PLA Air Force General News Thread:

If the Chinese wanted to attack Russia (which the West has been dreaming of for years) and its Far East, they would have tried centuries ago - and they would have failed.
I don't think about any conflict between Russia and China either. When equipping its armed forces, China probably has the deterrence of the USA in the foreground, although the Chinese Armed Forces are increasingly being equipped with offensive systems, while the entire environment of China is also "in the crosshairs" - I mean Japan, South Korea, as well as the island countries near China .
For example, China already has about 300 or over 300 J-16s while India has 260+ Su-30MKIs. I don't even need to mention J-10, J-11, J-20. I don't even think that a conflict between China and India will happen, even though that is also a Western wet dream.
My opinion is that China will look to achieve every possible primacy over all the countries in its surroundings, but will leave its northern neighbor to do its own thing and will leave Russia to be the quietest in the area of ​​the countries of the former USSR.

Greetings to you Hole and I have to write to you that I would much prefer Serbia to buy the J-10 than the plane produced by Asterixland.  
In the long term I would prefer the Su-75 but well, it is what it is.
If we are not already in a position to buy from the Russians, then it is best to buy from the Chinese. Apart from the unrealistically high price for nowhere proven "superiority", the West is prone to blackmail and I would not buy anything from them.
I am aware that this is impossible for Serbia and that from time to time we have to buy what we don't want.


I would be satisfied if Serbia had an aviation regiment with J-10C planes.

Actually it's voming from the israeli Lavi program. Nothing to do with mig-21.

Jf-17 is more a modern mig-21 than j-10.

More like a delta/canard winged F-16 with a Russian engine and a chinese radar and avionics.

J-10C has a Chinese WS-10 engine. There is nothing Russian in it.

So this list does not include 100 aircraft of the base J-11 variant, nor does it include any Russian-made aircraft, nor did I include the Xian JH-7 in the list. Also not included in this list are aircraft that are in service with the Chinese Navy.

1. J-20; over 200 aircraft - the most numerous heavy fighter of the fifth generation.
2. J-16; 300 aircraft,
3. J-11B/BS; 270+ aircraft,
4. J-10; well over 520 aircraft.

In a few more years, the Chinese Air Force will be the strongest in the world.
There are people who give preference to the West, there are those who give that preference to Russia, while I am in the third "hat" and give my vote to China.

I think different... I don't care about bragging rights and showing off, I worry about danger, and the west being the most powerful as it was in the 1990s I think the world was at its greatest danger because the west did as it pleased.

Russia increasing in strength is a counter to that so I see Russia getting stronger as being a good thing, and I see China as getting stronger as being a good thing too because it weakens the wests ability to do as it pleases and bully other countries into doing as they are told.

The west being all powerful has led to paranoia and now the west doesn't dream of a better world for everyone, they realise they have it good and want to keep things that way, which essentially boils down to sabotaging and attacking rivals... right now that is Russia and China, but soon hopefully it will include more and more countries until the west finds itself isolated and out of touch.

The west might wake up and realise what Russia and China and the other countries in BRICS have the right idea, but they will need to have their societies broken and economies collapse for that to happen I guess.

Russia and China just need to wait... the west is destroying itself.

Fashion has always been a factor in aircraft design and it is interesting to see Chinese fashion in aircraft.

To Garry

What is the biggest advantage of Russia is the breaking of another Western MYTH, which is the price of the fifth generation aircraft.
So the Su-75 will certainly be an AK-74 assault rifle compared to the fourth-plus generation aircraft from the West and at a price of "25 to 30 million dollars".
I also doubt that price, but if the Su-75 is even 50 million dollars, it is still better to buy a "flying AK-74" than a "flying spear of the fourth+ generation from the West".

By the time the US had the first F-15s it was certainly the most powerful force in the air. I still think the F-15 is the crown jewel of western aviation, at least it was in its day. I would still rather be in an F-15EX than any European aircraft.
The F-22 is a failure both in terms of the number of aircraft produced and the cost of flight hours and the cost of maintaining the aircraft. And how much of a failure the F-22 is is best seen through the J-20 and its production numbers. I am already convinced that the USA will NEVER have more "5th generation heavy fighters" than China - NEVER AGAIN..
And why do I mention heavy fighter planes?
All aircraft in the West except the F-15/22 are "second league" and this is best seen through the export of F-15 aircraft, while the F-22 remained only for the needs of the USAF.
And what happened in the USA - "well, we Americans are putting the good old F-15 back into production".
The Americans OBVIOUSLY have HUGE problems in innovating their military equipment, regardless of whether it is fighter planes or offensive surface warships - there is no successor to the Ticonderoga cruisers and only the "cold war" Arleigh Burke platform is still being produced.

