Ah yes, but isn’t it a bit unusual for a report to be chock-full of errors? Also, the UN registry isn’t very up-to-date, or as complete (since it depends on which countries bother to fill out the export reports and how truthful those reports are). How come Senor Hewson hasn’t issued a followup report since the first one in 10/03, or is the situation still cloudy?:)

Originally posted by crobato
That’s 105 kits—from 2001. What about the kits before that? My impression from SIPRI is that up to 2001, about 50 kits were delivered. These earlier kits are almost completely knocked down kits. and all they needed to do was assembly, riveting and welding.

The next 150 kits beyond that are kits with gradual decreasing Russian content to allow for gradually increased Chinese content. If RAND is correct, up to 70% of the plane will be Chinese made, with 30% remaining to be Russian. That 30% is likely to be mainly up of two things:

1.) The engines and engine management systems which are supplied by Urals based UMPO, which makes AL-31Fs for Salyut under contract. (Salyut directly makes the special AL-31FN engines for the J-10 in an assembly line near Moscow).

2.) The avionics, which includes the cockpit (Ramenoskoye for instruments), the radar (NIIP), and the fly by wire (ELARA). I think this is where Technocomplex comes into the picture, integrating all three and more into a kit.

The rest of the platform is made in China, including the airframe.

So I think the Technocomplex person may be talking of #2 here.

Based on my assumptions that since 2001, we are seeing a conversion rate of at least one regiment per year, or 24-26 aircraft per year. The production rate may be adjusted to this quota. The news about the Lanzhou regiment confirms the third conversion for 2003, following the first conversion (a reg in 1st div in 2001) and the second conversion (a reg in 7th div in 2002). That means we’re looking at about 75 J-11 aircraft operational or entering into service.

This also means we should be expecting a fourth regiment conversion to occur sometime this year. AT this point in time, another 25 aircraft should have been completed or in the end process of being so. These aircraft will still have to undergo a certification process before being officially accepted by the PLAAF, while the candidate unit will have to be prepared and trained for this migration.

So yes, I think this supports about 100 airframes being physically completed, with the last 25 still in the process of entering certification, while 75 may already be fielded in operational service.

With the news that PLA now has 11 Flanker regs, it breaks down to this:

5 regs of SU-30MKK, the fifth a very possible recent conversion of a Navy air unit with the first naval capable SU-30MKKs.

3 regs of SU-27 that are Russian made.

3 regs of J-11s, the SU-27s assembled or made in China. The last unit is the Lanzhou MR reg.

Of the 75 J-11s that may be in service, the first 50 are probably from almost complete Russian kits, while the last 25 to 50 may have increased indigenous construction.

Do you have a more definitive reference to the number of CKD kits supplied by the Russians pre-2001?

5 regiments of MKKs? Are you certain? I thought there are only 38+38 + (28-MK2s); so each regiment of MKKs has fewer craft than a regiment of Su-27s?

With so many Sukhois, it begs the question- do they have enough trainers? Even full-dome simulations can only do so much…

OK, so we know one thing then, that Knaapo delivered 105 kits in the past two years. Does that mean that since then, all 105 kits have been completed? Hewson also mentioned in his article that some 100 J-11s have been completed, so I presume this is what he was referring to….

Originally posted by crobato
Like I said, the J-10 images are open game. No one is willing to claim “copyright” on them. Just about every website, and every international publication that published an article on the J-10 has used the Internet images.

Yeah, but the J-10 images in Jane’s are credited to Yihong Chang, aka Pinkov. They should, imo, be accredited to ‘internet source’ instead.

Originally posted by crobato
The complaints on Kanwa images looking like the ones from the Internet centered on pictures of the new Chinese destroyers sitting in the harbor in Shanghai.

But of course, the pictures would look very much alike—it is the same content, same subject, same background. No matter who actually took it, they would all like alike.

On J-10 images, there is no question every publication used the leaked pictures off the net. But then the pictures were regarded as open game.

Many Chinese netters have a habit of scanning from Chinese military magazines then posting the pics in the forums with the netter’s signature to “claim” this pic is theirs. But who does the pic actually belong to? The guy who scanned or posted them or the magazine that published them. Everyone is so zealous of who and who owns the pictures that even CCTV and the PLA itself puts their signatures on their images.

I’m not talking about the scanned images- I’m talking about the J-10 images mostly.