According to CCTV news reports, the aviation industry Shenfei Group recently released a promotional video of "We Walk Together", and the picture of the mainland's new fifth-generation stealth fighter J-31B "Falcon Eagle" appeared at the end of the promotional film.
For friends who have been paying attention to the J-31 for a long time, the J-31 is already an old friend. It has been nearly ten years since it first appeared in the form of a "zongzi machine", and we have witnessed the growth of the J-31 every step from holding the pipa and half-covering the face to the present.
Shen Fei's promotional video
However, I believe that there are still many friends who do not know about this fifth-generation fighter, what does its appearance mean? Which is stronger or weaker than the American F-35C fighter? Then the author will try to answer.
Ten years of sharpening a sword
The J-31 fighter, the earliest number is FC-31, and the official nickname is "Falcon Eagle". The prefix "FC" represents the mainland's foreign trade fighters, such as the official number of the Thunder fighter is FC-17. So at first, everyone thought that this was a project developed by Shenfei Company for export. To tell the truth, many people were not optimistic about the FC-31 at that time, because the Continental Air Force already had a near-perfect fifth-generation fighter J-20.
What I want to refute a little bit of rumors is that many people have the so-called high-low matching, similar to the F-22 is a high-end machine, and the F-35 is a low-end machine, and the two are high-low matching. This statement is very wrong, whether it is F-22 and F-35, or J-20 and J-31, there is no difference between high and low, only mission. With this concept, we move on to the J-31.
A prototype of the J-31 at the beginning of the 31
With the increasing maturity of the FC-31, it seems to have gotten rid of the identity of a foreign trade aircraft, and it has been brushed with a five-digit serial number that represents the recognition of our army. The origin of its later name "J-35" is because the five-digit serial number on the aircraft starts with 35XXX, like the serial number of the J-20 starts with 20.
Of course, it doesn't matter what it's called, before the official name and model of the army are officially announced, everyone can call the Falcon as they want (the Falcon Eagle is determined by the manufacturer, so it is definitely right to call it the Falcon Eagle). So why did the J-31 upgrade from a self-developed project to a fighter project approved by the troops?
The main thing is that the J-31 is a very suitable fighter for "going to the ship".
What does its appearance mean?
J-31 will have a special foreign trade type, carrier-based type, air force type, according to the official information in the past, it can be found that the naval version of the J-31 J-31B (also known as J-35) has a faster progress and seems to be more valued.
As the construction of the mainland aircraft carrier enters the white-hot stage, our naval forces need a fifth-generation stealth fighter that adapts to the future war environment, and the J-20 is a good choice, but the main purpose of the J-20 in research and development is to meet the needs of the Air Force, so there is not much room for improvement on the ship, for example, the J-20's excessively long fuselage will occupy more deck space.
J-31 in the early stage of research and development to consider the possibility of the ship, according to the official data released by Shen Fei, J-31 air weight is not much lighter than J-20, it is not the so-called "medium fighter" rumored by the outside world - in fact, now in addition to the size of the fighter (Indian LCA, Thunder, etc.), the positioning of medium fighters and heavy fighters has been very vague - but a "large" fighter with multi-purpose combat capabilities, but its length is much shorter than J-20.
In addition, the delta wing of the J-20 is not suitable for folding, and the folding form of the J-31B has long been announced, so it is said that it is a fighter born for aircraft carriers.
If you carefully observe the progress of the J-31B fighter, you can find that it is very consistent with the development and construction cycle of large aircraft carriers on the mainland, that is to say, the J-31B is closely following the construction of large aircraft carriers. In the near future, the Fujian, the mainland's first large-scale electromagnetic catapult aircraft carrier, has conducted two sea trials after joining the Navy, and not long ago it went to the Bohai Sea to conduct sea trials. Generally, large aircraft carriers will have two years of sea trials, and the Fujian ship is expected to spend half of the time conducting hull sea trials, and the remaining half is expected to undergo frequent carrier-based aircraft tests.
"Coincidentally", the naval version of the J-31 was officially announced by the Shenfei Group at this time, indicating that the J-31B is only one step away from the boarding test, and the J-31, which has been flying on land for several years, will next arrive at its real "base" and settle down.
In addition to the Navy, the Continental Air Force is also basically certain to purchase J-31 fighter jets (the name may be J-31A). Stealth fighters who do not want more than the better, and now Chengfei is producing the J-20 at full capacity. After completing the production task of J-16 in stages, Shen Fei naturally could not be idle, and produced J-31 at full capacity to replace our last J-7, as well as successively replace J-7 and J-11 (Su-27 domestic version).
Ten years later, our Air Force will basically have an ultra-luxury lineup composed of four fighters: J-20 series, J-31 series, J-16 series and J-10C (it is expected that there will be no major action upgrades in the future); The U.S. Air Force will only have the F-35A, a small number of aging F-22s, and the F-15EX and F-16 series, and we will be historically overwhelmed by the U.S. Air Force in terms of quality and quantity.
It's exciting to think about.
How does it compare with the F-35C?
