Chinese aerospace may have taken 30 years to get to this point, but progress isn’t necessarily linear. Furthermore, we should probably consider the tools China has at its disposal now compared to 30 years ago. Computers are only getting more powerful and development and manufacturing technologies have only become more sophisticated. And even with all that considered, by the time the WS-15 is in production around 2020, if there are no hiccups, it will have been over 25 years since the F119 first flew, and it may not be as good as what the Russians will field with the Type 30 (6 stage HPC for 170-180 kN vs 5 stage HPC) or what the US may begin testing in a decade. I don’t find China having a 180 kN engine by 2020 *that* unreasonable all things considered. As with the J-20 itself, it doesn’t happen until it does, but China isn’t North Korea, and they’ve demonstrated both with engines and with a lot of other technologies that they can make very rapid progress, even if the process isn’t smooth sailing. If that is still difficult to believe though, considering the economic power at China’s disposal and the money they throw into military modernization, and I find it unlikely that if they can’t develop adequately powered engines for the J-20 on their own they wouldn’t just find a way to buy them from Russia. CAC has maintained a very close relationship with Salyut for a reason, I think.
Of course, as the case with anything related to China’s military technology, it’s only fair that you take what I have to say with a grain of salt. Sorry if that was tl;dr (but now I have a post I can reference whenever the history of the WS-10 is discussed).
me am agree.
but also chinabots are also prone to “hey, our economy and technology is rising super fast, that must mean so are our jet engines, radar technology, society, donkey, xyz”.
they dont realize that in some things take time to develop no matter how much money you throw at it.
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