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When the J-31 first came out I was pissed. It was obviously an improved F-35. What Bill Sweetman had to say pissed me off even more.
"You're looking at what the F-35 could have been...twin engines, larger bay, faster, longer ranged and a real dog fighter..."Now looking back.
Damn it! He was right. The J-31 is a copy. But its an improved copy of what we should have built....
Looking at the tail end where the jet turbines are there, edgy chinese workmanship can be see. Prototype or not, it actually looks like they directly transplanted the russian built NPO engine into the chinese built airframe.
ReplyDeleteAnd its still a single seater. I wonder if the Chinese have plans for a 2 seater.
Delete> edgy chinese workmanship can be see.
DeleteThat's an RCS reduction feature.
oops, was not refereing to the edge shapes also faintly visible. Wrong choice of words....i meant the bad workmanship on the Jets and its Fabrication with the main Air Frame.
DeleteNo VTOL requirement and an MIC that is truly under control of the ruling party rather than shareholders is what made the J-31. It was the same jet as the JSF but without the weaknesses our system has in producing a weapons system. What's worse. It's going to be cheap and easy to export to their foreign allies.
ReplyDeleteSolomon, can you give us a link to that Bill Sweetman article ?
ReplyDeletethis is the link to the article....http://aviationweek.com/blog/chinas-new-stealth-fighter-not-repeat-december-2010
Deletethe comment came in the discussion area. i was in full defense of F-35 mode then and i got pissed and told him how wrong he was. if we were in a bar i probably would have thrown a punch. now i'm eating words. they don't taste good but its the awful fucking truth.
I do admire your honesty Solomon...
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Deletei think you're onto something with regard to IAF's super SU-30 and Rafales vs. J-31 and J-20. the more i chew on this the more i wonder how good Chinese pilots are. IAF pilots fly against the best the US and our allies have to offer in annual training exercises. the Chinese are still involved in relatively simplistic exercises in comparison. additionally i'm wondering about the value of stealth all together and single seat airplanes in particular.
DeleteFrom the limited literature available it doesn't seem PLAAF pilots are rated all that highly at all but these things will never be openly talked about by the Chinese given the closed nature of their society/governance. The IAF developed its tactics in isolation during the cold war but every Western AF pilot I have seen talking about the IAF having trained with them has said the tacts of the IAF are very similar to their own but also the IAF has some very innovative tactics that can come as a surprise to the Western-moddeled/trained AF pilots as they have not been very exposed to the IAF in the past. The IAF is a bit of a dark horse really- pretty much Western in mindest/training but unique in its own way.
Delete+ I don't think stealth is an all together negative attribute as long as stealth is just another capability of the plane and not the ONLY attribute of the plane and the attribute the entire plane is built around and thus other capabilities are sacrificed i.e. the F-35 approach. For once the stealth is defeated (it is easier to do than the Locked Martin people would proclaim) the F-35 has nothing left in its arsenal hence those iconic words “can’t run, can’t turn, can’t climb”. On the other hand the The F-22 is a very capable aircraft with tremendous capabilities and arguably the unchallenged king of the skies.
It should be very interesting to see the PAK-FA however- this is a plane that had been designed from the outset to defeat the F-22 and the longer development time should allow for the advances in technology since the F-22 was first conceived/enter service to be incorporated. As it stands I think the PAK-FA will be unquestionably superior in terms of electronics carried (radar -both forward looking ad side mounted). It then means the Indian Air Force’s FGFA which is an Indian specific “MKIsed” version (of the PAK-FA could be a real force to be recommend with (just like the IAF’s Su-30MKI was superior to the RuAF’s Su-27/30 as the IAF had certain third party add-ons - from India, Israel and France, fitted ).
Can you imagine the US being accused in the future of copying the J-31? :)
ReplyDeleteNice looking paper fold plane. A crude attempt of implementing Su-27 technology in a F-35 folded frame.
ReplyDeleteNext iteration of Su-27 technology incorporating F-35 outlines? Yes. Comparable to PAK FA? Obviously. Threat to a F-35? Definitely not. This J-31 is pointing to a North.
Its just ridiculous similarity with Saddam annexation of Quwait, and Bear Hussain's annexation of Crimea. Both were fooled like a schoolboys. Denuclearisation of Rabid Nuclear Bear is a top priority for a XXI century, even russians getting bored with idiots in government doing whatever they want behind nuclear fence.
yea it looked crappy.. no HMD and DAS/EO and no american pilot inside... a useless flying target for the western air forces.. heck i think even Super Tucano can beat this contraption in dogfight..
