over time. They could have done the same for the J-10 and a 100+ J-10 fleet would have surely been a much better force.
J-10s probably would have been quite a bit more expensive than JF-17s, and China may not have been willing to sell J-10As in the same timespan that PAF may have required JF-17s.
I think buying JF-17s en masse and investing to upgrade them with better avionics is the best way to go. Even if China’s not willing to sell its best targeting pods or export a JF-17 sized AESA they can try with a European alternative instead.
Even with J-10s, the Chinese military seems to be uninterested in using it as a true multirole platform and content with using it as an A2A platform primarily, so PAF would probably have to fork out quite a bit of money for integrating precision A2G capabilities on any J-10s themselves.
BlitzoChina already claims the SCS as its territory so I don’t think there is any need to debate what their intentions might be.
Actually there’s quite a lot of difference in the fine print.
For example, the nine dash line. Does the nine dash line mean China is claiming all of the oceans and waters as well as land features within the nine dash line as territorial waters, or as EEZ?
Or, does it just mean China is claiming all the land features and reefs in the nine dash line, which would be quite different to claiming all the waters as its territory or its EEZ.
Furthermore, does the land reclamation at various reefs mean China is asserting those artificial islands have an EEZ or territorial waters?
These are all things that China has not stated, and even all their actions have not been enough to make one version or another watertight.
What is ambiguous about claiming it as your sovereign territory and then moving to create facts on the ground to support that claim?
See above.
The US isn’t even a claimant in the SCS so I don’t see what this has to do with the US. The real dispute is between those states that actually have plausible claims to the SCS, and China isn’t one of them. The nearest undisputed Chinese territory is Hainan island… 600 miles away. Vietnam Malaysia, and the Philippines are half that distance or less.
The US is a factor because US political or military backing of other nations will lead to different negotiating calculus during any talks that try to resolve the dispute. Obviously China would prefer to negotiate from a position of strength.
As for proximity — there’s a lot of historical precedents and examples one can bring up about how justifiable it is to claim territory as one’s own when said territory is closer to other nations than oneself. We can bring up all sorts of arguments and counter arguments for one position or another, and it’ll be a futile debate that’ll essentially boil down to disagreements about the fairness of certain aspects of the international and the historical post WWII dispensation of territory and decolonization process.
BlitzoThe question remains why would China invest massive amounts into military technology just to get satisfied with conferring together with countries like Philippines.. I don’t think they care about being called adults more than they care about expanding their EEZ in any thinkable way..
Depends on what China’s territorial ambitions in the SCS actually are.
I think China’s military and surveillance ambitions for the SCS are pretty obvious — i.e.: the ability to monitor airspace and surface of SCS with high capability military presence of their own to counter permanent US presence there and to track US surveillance flights near Hainan — but whether China actually wants to create EEZs around the new artificial islands is a whole different matter, and I’ve definitely not read any clear statements from the Chinese govt regarding EEZs around those islands, only things like “sovereign waters”.
In other words, China at this point seems to be deliberately maintaining a high sense of strategic ambiguity in terms of its territorial intent for the SCS and the nine dash line.
Personally I think China would be open to multiple bilateral or even limited multilateral negotiations to settle the SCS disputes territorially, but would want to do so from a position of relative negotiating power without influence from outside powers like the US.
BlitzoUse them to bargain. Remember how the U.S. used Jupiter missiles in Turkey to bargain with during the Cuban missile crisis? China if you want our shoals removed, then remove yours.
I would literally make the the shoal from end to end VLS launchers. I would greatly increase the resources needed to defend Chinese shoals.
China would probably just nod its head, accept the presence of a US artificial island, and continue going about its own reclamation.
You have to remember, that if even the US does conduct a reclamation of its own, the capability an artificial island will provide will only be a drop in the bucket compared to the vast amounts of air and naval power the US already have in the SCS. In other words, even if the US did build up an artificial island of its own and loaded it with VLS end to end, China would probably still be more concerned with USN ships and carriers and USAF land based fighters. Not to mention a US artificial island would be very susceptible to the same kinds of vulnerabilities in a war that China’s own artificial islands suffer from — namely being fixed locations with no strategic depth that can be easily bombarded by air power or missiles.
China might even use the excuse of US construction of artificial islands to further increase construction of its own artificial islands.
I personally cannot see any event in which the US would consider the idea of constructing its own artificial islands to be a good one. The US has many military options to use against China if they really want to prevent China from dredge up Scarborough, but building its own artificial island probably isn’t one of them.
BlitzoActually we might be under treaty obligation to defend scarbourgh.