Western weapons kill like any other weapon while everything else is a MYTH; just as the West glorifies the Roman Empire and diminishes Ancient Greece, which is an older civilization. Just like they write eulogies about Napoleon (a complete idiot) while no one mentions Kutuzov, or the MYTH about how winter defeated the Germans..
Lie again, just lie, then lie again and so on non-stop - it is the Western essence of existence....

More like a delta/canard winged F-16 with a Russian engine and a chinese radar and avionics.

Lavy was probably developed with the help of americans who were working on the f-16 at that time. Si yeah looks like a f-16 in some ways.

Neither the israeli nor the chinese had the experience producing aircraft so they bought expertise from external sources. Israeli sold to China the lavy program.

But at least it gave China a basis on which they tested their technology. They also work on their own su-27s. It's an easy way to gain experience quickly. But they are still limited when it comes to designing their own planes.

J-10 is a lavy. J-11/15 are su-27 stolen designs. J-20 is coming from mig 1.44 that they probably bought. J-31 is a f-35 stolen design. They can't make their own from scratch.

I have to bust the ultimate MYTH and that is the story of copying.
Copying a phone, television or toy is not the same as producing thousands of fighter jets - worth tens of millions of dollars..No one forbids the Europeans to produce airplanes like the Chinese, but in Europe there is neither money nor capacity for that, nor technology anymore. Flying buckets designed back in the Cold War are being modernized and that's all..

The MiG-1.44 flew only twice; the first flight lasted 18 and the second time 22 minutes.. If it is enough for someone to consider this project a reliable platform for "copying",  I would write to him that he is mistaken.
And while that story about copying is credible for the Su-27, the story about "copying the F-35" is supreme idiocy. One plane is an assembly of a huge number of different components, and the Chinese did not even come into possession of the radar, engine or airframe of the F-35 plane.
But it is typical for the West and a good part of the population in the West, that is, "everything comes from us", even though the WHEEL came from Asia and is probably one of the most important inventions of mankind.
All the example of Europe's desperation is reflected in the fact that China has more J-10 fighter jets than Germany and Perfumeland have in total, but "the Chinese are copying us".
It's not that the Chinese are copying YOU, but your military industrial complex is stagnant, inefficient and the gap is deepening.
The west is falling and I am following it with pleasure.

The WEST is now hiding the fact that it was so proud of at the beginning of the last decade (and befroe that in the period 2000 to 2009) and EVERYONE in the West wrote something similar to this; "Only the US has operational heavy fighters of the 5th generation F-22", "will China ever manage to produce the desired number of fifth generation aircraft", "the US reigns supreme in the heavy fighters of the fifth generation while the Chinese are still developing the prototype"..

In 2022; China has more fifth generation heavy fighters than the US and the US will NEVER be able to match China again. And while J-20 production is growing from the US, announcements are coming about the retirement of the F-22 in the near future. A large part of the population in the West is still blind and does not want to see anything - the MYTH of "superiority" is the last bastion of defense.

Mig 1.44 is a project. The prototype didn't flew because they stoped the program but it didn't come from Stalin's ass. They developed it, engineered it and tested in wind tunels which is a huge part of the work.

The prototypes are the finalisation of that work and there is very little changes made between them and serial produced jets.

China bought all that work. And adapted it for its needs.

Chinese Flankers are unlicenced production of of russian flankers. They even bought su-33 from Ukraine.

J-10 is a Lavy.

J-31 us a total copy of f-35. That shit was created in 2 days after stealing f-35 data and was sitying on a parking for few years. Thry are now more interested by it for naval use. But even China doesn't care about that shit.

The west isn't falling. If it was falling Chiba wouldn't be copying it on every levels and sending its students in all western countries. Their destroyers, carriers, planes, missiles and tanks are all copies of western and russian stuff. They can't make anything alone.

Claims about copying were also done by the US with regards to Soviet or Japanese aircraft at one point. We know how that turned out.

The Chinese are smart in getting expertise wherever they can since they had a huge gap with the US in weapons technology by the 1980s. Desert Storm showed them that their entire equipment park was obsolete. So they had to make crash programs to replace basically everything. Back then their air force was still mostly composed of MiG-21 or Su-15 clones. Jumping from that to the Su-27 platform and the J-10 was a giant leap for them. They basically skipped the 3rd generation of aircraft. They went straight into 4th generation and now most of their aircraft are like 4+ generation aircraft and they have the second 5th generation heavy fighter to enter mass production. You might claim the J-20 and J-XX are derivative aircraft in airframe design sure. But the changes they made to the designs are not that easy to make in the first place. Airplanes are not LEGOs.

