J-20 Program Update

Prototype No. 2011 of the J-20 project had its maiden flight last weekend. As previously discussed, No. 2011 has significant changes to the previous J-20 prototypes that we've seen in flight testing (No. 2001 and No. 2002). There were probably 2 more prototypes similar to 2001/2002 for the purpose of static and RCS testing. It seems like 2001/2002 are more like the demonstrator prototypes whereas 2011 is the first pre-production prototype. It's likely that the production version of J-20 will not see any major differences unless major problems are found in testing. The pictures below show prototype 2001 vs prototype 2011 from different view point with Chinese labels on parts that changed in the first 2 pictures.




Generally speaking, CAC appears to have taken much greater care for the LO properties of No. 2011 compared to 2001/2002. Quite a bit of type elapsed from 2002 to 2011 and it looks like they really tried to address a lot of issues from RCS testing. The workmanship and fit/finishing of 2011 all appear to be better. Some of the more obvious changes include

• Clipped corners on canard/v-tails
• Redesign slender intakes with bump larger or protruding more
• F-22-style light-grey colour scheme
• Larger weapon bay and smaller wing actuators
• Straightened leading edge
• Inner canopy frame like F-35
• Redesigned front landing gear door
• New EOTS-like sensor and holographic HUD display
• Redesigned rear fuselage around the engines and nozzles moved further in with longer tail sting.

It seems like more care is put into all-aspect stealth as the clipped canards has decreased returns from some angles and the ventral fins now seem to completely block engine nozzles from the sides. Looking at the inner edge of the canard, they are modified to conform nicely around intake so as to not create gaps.

Here is a good side view of the front part of the prototype.


Comparing to other 5th generation projects, I think PLAAF had a higher LO design requirement for J-20 than PAK-FA, while still trailing F-22/35. Compared to PAK-FA, it looks like everything conform to the body a lot better leaving fewer gaps and deflecting surfaces all around. Compared to F-22, it still has some areas like engine nozzle (which is covered by thrust vectoring plates on F-22) that are just not as well shielded even after the treatments. This is all from my extremely untrained eyes, so feel free to give me additional insights.

Project 310, China's other next-gen project, at this point still has not received official PLAAF designation. It looks to be in the flight demonstration stage and would probably need to become an offical PLAAF program before proceeding further to where J-20 is right now.

Su-33 or Mig-29K

As we see CV-16 Liaoning class spend more time training in the ocean, one of the often asked question is the choice of air wing. Now, we know that China can build flankers on its own, whereas it would have to purchase Mig-29K from Russia, so it would've been very unlikely that China would go with Mig-29K. The hypothetical question is what if China had the choice of building both Su-33 and Mig-29K, would it have taken Mig-29K over Su-33? Or more realistically, why did naval flankers get picked over naval J-10? After all, both India and Russia have now picked Mig-29K as their naval fighter.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, China was looking to modernize its air force by purchasing a 4th generation aircraft from Soviet Union. At that time, everyone thought China was going to purchase Mig-29, since it had only operated Mikoyan fighter jets in the past and Mig-29 was the aircraft that Soviet Union exported. In fact, Su-27s had never been exported before then. Against all odds, PLAAF picked Su-27 over Mig-29 due to its longer range and greater potential as a heavy fighter jet. Up to that point, China really was not capable of designing its own heavy fighter jet like Su-27. J-10, the winning design of China's own 4th generation competition, is a single engine fighter jet (between the size of J-7 and J-8). As part of the deal for ToT and local production of Su-27, China got pretty much all it needed to eventually indigenize flankers. Russia was a lot more willing to sell off its technology back at that time. As seen with India's involvement in the PAK-FA project, Russia is now a lot more stingy when it comes to sharing its core technology. The effect of the J-11 deal can be seen today. Shenyang AC is now producing J-11B along with J-15 and J-16. You can even see the effect of J-11 on J-20 (SAC helped with that part of design). Just as importantly, it changed PLAAF's doctrine from one of air denial to one of air superiority. As we can see with J-20 and J-31, PLAAF has made the decision to go with larger hi-lo fighter jet combination for the next generation. Outside of the obvious advantages like range/patrol time/multi-role capability, I've read that PLAAF believes that it can only make up for its technology gap vs Western fighter jets like F-35 by producing larger, more powerful aircraft.