The author wants to explain that the J-31 fighter does not have a short-range vertical take-off and landing model according to the current point of view, so in the comparison with the F-35, we will eliminate the short-range vertical take-off and landing type of the F-35B fighter, this fighter mainly serves the United States Marine Corps, in addition to achieving short-distance take-off (note, can not take off vertically), vertical landing, the overall combat performance is far from the A, C model There is a big gap.
There will also be no comparison of the F-35A of the US Air Force, on the one hand, we do not know much about the J-31 air force type to compare it with the American F-35A, on the other hand, the big brother J-20 is more likely to fight with the F-35A in the next few years, after all, the J-31 air force type should not be in large-scale service in the short term.
So let's talk about the comparison between the Chinese and American navies of the fifth-generation aircraft.
The biggest problem with the F-35C is that the U.S. Navy "thinks too much": they hope that the F-35C will not only have excellent stealth performance and maneuverability, but also have a strong multi-purpose combat capability, which makes the F-35C the most bloated member of the Lightning family, and it is also the origin of the nickname "fat electricity".
In order to adapt to multi-purpose combat capabilities, the F-35C has nearly 9 tons of built-in fuel, which is very close to the fuel storage of the J-15 fighter, and you must know that the size of these two fighters is one and a half times the difference. In order to build more weapon models and highlight the ability to strike against sea and land, the F-35C's built-in magazine size exceeds that of the F-22, and part of the reason why the United States has been delayed in completing hypersonic weapons is that it is difficult for the United States to solve the miniaturization (relatively) of hypersonic weapons to stuff into the stomach of the F-35C.
In this way, the maneuverability of the F-35C is at the level of the tail of the crane in the fifth-generation fighter, which is better than the F-35B. So why did the US Navy design it this way? As mentioned earlier, they "think too much".
The U.S. Navy's earliest plan was to purchase more than 300 F-35Cs, completely replace the F/A-18 series with F-35C fighters, and build a majestic-sounding aircraft carrier with fully stealth fighters.
And because their imaginary enemy is us, their aircraft carriers need to fight far away from the US mainland, and the short-legged F-22s can't help them gain air superiority, and they need to fight for air supremacy on their own. After replacing the F/A-18 series, the F-35C is also required to be responsible for sea, land, electronic warfare, etc., so the F-35C has the highest unit price, the most complex technology, the largest volume, and the most advanced avionics system.
Today, however, the U.S. Navy found itself wrong.
The result of wanting everything is that it is not good at anything, and the cost of the F-35C caused by too many requirements is too high (especially in peacetime training) and the failure rate remains high, so that the US Navy does not dare to use the F-35C for training and performing general tasks in peacetime.
In the end, the US Navy successively reduced the F-35C procurement plan, from the initial more than 300 to the current more than 200, but in fact only about 100 were purchased, on the contrary, the number of F/A-18E/F fighters purchased skyrocketed, and last year it was already more than 130 units.
The number of F-35C purchases is constantly being cut and postponed
So how many F-35Cs are currently armed with in the US Navy? There are only about thirty of them. In other words, if the J-31B joins the Navy in the next two years, by 2030, the number of stealth fighters equipped with the continental aircraft carrier will most likely exceed that of the F-35C.
Compared with the F-35C, the J-31B does not need to worry so much at all, it only needs to do a good job of fighting for air supremacy for the aircraft carrier fleet. After the J-31B was replaced with a turbofan-19 engine, it completely surpassed the F-35C in air superiority hard indicators, including a larger thrust-to-weight ratio, faster speed, and supersonic cruise capabilities that the F-35C does not have.
As for stealth performance and avionics performance, we don't know for the time being because the J-31B is still not public, but theoretically, the J-31B with a larger nose size can be equipped with larger and more advanced avionics equipment.
There is another highlight on the Shenfei promotional video that has been ignored by many people, that is, the J-31B has a double bomb bay design on both sides of the fuselage, because of the size, the double bomb bay is expected to only be equipped with short-range combat air-to-air missiles, but if you add the belly bomb bay of the aircraft, J-31B is likely to have the strongest air superiority ammunition configuration among the world's stealth fighters, that is, four short + four medium (including long-range and ultra-long-range) air-to-air missiles.
The F-35C has no side bomb bay at all, and all weapons are concentrated in the belly bomb bay, which also shows that the US military did not particularly care about its combat ability in the initial planning of the F-35, they are more like a group of "small bombers throwing bombs", because the US military at that time would not have thought that there would be a more powerful air opponent than him more than ten years later.
For the Chinese Navy, it is enough for the J-31 to do a good job of air superiority, and the rest can be handed over to the J-15 to clean up the battlefield. Although from another point of view, that is, the F-35C has stronger multi-purpose capabilities than the J-31B, especially in terms of sea supremacy, but if even the most basic air supremacy is lost, no matter how strong the other functions are, it is useless.
Didn't the author say some time ago that the US Air Force may abandon the development of sixth-generation aircraft? Now the US Navy is very interested in the sixth generation manned fighter, because the US Navy, having recalled it, would like to have a more advanced air superiority fighter, and the F-35C is clearly not qualified.
Finally, we hope that the day when the J-31B will take off and land on the Fujian ship will come as soon as possible! Although that day is coming soon. #长文创作激励计划 ##沈飞披露歼-31B New Stealth Fighter#