CHINA IS NEARING MASS PRODUCTION OF J-20 STEALTH JETS – REPORT

China is “nearing mass production” of its J-20 stealth fighters after engine problems have been rectified, the South China Morning Post reported on September 5 citing unnamed military sources.

Reportedly, an improved power train will allow the Chinese jet to fly undetected at supersonic speeds, competing with the US F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

With the new engine, designed to turn the J-20 in a world-class combat aircraft, South China Morning Post’s anonymous sources claim that the fighter jet will be ready for mass production by the end of 2018.

The sources also claimed that most of the problems, most of which are related to engine blades overheating have been solved in ground tests and trial flights. This makes the bid to create a high-quality aircraft almost a reality, as reported by the South China Morning Post.

A second unnamed source, cited by South China Morning Post, said that the problems with the WS-15 engine need to be solved before large numbers of J-20s can be manufactured. “China currently has about 20 J-20s, which is far from enough,” the source said. “[Having] a home-grown engine is a must for the J-20 to enter mass production, as no other country would be prepared to give China such cutting-edge technology.”

The anonymous sources’ claims seem legitimate, when taking into account a reported by state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) in April 2018. The report said that Chengdu Aerospace Corporation, which manufactures the J-20, was set to open a fourth production line for the stealth fighter in 2019. In August 2018, CCTV also reported that China had stepped up its training program for J-20 pilots.

According to the outlet, Beijing wishes to posses a stealth aircraft that is able to compete with the best in the world, especially with the rise in tensions over land disputes in the Asia-Pacific and with the US supposedly ramping up deployment of F-22 and F-35 fighters in the region.

“The WS-15 is expected to be ready for widespread installation in the J-20s by the end of this year,” one of the unnamed sources said, cited by South China Morning Post. According to the same source, some “minor problems” remained in the jet, however they would be solved once the engine had been more “extensively run in the aircraft.”

South China Morning Post cited military expert Zhou Chenming who said that China expected the US to deploy between 200 and 300 F-35s in the Asia-Pacific by 2025. According to him that meant “China needs a similar number of J-20s, or at least 200.”

So far 12 F-35 have arrived at the US Kadena base in Japan in November 2017. South Korea said it planned to procure 40 of the fighters in 2018.

According to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the J-20 entered into combat service on February 9th, 2018. It had been working alongside fourth generation aircraft such as the J-16 and J-10 fighters and the H-6K strategic bomber. However, according to The Post, the J-20 was equipped with a “stopgap” engine when it was initially deployed in February.

South China Morning Post reported that in May the J-20 took part in island encirclement drills around Taiwan.

One of the anonymous military sources claimed that the public would be able to get a first look at the stealth fighter jet at the China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition between November 5th and 11th. The event is held once every two years.

According to a report on August 30th, by the South China Morning Post, the J-20 stealth fighter jet carried out its first sea training mission. The PLA air force announced on August 29th that the training had taken place, without specifying where or when. The drill was conducted over the sea in “actual war conditions” to “further upgrade the air force’s combat capabilities,” Senior Colonel Shen Jinke said on the official air force microblog. “It will enable the [PLA air force] to better defend national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity,” he said.

The rapid development of the J-20 really presents the progress Chinese military engineers and designers have made. Similarly, to the tempo with which they’re developing the second and third Chinese aircraft carriers, the manufacturing of a fighter jet that can compete with the F-35 in such a short term is astounding.

It also appears that China is resolving issues with its jet, rather than what Lockheed Martin appears to be doing with the F-35. According to a recent investigative report by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), 19 issues that could threaten a pilots life and the jet’s operation were downgraded so that the F-35 could go past the development phase. These issues were downgraded without an apparent fix even being in the works.

Read more at: https://southfront.org/

Awesome pics: J-20

Stealthy Chinese J-20 Vulnerable

By David A. Fulghum, Bill Sweetman, Bradley Perrett, Robert Wall Washington, Washington, Beijing, London