Delete/sarc
beware of hubris and arrogance , pride before the fall or so the wise men said...
You know when I first found about this aircraft early last year I was already beginning to see how much of a Turd the JSF was really becoming so when I saw this along with its obvious IT copied the F-35 so I presumed as long as it keeps the weight down it wouldn't astronomically suck, now I wish this was the air frame we working on instead of the JSF but like I said before It needs to be light-er if it truly is going to dominate. Dose anybody have the airframe specs of this thing?
ReplyDeleteQuick note just found out this thing weighs more than the JSF so unless its going the way of the Su27 family then there going to need to lighten the thing in order bring out its full potential.
ReplyDeletei don't think that's right. the J-31 is suppose to be lighter ...
DeleteAnd better wing sweep.
ReplyDeleteAnd in another off topic news-
ReplyDeleteIndia gets to test its INS Arihant Nuclear Submarine out over the next few days. This testing includes a full sea worthiness test along with the first submarine launched test of the K15 short range submarine launched ICBM. The missile has a range og 750Km and is our first attempt to make a Submarine launched ICBM. Its next evolution shall have 2000KM range. The Submarine in question is an Indian copy of the Akula powered by an 83MW reactor. I know Solomon might cover this news in a succeding post but I couldnt help it.
Is planned to carry 12 of the 2000KM range missiles.
DeleteAmazing. So we will see the results..
DeleteThe way the Indian Submarine fleet is going....I have my fingers crossed. We need more..............................OF EVERYTHING. Torpedoes, sonars, submariners, submarines, submarine pens, canned tuna...well you get the point.
Deletein that first picture...are those port and starboard HUDS, flanking the main?
ReplyDeletecant see it that well. could the the trusty rear view mirror on left? dont have them in the F35,
Deleteif something is behind you and close in the F35 that little gadget is useless, because your gone.
if china exported this fighter to pakistan , or even developed a joint chinese-pakistani J-13P , it will be all over for indian air force..
ReplyDeleteIf China exports this aircraft to Pakistan, then it will be even better for the IAF. It will be an Albatross around their necks. They can barely maintain their current strength of F-16s with many cannibalized for spares along with their Viper attack choppers. Believe it or not, they will be the only country in the world which will be looking to replace F-16's with JF-17 varient of the Mig-21.
DeleteWe have known the unsustainable economics of the Paki Airforce since the Kargil conflict and then the Op. Parakram deployment where every intelligence source stated that the Paki's were not able to maintain suitable flying hours and inventory of spare parts and were down to cannabilization. I'll try to look for reports and links to verify these claims and post them here.
Like I always say, there is nothing better than a fat overconfident Political army which is more skilled at killing its own citizens than doing its primary job. The more toys they buy....oops....beg for...literally beg for...the more trophies for us to collect. We will open up a Shenyang Town right next to the Patton Town that we already have.
DeleteActually you've got it the wrong way around. Once the FGFA comes online in the IAF (sometime around 2022) it is all over for the Pakis and Chinese (even with their J-20s). The FGFA will tear the J-31 to shreds and dominate the J-20 in almost every conceivable way.
Heck I would even bet on the IAF’s upgraded “Super” Su-30MKI and Rafales to give the J-31 and J-20 a good run for their money. The Chinese are new to this game and to expect them to go from ripping off the Su-33 and uprating MiG-21s to producing a world class 5th gen VLO platform is a stretch too far for me. The superior sensors on the MKIs and Rafales coupled with the IAF’s world-class AWACS will be something to behold. The IAF’s investment in quality will pay off in the long run.
+ Soloman I saw your post about the pilot workload overload for the F-35 and what immediately sprung to my mind was that the Indian Air Force’s instance on having a two seat (back seat for WSO) version of the FGFA is vindicated
BTW, are you guys getting this news about the Pakistan School Massacre happening as we speak ?
ReplyDeleteLOL, an improved F-35?!?!?! HAHAHAH!!!!! Are you high?