At first blush, Scarborough presents a possible red line for the Philippine-U.S. military alliance. As a former U.S. territory transferred to the Philippines, it may be covered by the Mutual Defense Treaty that obligates the United States to help defend not only the Philippine metropolitan territory, but also “island territories under its jurisdiction.”
http://amti.csis.org/scarborough
I didn’t realize the shoal was transferred to the Philippines years ago. We are obligated by treaty. Suddenly building our own dredged reef and defending it doesn’t sound like a bad idea. It may be prudent and stop a wider conflict.
The US has more than enough ships and aircraft deployed in the SCS to conduct military operations around Scarborough if they wanted. Seriously, if they really do want to conduct military operations if China starts reclaimation Scarborough, then they can simply fire a few Tomahawks or send a few strike fighters from airbases in the Philippines to bomb Scarborough.
Dredging their own reef would be a bit of a confusing move.
BlitzoWait for the surge from a typhoon to rid the area of islands made by dredges.
Funnily enough, a typhoon last year did exactly that… only it wiped away a dredging attempt by Vietnam, not China’s 🙁
photo shows two Vietnamese dredging sites, photos on left show August 28 2015, photos on right show December 31 2015
I suppose it’s possible for a big typhoon or maybe tsunami or even possibly global warming to reduce the surface area of the reclaimed islands, but video from the ground of the reclaimed islands make them seem pretty robust and elevated. If there was a natural disaster big enough to wipe out reclaimed islands like Fiery Cross of Mischief, it would probably be enough to wipe out all the SCS islands and reefs occupied by everyone, not only China…. though I suppose that would be one way of settling the SCS dispute.
BlitzoIm not confused.
1. The island is disputed.
2. There is substantial reclamation on the island. Regardless if we have a island or not ocean was reclaimed, so my point stands.
3. We have had advanced weapons placed on the island’s in an intimidating manor. We have had attempts at intimidation regardless if the U.S. is present or not. I do recall that oil rigs have been positioned, fishers harrassed, and even nuclear war threatened with or without the presence of the U.S.
I don’t know if your towing the party line, insulting our intelligence, or simply re-writing history.
I am clarifying the different precedents of weapon deployment to the different islands, because equating deployment of weapons to Woody island to equal deploying weapons to Mischief and Fiery Cross most definitely is indeed a source of confusion.
There are two reasons for the differing precedents:
1: Woody Island is a natural island which has had some limited land reclamation done and where the key facilities like runways have always been present — whereas Mischief and Fiery Cross are artificial islands whose land mass is almost entirely exclusively a result of dredging and land reclamation and without which facilities like runways would not have been possible to be constructed.
2: Woody Island has seen deployment of fighters and SAMs and other weapons in the past before in a regular and well acknowledge way, whereas Fiery Cross and Mischief have never had those sorts of weapons before.
I’m merely adding some additional caveats to clarify the situation in case anyone happens to think that China was deploying weapons to Fiery Cross or Mischief, because deploying weapons to different islands most definitely do reflect different degrees of will.
===
edit:
another major reason I was belabouring the fact that Woody island is a natural island, is because in post 33 you mention Japan building a lighthouse and equating it to China stationing weapons. In that situation, I assumed you are talking about Japan’s planned construction of a lighthouse at the disputed Okinotorishima atoll which is also intended for an expansion to an island — in which case it is much more similar to Mischief and Fiery Cross than Woody.
That said, if you were not referring to Okinotorishima atoll to begin with then never mind.
BlitzoYou forgot the artillary. And didnt we recently have reports of fighters deployed to a reclaimed island?
Yes, it was woody island. The island is both disputed and has had recent reclamation. And no they didn’t use S-400 but HQ-9
Yes, and Woody Island is actually an island. That is to say, it is not an artificial island like Mischief or Fiery Cross which were reclaimed/dredged from what were essentially reefs.
China has also deployed both fighters and SAMs to Woody (Yongxing) Island in the past as well. In the case of Yongxing, they actually deployed a whole variety of weapons including HQ-9 SAM, HQ-6A SAM, LD-2000 C-RAM, as well as YJ-62 AShM, as well as fighters. It probably isn’t a permanent deployment, but rather a deliberate response to the US in response to recent US deployment and sailing/flight patterns.
If China had deployed those kinds of weapons to artificial islands like Meiji/Mischief or Yongshu/Fiery Cross then your point might have been more valid because those are islands formed exclusively from reclamation, but Yongxing is actually a natural island, not an artificial one.
I can understand your confusion though, because there’s lots of islands in the SCS and it’s difficult to appreciate which ones are natural and which ones are not, and the distances and geographic location of each of them.
BlitzoEqually one could ask why it would require US mediation for China to successfully resolve its disputes with its neighbours?
Fact is, while US presence in East & S.E Asia may be a source of irritation for China, it is welcomed by almost every other state in the region (as well as some interested extra-regional ones like Australia & India).
