Same as djcross, but with the difference that J-20 is for ISR warfare
more than OCA, on the hunt for first and foremost AWAC’s & other rear high value assets, it’s too expensive and too little added bang to slug it out in air dominance

I don’t quite understand this statement, could you elaborate a little? Thanks. 🙂

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The last J-11 crash I am aware of is in 2008. The last J-10B crash I heard was in 2011.

J-11 may be correct. I do not believe any J-10B prototypes have crashed as of yet.

J-10 and J-11 aren’t new fighters.

All the more reason why their crashes would be meaningless. Unless there is a systematic flaw which causes the entire fleet to be grounded, crashes due to aging airframes here and there are normal.

My conclusion is that J-20 cannot use China’s domestic WS-10 and WS-15 engines due to unreliability and must use Russian AL-31F and 117S engines, which gives Russia a control on the J-20’s production volume.

I bet the Russians would love that :rolleyes:

Or maybe just you.
I suppose all the USAF planes which have crashed mean their engines are all unreliable as well.

You can draw two conclusions from this report.

1. Chinese engines are unreliable, and this is the reason why J-15, J-20, and J-31 are all powered by Russian engines. The situation isn’t likely to change soon, and this gives Russia the power to control the production of these new Chinese fighter jets, or China must equip them with unreliable domestic engines.

The premise immediately is wrong, because there are over a hundred J-11B and BS and even new J-15 and J-16 prototypes sharing WS-10 engines. If WS-10 engines were so systematically faulty we would be hearing about far more crashes every single week of shenyang built flankers. So you’re wrong on this count.
Further, generalising the supposed reliability of one engine and then using that to make a statement about the entire industry of a country and a future engine developed my a different institute completely is frankly stupid.

2. Chinese fighter jet components are unreliable, and this is the reason why you hear so many crashes and technical troubles with China’s new jet development efforts like the J-10B, the J-11B, and the J-15. The J-20 sharing same components too is likely to be unreliable.

I don’t think we’ve heard anything about J-10B crashing or having technical problems. J-11B had issues with WS-10 for about the first 24 copies, which were installed with Al-31. All others were subsequently equipped with WS-10.

Unreliability of components can have a major effect on the readiness of the PLAAF’s combat jets.

I must say this is the most ambitious use of generalisation fallacies I’ve seen on this forum. Planes crash all the time. There are faulty components here and there. I suppose going off your logic, the entire US Air Force is destined to fall out of the sky given how even their newest in service planes crash occasionally, and I suppose oxygen problems on the F-22 mean they cannot build adequate life support systems for any of their planes so their pilots are all doomed to asphyxiated, and that F-35 is so over budget and delayed the US military should just give up on buying new equipment altogether.

Prove me wrong, but the WS-15 has yet to enter serial production.

Actually J-31 will never be using WS-15… Or Al-31. J-31 uses Rd-93 currently.

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And I think WS-15 is too far along its development to let anything they can learn from 117s significantly influence it at this stage. Not denying a look at them would benefit the indigenous industry (as would a look at any other nation’s advanced engines) but its effect on WS-15 development? Minimal IMHO.

I’m sure the competition itself of having UAV models land on a scaled carrier deck was just happy coincidence and it wasn’t signifier to some program for carrier borne UCAVs in advanced stages of development. But chances are the PLAN will end up having their own UCLASS in due time.

What I want to know, is whether the sharp sword or whatever it’s called, is a tech demonstrator like neuron or an actual prototype for a plane meant for serial production. Probably the former, if going by other similar programs

If the black blob on the right at the hanger door is a person then it’s not very big. The nose of the aircraft would only be head high.

At best a sub scale model

If that blob is indeed a person, it would be similar in size to X-47b

Plawolf over on SDF made an interesting case for how the RWR going off could have not necessarily have been a FCR.

It think 3km for a trailing vessel is far too close for comfort. If this was FCR illumination, I would’ve liked to know if the PLAN had issued warnings for the JMSDF ship to keep its distance or not, before lighting em up.

Whoever is in the wrong and right, it goes without saying the two countries need to work out some procedures to mitigate these risky situations popping up again.

But first, I think we need to be clear what a radar lock on means. This might seem obvious to most of us here, but a ship or planes radar warning receiver goes off when it detects radar waves operating in bands typically used in fire control radars (x-band) illuminating the receiver over a certain power threshold (btw, LPI radars work by keeping their emissions individually below this power threshold, but scan lots of times using many slightly different frequencies and then piecing all the weak returns together to forms big return, but I digress).