China’s newest combat aircraft prototype, the J-20, will require an intense development program if it is going to catch up with fast-moving anti-stealth advances. In fact, anti-stealth will bring into question all stealth designs: How much invulnerability will current low-observability techniques offer as air defense systems adopt larger and more powerful active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radars? From the early days of AESA development, a key goal was to build a radar that could detect very small objects—such as a cruise missile at a distance great enough to target and shoot it down—or a larger object like a fighter with a very low-observable treatment. Airborne detection of stealth aircraft may already be an operational capability. In a series of tests at Edwards AFB, Calif., in 2009, Lockheed Martin’s CATbird avionics testbed—a Boeing 737 that carries the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s entire avionics system—engaged a mixed force of F-22s and Boeing F-15s and was able to locate and jam F-22 radars, according to researchers. Raytheon’s family of X-band airborne AESA radar—in particular, those on upgraded F-15Cs stationed in Okinawa—can detect small, low-signature cruise missiles. Moreover, Northrop Grumman’s lower-frequency, L-band AESA radar on Australia’s Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft is larger and potentially more capable of detecting stealth aircraft at longer ranges. Lockheed Martin also hinted at a JSF anti-stealth capability in 2009 in a reference to combat with sophisticated, foreign aircraft. “The F-35’s avionics include onboard sensors that will enable pilots to strike fixed or moving ground targets in high-threat environments, day or night, in any weather, while simultaneously targeting and eliminating advanced airborne threats,” said Dan Crowley, then-executive vice president and F-35 program general manager. Better images emerging from China point clearly to the J-20’s use of stealth technology, but major uncertainties and questions remain unresolved. The overall shape resembles that of the F-35 and F-22, which have a single “chine line” uniting the forebody, upper inlet lips, and wing and canard edges with a curved surface above that line and flat, canted body surfaces below it. The wing and canard edges are aligned: The wing and canard leading edges are parallel and the trailing edge of each canard is aligned with the opposite wing’s trailing edge. The same basic philosophy also has been adopted in British, Swedish and Japanese studies for stealth fighters. The aim in all cases is to endow a practical, agile fighter configuration with a “bow-tie” radar signature, with the smallest signature around the nose and the greatest (still much lower than that of a conventional aircraft with curved or vertical-slab sides) to the side. The fighter’s mission planning system, using a database of known radar locations, then derives a “blue line” track that weaves between radars and avoids exposing the side-on signature to those radars more than transiently. The “diverterless” supersonic inlet avoids a signature problem caused by a conventional boundary layer diverter plate. For example, the F-22 has a conventional inlet, which is likely to require extensive radar absorbent material (RAM) treatment. The biggest uncertainty about the Chinese design concerns the engine exhausts, which as seen on the prototype are likely to cause a radar cross-section (RCS) peak from the rear aspect. One possibility is that a stealthier two-dimensional nozzle will be integrated later in the program; however, the nozzles on the current aircraft show some signs of RCS-reducing sawtooth treatment, suggesting that the People’s Liberation Army has accepted a rear-aspect RCS penalty rather than the much greater weight and complexity of 2D nozzles. Other features are less clear. Stealth development has been dogged by detail-design challenges. All the antennas on the aircraft have to be flush with the skin and covered with surfaces that retain stealth properties while being transparent in a specific frequency. Maintainability becomes a complex tradeoff: Some systems requiring frequent attention will be accessed via landing gear and weapon bays, and others by latched and actuated doors that can open and close without affecting RCS—but the latter involves a weight penalty. Perhaps the toughest hurdle is managing radio-frequency surface currents over the skin. Early stealth designs used heavy, maintenance-intensive RAM. The F-22 introduced a much lighter surface treatment, but it has proven unexpectedly difficult to maintain, causing corrosion issues. Lockheed Martin now asserts that the F-35 will be robust and affordable to maintain in service, with a combination of a high-toughness, sprayed-on topcoat and a conductive layer cured into composite skin panels. The Chengdu J-20 design has struck many analysts and observers as familiar and somewhat different from the F-22, F-35 or Sukhoi T-50. “The J-20 is reminiscent of the Russian MiG-1.42 both in terms of planform and also with regard to the rear fuselage configuration,” says Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies. “The most obvious difference is the greater forward fuselage shaping as the basis for low-observable characteristics, along with the different engine intake configuration. The MiG program was canceled by the Russian government around 1997,” he notes. However, the similarity to the MiG concept may suggest some collusion with the Russian aviation industry. The J-20 made its first flight shortly before 1 p.m. Beijing time on Jan. 11. The flight ended three weeks of anticipation that began in late December when the new design started taxi tests. The discussion about the program will now shift to the aircraft’s mission (fighter or, more likely, long-range strike), sensors (strike missions would require a high-resolution, long-range radar) and communications (which would demand high-speed data links and sophisticated integration). Conventional radars have only one-half to one-third of the range of an AESA radar. Moreover, the movement of a conventional, mechanically scanned radar antenna provides a tell-tale glint of radio-frequency reflections to enemy aircraft with advanced radars. Such reflections undercut the effectiveness of a stealth airframe. China is known to be pursuing newer radar technology. “It’s too early to tell the true status of the Chinese AESA program,” says a Washington-based intelligence official. “We’ve seen lots of press and air show information on the program, but that doesn’t automatically translate into a robust development or give us an accurate look at where [China] is as far as fielding one anytime soon. “Like the [high-performance] engine, it’ll be a challenge to take the step from older radars to one designed for a fifth-generation fighter,” he says. “Again, though, the J-20 is just the first or second—depending on whom you believe—prototype in a very long development program.” If the Chinese conduct a few months of flight tests and there are no more aircraft involved in the program, this might indicate that the J-20 is a proof-of-concept or technical demonstrator. If there are several aircraft eventually, a prototype program would be a more likely conclusion. The flight occurred during a visit to China by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who says Chinese President Hu Jintao confirmed the event to him in talks. However, Gates still believes the U.S. will retain a preponderance of stealth fighters through 2025. Photo Credit: Internet via Airpower Australia

More Pics of Chinese Stealth Fighter Surface

Note: Article from www.defensetech.org

Well, some new pics of the supposed J-XX/J-20 Chinese stealth fighter have emerged over at Alert 5. The images give a much better view of the airframe, although, they still don’t reveal the inner workings of the beast. Speaking of beasts, that’s a big fighter. It looks (in my very unscientific photo-analysis) to be a bit longer than an F-22. And who knows what type of engines those are or if they’re capable of thrust vectoring.

Rumor has it that production versions of plane will feature many fifth-gen prerequisites: Glass cockpit with one giant, re-programmable display; thrust vectoring engines, possibly the Chinese-designed 28,000-pound WS-10 engines or Russia’s 30,000-pound Salyut 99M2 engines; it’s also supposed to feature extensive fly by wire controls and a 3D HUD. Again, this is rumint.