ReplyDeleteThis plane is a crude Gen 4 fighter with black smokey Mig 29 engines, there is no data/sensor fusion and worst of all - not even the PLA has committed to ordering a single copy. The only country interested is Pakistan!!! You are playing into exactly what the Chinese psychological mantra wants - it's enemies to overhype and be afraid of their non existent abilities.
Dude, you have to stop the the grand exaggerations here, this plane is and always will be a dogmeat burger drowned in hoisin sauce.
what does sensor fusion bring to the battlefield that isn't already there? if you talking about a networked system then you have that with an AWACs as quarterback. why you would want to push that ability down to every pilot is beyond me ... so the truth becomes stark.
Deletesensor fusion is bullshit.
which leaves you with a fat, slow, low flying, F-35 that isn't worth a nickel. you can LoL all you want but the reality is that you and your kind have probably guaranteed the loss of the next war.
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DeletePoint 1: You can't tell the level of sensor fusion the plane has from a photo. The only way we'll know how well the sensors work together is by stealing one of the things...probably not gonna happen. So your comment "there is no data/sensor fusion " is without merit. I'm also pretty sure you have no idea how good the F-35's sensor fusion is, because that's almost certainly classified. So you don't only know how good the sensors are on the plane your criticizing, you also don't know how good the sensors are on the plane you're comparing it to. Unfortunately, all we can really tell about an aircraft purely from a picture is how aerodynamically sound the design is. Considering the J-31 doesn't suffer from the drag penalties imposed by the lift fan, it probably is indeed a better aerodynamic design than the F-35.
DeletePoint 2: @Sol: Sensor Fusion is bullshit only to the point that company executives will often tout it as an advantage without having to give any evidence on how the sensors actually work together (again, sensor capabilities are usually classified.) It's really just a fancy way of saying "do the aircraft's sensors provide useful information to the pilot". This can actually be very critical. For instance, if you look at the RWR location of a Mig-23 - it's by the pilot's right leg. Considering the bulkiness of his G-suit and the position of the stick it's entirely possible for him not to see it during many portions of the flight. The F-16, on the other hand, is just to the left of the HUD and just below the canopy. If that thing lights up the pilot will immediately notice it...vs "might" notice it in the Mig-23.
well i've said that the program office and LM along with fanboys are jumping on the sensor fusion bandwagon because critics of the program (yours truly) have no way of effectively fighting that argument. they've abandonded superior kinematic performance of the airframe, cheaper operating costs etc to glom onto something that is impossible to accurately measure.
Deletethat alone is bullshit, but we haven't heard publications discuss that part of things yet.
There's at least three ways to deflate the 'Sensor Fusion' argument:
Delete1. It's over sold.
Honestly, a truly good stealth aircraft, provided that stealth is entirely passive, doesn't need much more than a basic RWR and a good mission planner to avoid the known emitters. Whether you are dropping on a division in the field, a HAS farm on an airbase or some big structural target like an AFHQ or major powerplant, the degree to which the EOTS is providing you better imagery than a LANTIRN or LITENING pod is largely irrelevant.
2. It doesn't work vs. truly advanced systems.
Think about it. The essence of Netcentric AD vs. Stealth is some guy waaaay back here looking with a honkin' huge VHF ALO radar which talks over landline or directional microwave to a bunch of SAMs over there. Now, if he's bright, he's using a dumb launch box with maybe an IRST, carrying 6-8 MRAAM class weapons (AIM-120, MICA, Adder, SD-10) on a booster. Such a weapon is cheap as these things go which means you can buy 5-10 for every S-300PMU-2 you would normally pick up and it -will hit- an F-35 at 20-30,000ft, if the jet flies right overtop the launcher. And the first time you will likely know about the weapon's presence (carefully camouflaged with MCS panels and a thermal net as well as multiple decoys) is when it makes a big bright IR+UV flash coming out of the launcher. At which point, things are pretty messed up because the weapon is going to start pinging almost immediately and the while your DAS will undoubtedly have gone nuts and you will be staring through the floor at the weapon coming up, the differentiation between DAS giving both visionics and MAWS and an ordinary pair of goggles and a discrete MAWS is going to be...zero.
Indeed, at this point, you're yankin' and bankin' like any other, non-LO, fighter pilot trying to set the geometry on your last best move, waiting for the EWMS to start popping expendables and -knowing- that the more G you put on the jet, the easier it's gonna be to see you and the more knots you're gonna bleed against the followup shot.