There was a competition between J-10 and J-11 as the first generation naval fighter, but J-11 won due to the aforementioned advantages. I would think that the second generation naval fighter will likely be a heavy fighter too. Operating off a stobar carrier like Varyag, there will be limitations to J-15 take-off profiles. So far, we've seen J-15s with 2 SR-AAMs and 2 LR-AAMs, 2 SR-AAMs and 2 AShMs, 2 SR-AAMs and bombs. We've even seen J-15 just carrying buddy refueling pod. None of these profiles come close to approaching the limits of what's possible from CV-16. With no headwind, Su-33 can take off from the first and second take-off locations on Adm K class with 28 ton. It can also take off from the third take-off location with 32 ton. It's likely that as they get more experience, we will see more weapons carried on J-15. Based on what we've seen from typical PLAAF photos, the stobar limitations probably won't affect J-15 that much. We rarely see J-11B with more than 6 AAM (4 LR + 2 SR) and J-10 with more than 4 AAM (2 LR + 2 SR). Those are quite achievable off all 3 take-off spots on CV-16.

Current Status of JF-17

As PAC starts the production of second block of JF-17, it's good to take a look at where the project is right now. I won't go over the history of the project, since that can be found online or any of the many forums. At this point, PAF remains the only operator of JF-17. They have finished the production of the first block of 50 JF-17s out of the 150 they ordered. There have been persistent news coming out of Pakistan that more will be ordered, but I don't think that's finalized. By all account, PAF has been fairly satisfied with the performance of the aircraft and the project as a whole. I don't have the latest number, but PAC is now capable of producing most parts of JF-17 with engine been the lone major subsystem that is outside their expertise. There have been numerous reports of sales to other country, but none of them have concluded. There were the 12 JF-17s to Zimbabwe and the 24 JF-17s to Azerbaijan, which never came to fruition. There were also the more persistent stories of concluded sales to Egypt and possible sales to Argentina. In the former case, China lost the deal after Mubarak and the new government is now picking Mig-29s over JF-17s. In the latter case, Argentinian economy has bigger issues like hyperinflation to deal with and will not have the ability to purchase fighter jets anytime soon. The problem for JF-17 has always been finding the right customers. China's traditional customers don't have the need or the money for something like JF-17. They have most opted for J-7s and K-8s in the recent years. L-15 is fighting the same issues. In the more affluent markets, JF-17 has been fighting against used F-16s, Mig-29s and other better known 4th generation fighter jets with more customers. It's hard to make the case for JF-17 while PAF remains its only operator. Having said that, I think JF-17 still has a bright future. PAF have really made JF-17 project what it is today by discovering/expanding the flight envelopes of the aircraft and working with various Chinese firms to add support for SD-10A, SRAAM, C-802A, various PGMs and the infamous mach 4.5 CM-400AG. We've heard recently that Saudi Arabia is interested in getting involved in the JF-17 project. Certainly, if KSA does purchase JF-17, that would be a huge shot in the arm for the entire program and its export prospects around the world (especially the rest of Muslim world). More importantly, I think PLAAF will be placing orders for JF-17 in the next few years. In a recent interview from Singapore Air Show, the VP of AVIC-1 said that domestic engine options should be available for JF-17 soon. I have talked in the past that PLAAF is looking for a stripped down version of JF-17 that it can replace all the retiring J-7 regiments. There were a total of 10 J-7E and 3 J-7G regiments produced for PLAAF/PLANAF. Based on the year they entered service and orbat data, most if not all of them should still be in service. There are also 10 or more J-8 regiments still in service including the very ancient J-8B aircraft. All of these regiments will need to be replaced. Although some of those regiments may be disbanded, there are not likely going to be enough J-10B and J-16 production to replace all of those retiring aircraft. There will probably be a total of less than 10 regiments of J-10B/J-16. By the time domestic engine (let's say WS-13) becomes ready for JF-17, some of the older J-7E regiments should be ready to retire. If CAC can meet PLAAF's cost requirements, then I think there will be order for several regiments of JF-17. Once PAF and PLAAF operate JF-17, I think you will see some export deals.

Some high quality photos of recent PLAN training

Most recently a flotilla consisted of No. 169 (Type 052B), No. 171 (Type 052C) and No. 989 (Type 071) took off for a training mission in Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean. According to People's Daily, it started on January 20th and crossed the Sunda Strait, the Lombok Strait, and the Makassar Strait in the training. By today, the ships were back at the naval base at Zhanjiang. This exercise along with No. 546 (Yancheng)'s recent training with Kirov class Petr Velikiy are part of PLAN's effort to become a blue water navy. Here are some of the photos:

Some thoughts on 5th gen projects

Last week, we got news out of India that they are not happy with the progress of PAK-FA project. The article says that IAF found FGFA (their version of PAK-FA) to be too expensive, not have enough technology sharing with India and use inadequate engine solution. On top of that, IAF has also declared in the most recent meeting that the radar is inadequate and the stealth features badly engineered.