I don’t think he’s saying that it would “require” US mediation to resolve the disputes, but rather that he thinks the US could try to mediate on the basis of previous treaties and agreements (that max steel is saying is the source of many territorial issues in SCS today) instead of enhancing its military deployment to the area. The alternative is that the US simply does not get involved in the SCS at all which would result in likely bilateral agreements with China having superior negotiating positions, which the US obviously doesn’t want.
As for US presence — I think the medium term and long term goal for China is to continue to normalize its own military and paramilitary presence and surveillance capability in SCS, while maintaining military relations with as many SEA nations in as effective a way as possible, and to increase economic integration with those countries, in such a way that SEA nations eventually get used to the Chinese presence simply due to the unwillingness to truly confront China on the basis of economic and political links. China would also probably seek to economically and politically engage with Australia and India to reduce the degree of participation those nations would do with the US in SCS — it probably isn’t realistic for Australia and India to voluntarily avoid venturing into SCS, but I think China would be interested in making them more wary to the establishment of a formal NATO style alliance or avoid constant high tempo ops with the US in the SCS.
The US military would still have a substantial presence in SCS, but the end goal is for China to have the ability to monitor, track and possibly escort the US military presence in SCS to provide substantial early warning and reduce the threat to the Chinese mainland from USN and USAF air power and cruise missiles.
How successful China’s goal will be is another matter. If the US manages to get most of the SEA countries into a cohesive alliance and to resolve their own territorial disputes with each other then it could present a very viable challenge to Chinese plans, but how likely it is is another matter.
BlitzoInternational Law ? Isn’t it ironic that regarding these islands the U.S. is now touting UNCLOS and its arbitration, when the US senate refused to ratify UNCLOS because it would subject U.S. actions to unwanted international arbitration, and claims are being made about obeying “international law” which the U.S. is hardly an example of.
@Blitzo : Thanks for the details. Breaking defense twisting facts not expected.
In 1945, in accordance with the Cairo and Potsdam Declarations and with American help, the armed forces of the Republic of China government at Nanjing accepted the surrender of the Japanese garrisons in Taiwan, including the Paracel and Spratly Islands.
U.S. interests would be far better served by a bold attempt to eliminate the causes of conflict than by continuing the futile pursuit of mechanisms for managing tensions. Having taken sides against China, the United States cannot now hope to mediate between the parties. But it can make it clear that it would welcome, accept, and support the negotiated settlement of their differences.
The entire poor handling of post WWII territory restoration in East Asia, and the decolonization process in South East Asia is the source of many overlapping problems in the region we see today.
Personally I think it’s too simple to blame the US or other western powers at the time for the responsibility of the issues we see today, but the fact is that each nation now has its own geopolitical interests, whether it’s China, the US, Japan, or whoever, and all the big powers have made mistakes whether it’s in relation to UNCLOS or past reactions to ICJ rulings, or contravening international law in certain respects for their own interests.
BlitzoLaw is Law. There are no provocative actions by sailing in International waters. Per definition. By writing such, you already imply that your opinion is a fact. This is what I pointed out. Nothing else.
I think you are mixing the idea that “legal actions” cannot be “provocative actions”.
Any nation has the right to perceive an action as provocative regardless of its legality, because the perception of provocation is ultimately dependent on their own national interests, rather than international law.
Putting it another way — one can conduct immensely provocative actions while remaining comfortably within the bounds of legality.
So Japan building a light house is equal to China building air bases, S-400s, and placing artillary and Tactical fighters there? I SEE..
APPLES AND ORANGES? Or apples and hand grenades?
China has not placed S-400s (or any SAMs) or artillery or tactical fighters on any of its reclaimed islands. China doesn’t even have S-400s yet.
They’ve only deployed fighters and SAMs to Yongxing island — but that is not one of the reclaimed islands that have been dredged, and weapons and fighters have been deployed to Yongxing routinely for years now.
BlitzoIt would seem that the only logical thing would be to dredge our own islands. They would be joint bases with Taiwan the Philippines and Japan. I China wants them moved either use physical force or bargain to have them removed. F-35Bs in Taiwan or THAAD in Taiwan or even a joint base would definitely get Chinas attention. Its not about the capability per se, its about Honor.
The problem is that for China it is a matter of capability — i.e.: the capability to monitor the SCS more effectively and to provide more military and paramilitary presence in the area. For China it isn’t a matter only about territory and sovereignty but also the need to be able to defend its own SLOCs in the SCS where so much of its trade runs.
If the US wants to build its own islands there, then they’re obviously free to do so. Whether the US would consider that a useful expenditure of money when they have so many bases in SEA nations already, and when they have such a potent blue water naval capability and naval aviation capability in its CVNs is another matter.
?!!!
I think the first skill in to learn in discussing geopolitics is to understand that different sides can have different perceptions of what is considered provocative or not provocative, and to accept differing perceptions as valid in the eyes of the different sides.
Only after that is it possible to have a rational discussion about each side’s motivations.
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