3. If it works on a piece of junk airframe, it should work on a decent one.
Direct from Pierre Sprey's mouth. It would cost less, to rebuild the tooling for the F-22 _from scratch_ (and turn the Navy into a permanent deep interdiction force by missile) than it would to complete the development of the F-35. Whatever is 'wrong' with the F-22 (range, signature, engine cycle) could be fixed with JSF technology inserts. Including the vaunted 'sensor fusion'.
Sensor fusion can also be installed on a cheaper airframe and will, in fact, do it more good because the threat is going to be willing to turn on their fire control radars if there is a real chance of their picking up the threat.
Further to this, in a VLO airframe, everything has to be integrated within an RF sealed fuselage or wing environment which can effect a dozen different secondary parameters such as sector coverage and airframe masking.
On a non-LO airframe, you can scab a fairing almost anywhere. On the F/A-18 ASH, MAWS is in two humps, on the spine and under the belly. On a conventional airframe if you're engaged, you can deploy high quality DRFM jammers and towed arrays (ALQ-214) while your external pylons allow you to carry outsized standoff munitions.
Such as JASSM, SLAM-K, HARM-E and JSOW-ER.
All of which either out-range or out-LOS the radar detection systems by simple virtue of burying the jet in the ground clutter. No VHF standoff cue = no launch from ARH weapons. The trashfire threat goes up, but only to the extent that you fly in daylight and hey, that's what the 'sensor fusion' is about (a DIRCM might be nice...).
DeleteThe Super Hornet is not a great fighter. It's a very dated concept whose origins lie in the 1970s. But it's solutions to the _limited_ (by cost, 60-100 million per battery for S-300/400) major threats we would expect to see in most secondary theaters is more flexible than the JSF's which requires direct approach within 12nm of targets to release JDAM (25nm for SDB). Better to send a smarter bullet than a sneakier aviator.
For the future, the big worries are those of the transition to optical tracking and the treat from unconventional weapons. Solid State Lasers in the 1MW class are near horizoned, no later than 2025-2030. That's less than 1/4 of the F-35 (and before F/A-XX even reaches service) lifecycle. Combine these with recoverable target drones with SRM seekers and datalinks as a mid point between the range issue of missiles and the cost of (manned) fighters and suddenly the price of a 5 million dollar drone which you can use 10 times off the back of a catapult equipped truck translates to HORDES of robotic intercept which would like nothing better than to Fox Four your hide.
One 85 million dollar SU-35 = 17 drones. Four F-35 = 8 AIM-120. Shoot all you want, they will keep coming. And they will have performance at least equal to an F-5E/F (with similar, low cost, J85 type engines) because they will weigh less than 10,000lbs at takeoff.
SAMs are moronic weapons because they are miss-iles for which there is ONE chance of a target strike after 10-20 seconds of midcourse in which the airframe is walking away from the WEZ or sending a shot which is itself closing on the guidance emitter. Fighters are moronic weapons because they are so expensive that who ever has the most aircraft will always win the Combat Turn sortie generation condition by which they are down, on the ground, unable to fight at all.
But drones split the difference. They are VTOL capable from rocket and parachute into any farmer's field. They are cheap enough to be purchasable in numbers sufficient to meet a day one attack. And they are utterly fearless which means that a BVR disparity will do you no good as the threat will walk your launch flash back up to your jet and use skirmish line _ELECTRO OPTICAL_ detection (10 jets, 20 miles wide, 10nm deep X 500 knots = 1660 miles of airspace swept _per minute_) of their own to swarm kill you.
What good is 'Sensor Fusion' at that point? Not a lot.
How is J31 a copy of something that was never built or designed? But i understand people who are not technical to look at the thing see a couple of similar lines (by the way dictated by concept of stealth design not by F35 design) as say its a copy.
ReplyDeleteYou have to understand that US and Europe have been transfering tech to China to boost profits for decades and that China developed enough know how to develop many things.
While US and EU particulary UK channeled best and the brightest into finance and law (dodging taxes and bending laws for the 0.1%) china built industrial base schooled best in the west to gather knowledge ,industrial espionage is just a dressing on the cake. You have to have enough know how to be able to use that ,most countries in the world you could deliver F35 plans and parts on a silver plater and they wouldn't know what to do with it.
Face it west is losing technological edge by outsourcing work.Mayor western aerospace companies all have development and production centers in Russia/India/China.