I expect Chinese 6th generation designs to have more of their own characteristics now they have caught up with the rest of the aviation industry. That has been the trend anyway. And regardless of how much that the US ballyhoo how they invented the airplane and things like that, the US had to buy fighter planes from France back in WWI. Because the aircraft the US produced back then were shit. Courtesy of the Wright Brothers and their lovely airplane patents. Caused US to have a decade's delay in producing aircraft.

You might claim the J-20 and J-XX are derivative aircraft in airframe design sure. But the changes they made to the designs are not that easy to make in the first place. Airplanes are not LEGOs.

That's what I said. They bought good and well engineered designs and adapted them for their needs and aquired experence with them.

If they keep investing they will make planes on their own in the future. Even if they aren't as good as russian or western they will have all the industry and be independant in that field.

That's good for them.

And last point that I forgot to say about J-21, it seems that indians aren't impressed at all by it so it shouldn't be seen as good as they say. Still lot of work to do on it.

The biggest hypocrites are Americans. The same applies to the British who bought the T-80U in the early 90s.
They are telling the whole world, from the Russians to the Chinese, how they copied this or that, although I don't know when the Russians flew F-15s or F-16/18s in Russia.
On the other hand, the USA has only been "evaluating" Su-27 and MiG-29 aircraft for decades.
The amount of hypocrisy in that cannot be described in words

Problem of the soviet was that leaders obliged their companies to make analogues of every US project even if their scientists said it was dumb.

If US made a fighter with swept wings they would do it also. If they did a VTOL they would do it too. If they did 1 big aircraft and 1 small aircraft the soviet would do it too (f-15/f-16 - su-27/mig-29). They even made an analogue to the U2 plane.

They were throwing money on every dumb US idea. They lost too much cash and effort on useless project.

Anyway, a few closeups of the J-16.

J-10 is a lavy. J-11/15 are su-27 stolen designs. J-20 is coming from mig 1.44 that they probably bought. J-31 is a f-35 stolen design. They can't make their own from scratch.

Designing your own stuff from scratch carries enormous risk and also a specific set of skills. There will be Chinese designers designing their own planes and aircraft, but the fact that we have not seen their products just relates to their designs not working out to offer any benefits over existing foreign proven designs, while at the same time having an element of risk not present in proven reliable foreign designs that have had service and any problems already found and dealt with.

Eventually they will find western and Russian designs are not as suitable as a domestic design... the whole reason the Russians bought the Mistrals was because it was a ready proven design with most of the kinks sorted out and ready to make and put in service quickly... they would probably have four in service by now if politics didn't get in the way.

Instead they got an inside out look at a modern French designed helicopter carrier and now they are building their own designs presumably with modifications to suit their own needs better... I would guess distributed power systems so one missile hit wont take out both power plants, and probably some ice breaking capacity too... and I also suspect better armament.

Mig 1.44 is a project. The prototype didn't flew because they stoped the program but it didn't come from Stalin's ass. They developed it, engineered it and tested in wind tunels which is a huge part of the work.

The MiG did fly... there were reportedly two prototypes... 1.42 and 1.44... the latter was the flying prototype and the other was the stealth prototype which AFAIK has not been seen.

AFAIK they did fly the flying prototype of the 1.44, but it was cancelled and didn't fly very much... cannot find any real pictures of one in the air.

Problem of the soviet was that leaders obliged their companies to make analogues of every US project even if their scientists said it was dumb.

If US made a fighter with swept wings they would do it also. If they did a VTOL they would do it too. If they did 1 big aircraft and 1 small aircraft the soviet would do it too (f-15/f-16 - su-27/mig-29). They even made an analogue to the U2 plane.

Not strictly true, there was real competition in the Soviet Union... the west just never saw any of it.

For a replacement for the MiG-21 MiG tested swing wings and also lift jets to get the necessary small wing area for mach 2 flight but also to operate from airfield that were not 5km long. Germany was the first country to have aircraft with variable geometry wings, the adoption of swing wings for the Su-7 to create the Su-17 greatly improved the aircrafts performance, while the use of VG wings on the MiG-23 and Su-24 as well as the Tu-22M3 and Tu-160 made them very good platforms. The US used them for their F-14s and F-111s as well as their B-1Bs with the latter being their only swing wing aircraft still in use.

They had an analogue of the U-2 but not the criminal government that would overfly foreign airspace in violation of international law...

The US had no problem copying the MiG-25 to create their F-15...

They were throwing money on every dumb US idea. They lost too much cash and effort on useless project.

Yeah, the US didn't invent swing wing nor did they even come close to invention STOVL... everyone played at that and the Americas were the worst, they ended up buying British.

But US has the money to throw it at for dumb projects. Well, they had. Dollar was the money of the world.

