China stealth jet enters service, navy building 'first class' fleet

China stealth jet enters service, navy building 'first class' fleet

The article is light on details about the J-20 entering service.

However the J-20 is entering service.

Didn't it seem that they were still testing this plane? Or was it further along than we thought?

What are everyone's thoughts?

China has put into service its new generation J-20 stealth fighter, a warplane it hopes will narrow the military gap with the United States, as senior naval officers said the country was building a "first class" navy and developing a marine corps.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is overseeing a sweeping modernisation of the country's armed forces+ , the largest in the world, including anti-satellite missiles and advanced submarines, seeking to project power far from its shores.

In a report late on Thursday, state television's military channel confirmed that the J-20 had now entered service, though it gave no other details.

Sweet WW III is back on the table.

a reply to: Lysergic

Be careful what you wish for.

To my understanding, the Chinese do not have suitable engines for J-20. Even if Su-35S is sold to China, the Saturn 117S do not provide sufficient thrust for J-20 although it would a major step up from the AL-31F engines the Chinese use on the J-10 fighter jets.

a reply to: grey580

The F-35 is STILL in testing and development and is post IOC, making it operational.

I think they just need Engineers and R&D, and they wouldn't need to buy engines. They might not skip on quality, either. They have vast resources.

a reply to: Lysergic

Cant see why.

Considering the monies and financial connections China has to the U.S and the rest of the world i really don't see them starting any world wars in the not to distant future.

Kind of hard to pay up when the all your bread baskets and info structure lie in ruin.

J-20 is quite a looker. It has DSI type air intakes and large frontal foreplanes. F-22, on the other hand, has a conventional layout.

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: allsee4eye

Those large canards also affect stealth to a degree.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Perhaps so. I'm not an expert on stealth designs. What is interesting is that Russia's upcoming PAK FA has both fore planes like J-20 and tail planes like F-22.

theaviationist.com...

a reply to: allsee4eye

Those aren't canards, they're Leading Edge Root Extensions. It's also run into its fair share of problems.

China is making progress on the WS-15,but is having quality control problems with production.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Which is not surprising, as they had quality problems with some of the US designs being made in country. They can typically get the machines to make those parts, but production standards and methods plague them.

Not sure how well they do, self supervised on their own designs. The complexities of engine design are so hard now, with the metallurgy, coatings and shaping. None of those delays really are unexpected.

a reply to: cosmania

It didn't really help that their baseline was with Russian engines. That kind of started them out heading for problems. Now they're finding out that it's hard to go to the next level.

a reply to: Zaphod58
I would be very hesitant to claim that the WS-15 is Russian based.

Very hesitant.

Don't you think its the time to work hard on a F-22 successor, with the futur engine the J-20 will be surely a hard
adversary.

a reply to: peck420

I never said it was. I said that China started their engine manufacturing from Russian engines. I didn't say anything about the WS-15 being Russian.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: peck420

I never said it was. I said that China started their engine manufacturing from Russian engines. I didn't say anything about the WS-15 being Russian.

Which is also a fallacy.

The Chinese have never been loyal to one "brand". Their designs, going back to their first production runs, have been from Russia, France, England, and yes, even the US.

Even China's first ever internally built jet fighter had 5 engine variants built for it. Only one of those variants was Russian based. Which they did end up going with, as they didn't have the engineering capability of making non-Russian engines work in the Russian designed aircraft. Today, they suffer no such issue. Haven't since at least the early 80's, when they started dropping British designed engines into Russian designed aircraft.

a reply to: peck420

And their historic fleet has been largely Russian based, meaning Russian engines. Even their indigenous aircraft used engines based largely on the Russian engines, for both commonality and to ease production issues. They were able to use lessons learned from Western engines to improve them, but it's not easy to overcome the starting point and go to an engine that is far better than anything locally produced.

a reply to: Zaphod58

That's really interesting LERX. All existing LERX are immovable. The one on PAK FA looks like canards and LERX meshed together. Russian planes like Su-33 and Su-30MKI/MKM/SM have their LERX modified into canards. PAK FA is the first plane I've seen LERX that is movable.

Thanks for the insight.