Funny, Brazil and India to name just two think SSN’s is the better solution………..

The Australian public is generally completely opposed to nuclear power of any sort.

Conventional Japanese subs would probably be viewed as a great sign of national healing. Australian hicks might be opposed to it but the general public would not give a crap, unlike the acquisition of nuclear subs.

Also Brazil and India want to pretend they’re super powers. SSKs fit here as a prestige program. It’s like Ghana wanting to build a nuclear reactor in the 1960s when it had sufficient hydro electric opportunities.

Meanwhile the Japanese who have a very advanced and capable Navy are going for conventional submarines.

But then they’re not just puffing themselves up whilst in reality the vast majority of their military is equipped with obsolescent rubbish.

Thanks for the update. It still reveals an obsolete force with 54% comprising obsolete J-7, J-8 and Q-5. Add the JH-7 into the mix and that’s near 65% obsolete.

700 modern fighters/attack aircraft is good for self defence but it’s insufficient for maintaining any large scale military conflict in North Asia.

And by the time the old crates have been pensioned off, the earlier J-10s and J-11s will need replacing.

FYI, JH-7A’s mk202s/WS-9s produce 91kn of thrust each, tornado’s mk103s produce 77kn each, with a MTOW of 28.5 tons and 28 tons respectively…
Not exactly underpowered.

But it’s definitely not a modern design per se, aerodynamically, although JH-7A does have early 4th gen avionics, and boasts a decent A2G suite, mostly standoff missiles of the KD-88 type.

Cheers for update.

The website you posted a link for states Air Force JH-7As are scheduled to be replaced by J-16 (Su-30MK equivalent). Doesn’t seem PLAAF are too enamoured with JH-7A. PLANAF is looking at new JH-7Bs to replace JH-7/JH-7A as well as some H-6 Badgers.

lol what is your point? war is not fight in numbers alone

As stated China is lacking in force multipliers and force projection tools.

It’s lacking in a modern air force with a lot of the force being obsolete.

500 j7 alone is more dangeorus than most air force can put in the sky.

And 500 J-7s have extremely limited range and are thus limited to short range defence missions. Which is what the MiG-21F-13 and MiG-21MF’s main roles were – take down USAF B-47s and B-52s.

Great example of how numbers can be irrelevant.

I dont think all of them scraped. UBK as are late 90s.

That adds a handful of airframes.

US has alot of commitements like baby sit EU and Middleast. and China lack of threat is not due to lack fighters. it is some totally different reasons.

US commitments to Europe is 150 fighters plus rotational figher deployments. That leaves 2,000 odd combat airfcraft for other things.

US European commitment is in decline – just recently USAFE lost another fighter squadron.

120 for JH-7 is too low.

You provide a link to a number showing more JH-7s and I’ll believe it.

Those Japanese Soryu class do sound impressive.

Not ignoring anything….Your looking at one side of the coin and then spinning it in the most negative light.

You are indeed ignoring things like AWACS or transports (necessary for redeploying a fighter squadron or delivering and resupplying forward units).

As for negative, the Chinese have done wonders in upgrading their obsolete force. But they’re still miles behind – the J-7 is still one of their most numerous fighters and it’s useless as anything but as basic point defence fighter against low tech opponents.