The people with the purse strings seem ready to believe any claim at all, whether it is about stealth back in the days or about swarms now... the problem with stealth is that it is incredibly expensive to get to a useful level and as your stealth gets better it becomes much more expensive to buy and to maintain, so so moderate stealth is affordable, high stealth is eye wateringly expensive and not that much more effective than cheaper levels are in practical terms.

The B-2 is not stealthy when it is wet.

Swarms will have lots of their own problems... a dumb swarm might be easy to take out, while a smart swarm might be too expensive to get enough together to be effective.

The Chinese seem to have their own version of the F-35, but we know it is not a carbon copy because theirs has two engines... which might be very smart... if they are Russian engines then at most they will be 1 or two million each, so a fraction of the price of one American engine that costs over 30 million, and the two engines together probably generate enough thrust to make the Chinese plane a good fighter... the slimmer body should massively reduce drag and enable better supersonic performance, which is critical for a light fighter... climbing and accelerating to supersonic speed gives your missiles extra reach and allows you to then turn and leave the area in case of return fire on its way from the enemy platforms.

I actually think the Chinese F-35 might be better than the American even if on paper it is less sophisticated and high tech, I think they likely took a much more practical approach to its design and made it affordable and less likely to kill its pilot.

I also suspect they dropped the stupid requirement for VSTOL performance... than anchor hung around the projects neck by the US Marines was a game changer in the worst possible way.

Now China is in a position of looking at several different types of 5th gen and 4.5 gen fighters and they can pick and choose which they want to make and in what sort of numbers they want them.

As they branch out to the rest of the world in terms of trade and relationships I rather suspect their aircraft are going to sell better than western aircraft, which are all way too expensive. Russia might offer some competition in that regard, but it will be the west that will be the problem demanding countries buy their products or they will cut all trade with them. The west has not relied on having the better product for a long time now...

Podlodka77
By the time the US had the first F-15s it was certainly the most powerful force in the air. I still think the F-15 is the crown jewel of western aviation, at least it was in its day. I would still rather be in an F-15EX than any European aircraft.
The F-22 is a failure both in terms of the number of aircraft produced and the cost of flight hours and the cost of maintaining the aircraft. And how much of a failure the F-22 is is best seen through the J-20 and its production numbers. I am already convinced that the USA will NEVER have more "5th generation heavy fighters" than China - NEVER AGAIN..
And why do I mention heavy fighter planes?
All aircraft in the West except the F-15/22 are "second league" and this is best seen through the export of F-15 aircraft, while the F-22 remained only for the needs of the USAF.
And what happened in the USA - "well, we Americans are putting the good old F-15 back into production".
The Americans OBVIOUSLY have HUGE problems in innovating their military equipment, regardless of whether it is fighter planes or offensive surface warships - there is no successor to the Ticonderoga cruisers and only the "cold war" Arleigh Burke platform is still being produced.

---

I dont think the problem is innovation, the problem is with costs. The Raptor was introduced and produced during a period when the west had no competition from Russia or China. When Russia started to be a rival again in the late 00s and China was starting to show strengh the F-22 production line had been cancelled for years. And all money was on the JSF, F-35.
The US seems to be in full invest in the new 6th generation NGAD and F/A-XX program to replace the F-22, F-15 and F-18 in the 2030s.
Now China might have resources to try to keep up, I have doubts about Russia.

F-15 is one of the shittiest plane ever produced. Its record of kills is one of the dumbest thing I heard about military stuff. Its wins are against failed militaries like Iraq or Serbia in the 90s and its losses are all hidden be it US ones in Iraq or Israeli against syrian planes.

Against any modern jet it will eat dust on the ground. Specially Rafale or Typhoon. Mig-29M or mig-35 with R-77-1 and modern jammers would it alive. Su-35 with r-37 will keep destroying it all day long.

I give it no chance against chinese flankers armed with pl-15 or pl-21.

F-15 has a huge rcs like su-27, a bad aim-120 for modern standards, old jammers, and its radar's field of view is very bad when you compare to Irbis which scans mecanically and passively making its field of view 120°.

Even with its modernized radar it keeps being a bad aircraft.

Same as su-30 but at least su-30 has supermanoeuvrability and modern jammers.

The US seems to be in full invest in the new 6th generation NGAD and F/A-XX program to replace the F-22, F-15 and F-18 in the 2030s.
Now China might have resources to try to keep up, I have doubts about Russia.

Keep up ? Don't need to as long as they have Bulava, Topol-M and Iars.

China is building a massive army but any war btw China and US would be in the pacific ocean. With Its ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and massive stockpile of antiship missiles those US carriers and ships won't survive long. F-22 and f-35 have no legs to reach China from US bases.