To counter your point.....Like Solomon said in a previous post here. Look at things like the X37 and see if that is being replicated or even attempted to be replicated anywhere in the world.
DeleteWhat are you countering idea that J31 is not a copy ?
DeleteAgain you only confirm my point copying something is a no go unless you have know how to make it happen and why would any one want X37?
Hmm, wasnt clear above about with point i was countering.
Delete"Face it west is losing technological edge by outsourcing work.Mayor western aerospace companies all have development and production centers in Russia/India/China."
You look at the X37 and it doesnt feel like you are loosing anything.
Mr. T,
DeleteReality Check: Anyone who copies someone else /mission/ approach to solving a given tactical problem is playing into their opponent's designated "Follow me this way, now that way, now over there..." conditional approach to warfare in which the countermeasure is inherent to the solution.
The Russians did this, with the MiG-23 and MiG-25 as counters to the F-4 and RB-70 and their outcomes were useless weapons, ill-suited to the problems of tactical warfare. They tried again with the MiG-29 and Su-27 and did seriously better but the U.S. had invested more heavily in electronics as ARH + AESA and in Stealth which again left them in a situation where their aircraft's strengths were suddenly (Energy Maneuver vs. Shot From Blue AAM) a loser's proposition again.
The way you win a war as the technical dominance to fight one is to take a sidestep. Avoid the way your enemy fights best and find a way that lets you fight better. If the enemy uses high tech airpower, shift to high capability missiles instead. If your missiles are jammed make them drones and hunt by optical sensors which are _recoverable_, via parachute (while the drone itself is still 10 times cheaper than any manned jet and can fly and fight, defensively, twice as hard because it is fighting over it's own terrain).
The Chinese are more perspicacious than the Russians were. They may not have the art of modern war quite down pat but what they are doing is demanding that any Western company that wants access to Chinese sweatshop labor act to bring more than manufacturing capabilities to the Chinese. No. They have their own CATIA etc. and it is increasingly as good or better than U.S. equivalents because they plow profits back into production without regard for 'quarterly report' profit margins for stockholders.
What the Chinese now want is _R&D_ as the insight with which to see /why/ things are done a certain way, what the tradeoffs are and how the resulting systems fit into the bigger picture. And the West, ruinously addicted to cheap consumer goods, is walking right up the abattoir chute.
Nor can we continue to compensate by recruiting outside genius.
China graduates 50% of it's youth in STEM fields. The U.S., about 13%. We have only seated in the last ten years about six major tenured technology professors. So the kinds of projects which the U.S. used to dominate the world in, bringing grad students to study at prestige universities is falling even as those very same kinds of high tech campuses are becoming more and more numerous in China.
Create a welfare state. Create an undefended borders state where anyone with an IQ of 83 can walk over a border and demand HUB, EBT and Medical and what happens is that the kind of nation you get changes from that of a first world power to a third world hell.
And we are doing this at rocket like rates.
DeleteEast Asians have a 3-5 IQ point lead over Europeans. Their conceptual intelligence (fluid/G loaded) is not as great as ours but their math and spatials are superior.
And they are heavily into Eugenics based societal improvement programs which will, through selective breeding and social advancement (free apartment if you have a kid) of college grad females mated to high IQ males in similar classes.
As well as through directed genomics studies (China has FOUR THOUSAND gene sequencer hoods, active in mirror sites in Hong Kong and an Internal genomics research site, all looking, specifically, for the allele sequence SNP keys to higher IQ. They invite the best and brightest of Western genetic specialists to no-holds barred research in Honk Kong and then immediately reapply their discoveries to a 'not for public eyes' genie quest in their own, secure, facility).
The Chinese are going to beat the crap out of us, at all levels. From the doctrinal understandings of technology innovation and leveled development which they inherit from us, to the rapid expansion of their natively superior genetics base to superhuman levels of 120-125 baseline IQ through active genomics. To a general society outlook which is less concerned with the 'huddled masses' and more hopeful about a future which includes things like carriers and moonshots (with intent to stay).
IMO, this is why Chengdu and Shenyang are allowed to fiddle around with prototypes for the J-20 and J-31, to keep their hands in the aerospace game. But nothing major is being done to transition to these systems overall. Because they are looking at game changers as generation after next. And they have the brainpower and the broad-scope vision to make it happen.
While Americans think it can't happen to us.