However, not all x-band radars are fire control radars. It is worth noting that many marine navigational radars and radar range fingers also operate on the x-band, but to name a few things. I remember a story from a reliable source, where the RAF were scratching their heads when the self defence suit on Typhoons stationed at a certain RAF base would suddenly activate and give the pilot firing solutions to a spot on a nearby motorway. There was nothing wrong with any of the ECM suits, and after much investigating, it was discovered that a couple of patrol cops were using their radar speed guns to clock the speeds of passing Typhoons when they were on traffic watch, and that was similar enough to fire control radars that had they been doing this in a war zone, they would have eaten an ALARM missile for their troubles.

I think the general public has a somewhat distorted idea of what a radar lock-on means, probably from watching too much Top Gun. There is no real-time synchronised beeping and flashing of little red lights. RWR are set to go off when radars operating within a wide range of frequencies hit the RWR with a high enough amount of energy. The RWR by its very nature need to err on the side of caution, as it needs to cover all sorts of threats from many countries and systems, and a false positive is better than missing a lock.

Frankly, it would not be hard to imagine how Chinese range finding or even navigational radars could have set off the Japanese RWRs, especially when you consider just how close they were operating to Chinese ships at the time of these ‘lock-ons’, because the closer you are to the emitter, the stronger the signal, especially in the case of high frequency radars that loose their energy very quickly, like x-band radars.

What more, fire control radar wartime operating frequencies are some of the most closely guarded secrets of any military, because if an enemy found that out, they can potentially develop tailored countermeasures to make your weapons useless. And I personally do not believe the Japanese or Americans have a record of the wartime frequencies of modern Chinese fire control radars. If anything, it would have been a big intelligence coup if the Japanese did manage to record such frequencies from this incident. In which case I hardly doubt the Japanese would be complaining and making such a big deal out of it. Looking at it from the other side, I find it hard to believe that a Chinese commander would order the use of his fire control radars because of the valuable intel he would be giving away.

If anything, I think the Japanese have made a blunder and gifted China some valuable data because obviously their RWR went off, and depending on how modern their self defence suits are and their settings, they might have also actively broadcasted jamming signals automatically. These jamming signals are also very useful for CECM, and given the high tensions and how much of a deal the Japanese are trying to make of this, I doubted their pilots and ship captain were using training mode if and when they did start jamming.

I do wonder if all the fuss the Japanese are making is supposed to try and compensate themselves for, and justifying they potentially giving away very valuable signals and frequency characteristics to the Chinese so cheaply. After all, if the Chinese did use their fire control radars, its not so much of a screw up since the signals and frequencies the Japanese recorded would be useful to them if things did turn hot. And/or they are thinking we might as well try and make some political hay out of this and make the most of a bad situation.

So, to sum up, I have little doubt that the Japanese RWR went off, and that the pilots and Japanese captain thought at the time that they had been targeted. However, I also believe the Chinese government when they specifically denied that fire control radars were used on the Japanese ship and helo. I think another type of radar was the cause of the Japanese thinking they had been locked on, maybe making them think that was deliberate, where range finding or navigational radars were being used in an atypical fashion designed to give the impression off a lock on without actually using the ships fire control radars to avoid giving away sensitive signals.

Anything in the JH-7 arsenal comparable to the 550+ km´s MBDA Taurus 350 and the Goodrich RAPTOR pod? Or something equivalent to the ECR electronic suite?

Honestly asked, my knowledge on Chinese aerospace is not exactly “sharp”.

1: nope, or at least if it is it ain’t in wide service yet. A longer range, stealthy cruise missile is still a weapon the indigenous industry has yet to demonstrate.
2: I am not sure if JH-7/As are tasked with recon, but short answer is no.
3: JH-7/As have been seen carrying multiple EW pods, with news reports that they are used in the escort jammer role.

Which variant of the Tornado are we on about? GR4 from the RAF, or the IDS’ of the RSAF, Luftwaffe or Italian Air Forces?

Considering the only significant deviations between them are avionics and compatibility or lackthereof with various weapons, let’s just say we’re on about all variants.

Unfortunately we don’t have details on how well JH-7As various avionics perform in their roles, nor what specialized avionics they have in the first place.

But we can compare known weapons that the planes can be equipped with, and in this regard I think only RAF tornados have a significantly different weapons capability in the form of brimstone.

LGBs with self designation, anti ship cruise missiles, land attack cruise missiles of various guidance modes, ARMs, SRAAM, dumb bombs etc are all common armament to both JH-7/A and most tornado IDS of various international air forces.