So, what does all of this tell us? It sounds to me that IAF's biggest concern here is with their work share in the project. They are trying to put the pressure on the Russians to share more of the technology that Russia is simply not prepared to share. We've heard similar complaints from India in the past regarding other projects with Russians. The other complaint of escalating costs seems also be a negotiation tactic. Cost overrun seems to be a common issue with all the new military aviation projects. The article itself even mentioned that MMRCA project's escalating costs is part of the reason that IAF is complaining here.

The technical issues are something that I think PLAAF followers should look carefully at. We know that China still depends very heavily on Russia in high performance turbofan engines right now. China invested large amount of resources in the 99M project, which is still lagging in progress to the 117S project used on Su-35. If Russia is having trouble developing and mass producing a new generation of engine for 5th gen aircraft, then one can imagine the stumbling blocks facing WS-15 project and other next generation Chinese turbofan projects. Up to now, all indications are that WS-15 development is going well, but as we've seen from WS-10 project, the mass production version of a new engine takes some time to sort out problems. So, it remains to be seen whether or not WS-15 will be ready by the end of this decade.

The other issue of inadequate radar with PAK-FA is less of an issue with J-20. China is ahead of Russia in electronics and are ready to cost efficiently produce the components needed for AESA radar, whereas Russia is not. I believe that China has even tried to sell AESA radars to Russia. It appears that J-10B and J-16 will be equipped with the 1st and 1.5th generation of AESA radar, so China's AESA technology should be a lot more mature by the time J-20 is in mass production. Even so, one has to look at the whole systems of avionics. F-35 is said to have more than 8 million lines of code to manage all of the weapon and sensory subsystems to give unprecedented situation awareness to the pilot. However with such a complex system, any software engineer can tell you that it would take a long time to test out such a complicated system. There is quite a few articles on issues with the complexity of F-35 code. When it comes to J-20, CAC has smartly been using J-10B as a testbed for a bunch of next generation avionics that will help with J-20's integrated avionics architecture development. I think it partly explains why J-10B took so long to go into production. When it comes to J-20, we are likely to see similar delays due to avionics that we've seen with F-35. My guess is that IAF chief will be complaining a lot about avionics delays on PAK-FA as we get closer to induction time.

Stealth is probably the biggest issue with PAK-FA compared to western definition of 5th generation aircraft. When I look at PAK-FA, it looks to be stealthier than the 4th generation fighter jets, but just can't compare to F-22/35. IAF chief would have known about this all along. Just in my non-professional eyes, J-20 looks to be stealthir than PAK-FA, but is probably closer to PAK-FA in lo technology than F-22/35. Stealth technology is probably the biggest advantage that Lockheed and Boeing have over the Russian and Chinese aircraft companies.

So I find that IAF complaints over PAK-FA just shows how difficult it is to develop 5th generation aircraft. Only US, China and Russia are actively developing these aircraft. And if you ask some Western defense analyst, they would say J-20 and PAK-FA don't qualify as truly lo platforms. These are extremely advanced technologies, so it's not surprising that Russia is reluctant to share them with India. Cost escalations are common. We don't really hear about it on Chinese military aviation projects, but it probably has similar cost escalation as F-35 and PAK-FA. From that, I think it's quite interesting that China can still afford J-20 and J-31 (supposedly will be made official PLAAF project) at the same time.

A quick update before Chinese New Years

In less than 2 weeks, we will have Chinese New Year. Every year as with other Chinese companies, all of the military industrial complex stops working from a few days before Chinese New Year until 2 weeks (sometimes longer) after the Chinese New Year. This is a very short update before that period hits.

This past week, we saw a new J-20 prototype (No. 2011) coming out. It seems like the previous J-20 prototypes were all part of the technology demonstrator phase of the program. This new prototype features some changes like redesigned intakes, installation of nose mounted EOTS, smaller wing actuators, clipped tail fins, frame strengthened canopy and frameless holographic HUD. It is said that unless major problems are found in this prototype, the changes before the production version will be minimal. The changes in this prototype explains why we had such a long wait until this prototype. This prototype had its first low-speed taxi test on the 16th. I think it will not make its maiden flight until sometimes after Chinese New Years. Here are two comparisons of No. 2011 vs previous J-20 Prototype No. 2002 from different view. In both cases, No. 2011 is the one on the bottom



In the naval side of things, there are some rumours that I think is probably fairly accurate. It is said that Dalian shipyard will probably start the construction of the first domestic carrier. I would expect it to look very similar to CV-16 Liaoning. Dalian shipyard is also expected to start work on the 052D project (if it hasn't already). Previously, Dalian and JN shipyard have both been the shipyards responsible for building larger surface ships designated in the destroyer class for PLAN, so it's not surprising that they will be participating in the 052D project. The production run of the 052D class is now estimated to hit 12 ships. 4 of which will be produced by Dalian shipyard and the other 8 will be by JN shipyard. We know that 3 052Ds have already been launched at JN shipyard. Based on the current rate of production and commissioning, all of 052Ds from JN shipyard will probably be handed over to PLAN by around the end of 2016. It is likely that the Type 055 project will start before then. All of the above are from a pretty good source, but things could obviously change before then.

