China may not be able to produce enough J-20s to meet the
PLA's demands. Photo: Getty Images
The nation's defence contractors are unable
to deliver the fifth-generation fighters as fast as Beijing would like
By ASIA TIMES STAFF JANUARY 16, 2018 4:56 PM
(UTC+8)
Military observers can anticipate more J-20s taking part
in People’s Liberation Army drills after China’s domestically designed and
manufactured fifth-generation super-fighter officially entered service last
year.
Official media report that in the PLA’s first war-games
of 2018, in Inner Mongolia, an unspecified number of J-20s engaged in a mock
dogfight with J-16s and versus a battalion of anti-aircraft missiles.
None of the reports answer the question of the exact
number of J-20s already in service and where they are based, however, as the
focus of international observers shifts from the fighter’s specifications and
capabilities to its production and deployment.
Chinese military columnist Xi Yazhou speculates, on the
Shanghai-based opinion site The Observer, that the J-20 may still be at a
low-rate initial production stage. The fighters are being built at the Chengdu
Aerospace Corp., where augmenting output “is never as simple as adding some
extra assembly lines.”
It may take years to achieve mass production, especially
for a highly integrated and sophisticated stealth fighter like the J-20.
“China’s manufacturing sector has the reputation of
pumping out products at an impressive speed, but even Apple had to carefully
time its product release as per production status in China for its new iPhones,
and it’s not surprising to see crunches in supply for more sophisticated
warplanes as a whole plethora of factors ranging from parts to manpower
determine the actual output,” writes the expert.
More than 100 Chinese enterprises are involved in
supplying homemade engines, parts and avionics for J-20s, according to a PLA
Daily report.
China has the expertise to develop a cutting-edge fighter
like the J-20, yet its workforce and defense contractors may have become
overstretched as they juggle competing orders from the military.
Revving up J-20 production is a systemic undertaking that
requires coordination from numerous suppliers and subcontractors and the PLA
must navigate a raft of logistics and quality-control hurdles.
Until then, the Chinese military may not have sufficient
J-20s to support its aims of superiority in the skies.
The Soviet Union encountered a similar production
bottleneck after the supermaneuverable Su-27 fighter’s introduction in 1985,
when Moscow was anxious to press ahead with the modernization of its fleet.
F-15 and F-16 fighters had already become the backbone of the US Air Force.
Defence industries under the then Communist regime were
never able to churn out enough components to meet Moscow’s demands for 100
Su-27s and MiG-29s per year.
Original post: atimes.com
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