tphuang wrote:On this topic of what China can and will produce. I think there is a difference between navy and air force. And that comes down to their shipbuilding industry being far more advanced and competitive than their aerospace industry. They seem to be aiming for 6 carriers and a lot of escorts. Their recent shipbuilding program is comparable to what USN has and the quality of ships are also getting pretty good. And due to lower shipbuilding cost, China can build similar number of higher end ships with a much smaller budget and they don't have to support all of USN's deployment missions. PLAN is flush with too much hardware to know what to do with.
Their air force is quite starved in comparison. They couldn't build a large transport and engine for it until Y-20 came out recently. Now they got a huge requirement for that (maybe 200) and who knows how long it will take them to build that. They don't have an aerospace powerhouse like Boeing that can just ramp up and build 40 or 50 a year. So they've been stuck building An-12 derivatives. They are attempting a huge jump to build a stealth bomber, but until then, they are relying on Tu-16 derivatives. Who knows when that will happen. After being in service for 15 years, they can probably max out at producing 6 J-10s a month and that's assuming they can building engines for it (which they can't). It took them probably 30 years to finally develop something to replace S-70, because the local helicopter industry is so far behind and turboshaft industry is even further behind. They are still building variants of SA-321 super frelon, because that's all they have that's larger than Z-10 and can land on a ship. Working with Eurocopter to develop EC-175, they got a really advanced helicopter in Z-15 but they are having trouble getting a domestic turboshaft developed for it. And without a domestic option, they can't create versions of it for the army.
Having said that, they do have requirement for probably up to 1000 J-20/31s, but that might take 20 years to build. They have requirement for 200 Y-20s of different variety (transport, tanker, special missions platform and such), but that might take them 10 years to build.
You've cited some excellent examples here, but I think it'd be a mistake to under-estimate them. The J-20 flew WAY ahead of projections, and it seems as if US intelligence constantly under-estimates Russian/Chinese advancements since at least the 1980's. Prior to that we over-estimated (at least the Russians) i.e. the Mig-25 was a "super fighter" capable of doing it all. Something happened after that to swing the pendulum in the other direction, though I'm not sure what.
I'd say since the Soviet Union's collapse, US intelligence has done a good job projecting their weapons systems, capabilities and introduction dates etc. China I'm not so sure. The J-20 flew much earlier than we had projected, and it's introduction into service (albeit a rudimentary capability) seems to have gone faster than expected to. Unlike the SU-57, which has suffered setback after setback and even now, almost 9 years after its first flight only a dozen will be built. Those 12 aren't going to operational units though, just more test and evaluation. Sure, you'll find talk about more being built later... but no real evidence of that.
I just hate under-estimating your enemy. One of the biggest mistakes in the book...