Things to look out for that don't show up in the headlines

When it comes to PLA watching, there are the developments that get people excited and also the developments that people just don't care about. Many of the latter developments are in that category because they don't really improve the combat capabilities of PLA that much. However, there are selected developments that I think are pretty important and are not being talked about enough.

The first of which is the Type 081 MCM class of ships. Up until recently, PLAN had a very old fleet consisted mostly of the 50s era Type 6605 and Type 6610 minesweeper and several smaller Type 082 minesweepers that entered service in the early 80s. Clearly, this MCM force badly needed newer technology. Since the PLAN modernization begun in the last decade, we have seen the new Type 081 minesweeper and the Type 082 II minehunter entering service. The latter gets more press because it is uses the latest sonar technology, ROVs and remote controlled drone ships. Type 081 is your typical 90s era minesweeper with different types of sweeps. It has become PLAN's work horse in MCM operations within the first island chain. In the first wave, 4 Type 081s (805, 810, 839 and 840) were built. By late 2011, we saw No. 841, the 5th Type 081, launched in JN shipyard. Since then, we've had 4 more Type 081 (842, 843, 844, 845) that have been launched and either joined or close to join PLAN. Which means 5 Type 081s were launched in the period of less than 2 years. This building pace is as impressive as any we have seen in PLAN. Only Type 056s have had more launches in the past 2 years, but Type 081s are complicated ships with smaller number of replace. As a whole, Type 081 is not expected to be part of blue water fleet, but it will still be very important in any possible conflicts around China.

The other naval class that I don't think is getting enough attention is the Type 903 class of AOR ships. The first two of this class (No. 886 and 887) were commissioned in 2004. They and no. 885 have allowed PLAN to make these long blue water missions that they were not making a decade ago. They have been especially important in the Gulf of Aden missions due to the lack of blue water AORs in PLAN. Seeing the need for this, 2 new Type 903s (No. 889 and 890) were commissioned this past year. They should be just as important as the first two in PLAN's quest to become a blue water navy. It looks like Guangzhou shipyard has recently started to build a new AOR. It's not clear if the new one will still be Type 903. Maybe they will need to be larger to support a carrier group in the future, but we often overlook the important of the replenishment ship when looking at the missiles on a combat ship. In the aviation projects, the first one I look at is JH-7B. From all of the rumblings over the holidays, we have finally seen the pictures of JH-7B for the first time. According to huitong's link, it has been test flying in CFTE for a over a year. There have also been a lot of speculations about this over the years, but it never compares to some of the other programs like J-16 or J-10B. Or else, we would probably have seen pictures of JH-7B for overly eager military fanboys from outside the air fields. The external changes on JH-7B seems to be minimal compared to what we've seen with J-10A to J-10B. It looks to have a retractable IFR and strengthened wing structure to carry the heavier payloads. One would surmise that the biggest changes are going to be the avionics and the weapons that it will be carrying. At this point, JH-7B sounds like a PLANAF project (just like the original JH-7 was), whereas PLAAF has embraced the J-16 platform. While I don't think too many additional regiment in PLANAF will be converted to JH-7, its appearance will bring additional strike fighters with long range (vs fighter jets) and the ability to carry potent new AShM, LACM and ASM to threaten all neighboring naval forces. In addition, some of the technology from the program could be used to upgrade the existing JH-7/A in service with both PLANAF and PLAAF.

Another other programs that have been flying under the radar are the non-AWACS versions of the high new program. Recently, we have seen the newer units of these programs been built with the Y-9 airframe. This development makes a lot of sense, since Shannxi AC had been using two separate lines to build Y-8 Category III platforms for KJ-200, ASW variant of Y-8 and Y-8 Category II platform for the remaining ones. Recently, we have started seeing High New 7 program with Y-9. This will likely happen with all of the remaining High new programs and the new KJ-500 AWACS program. The high new programs have provided force multiplier kind of capabilities to PLAAF and PLANAF. The ones built on a newer Y-9 platform will have greater range, endurance and comfort. All of which should continue to improve PLA's C4ISR capabilities in surrounding theaters.

These are just a handful of programs that don't get noticed as much. We have seen a lot of exciting aviation development over the holiday season such as the appearance of Prototype No. 2011 of J-20, the first production versions of J-15 and J-10B, the first flight of Z-20, photos of JH-7B and appearance of YJ-12 missile. I had wanted to explore all of that, but I will have to leave it for another day.