Monday, February 2, 2009

New JH-7A regiment

Recent photos like the following have shown JH-7A in a new regiment. According to the article that accompanied these photos, the regiment conversion is complete. Considering that this article was in Xinhua, we can be sure that the entire regiment have been converted and the pilots have more or less went through the course for JH-7A. Xinhua doesn't normally talk about a new regiment until it achieves operational status.


So, it looks like we now have 3 PLAAF regiments. One for the 28th division, one for the 5th division and one now for the 11th division.
If we look at Sinodefence's Orbat, the JH-7As are basically going into and replacing old Q-5 divisions. So in those divisions, what you see is normally 1 Q-5 regiment and 1 JH-7A regiment. From the look of it, all the Q-5 only divisions have already received a JH-7A regiment. PLAAF seems to have a balanced distribution policy where all the divisions other than the elite divisions of 1, 2, 3 and 29th receive at most 1 regiment of 2.5+ generation (so, flankers, J-10, JH-7A or J-8II). At the same time, they also try to give each military region a regiment of a new type of aircraft before giving a second regiment of that type to a region. From this, I'm guessing the next division to receive JH-7A would be the 15th division, because it is being converted to a attacker division (starting with a new Q-5D regiment) and it also belongs to the Beijing MR which has no JH-7A regiment yet. the other possibility is replacing one of the old H-6 regiments or equipping on a second regiment in 28th division. I think we will see probably 2 more PLAAF regiment of JH-7A and maybe 1 more PLANAF regiment of JH-7A before the end of the production run. That would give a total of 8 JH-7A regiment = around a production run of JH-7As. Add on top of the 20+ JH-7s in PLANAF, there will probably altogether be 250 JH-7/A serving in PLAAF/PLANAF.

11 comments:

bigdaddy said...

wow, such ugly museum pieces. You call that a modern fighter jet? LOL! It looks like it was designed from a 6-year-old's chicken scratch.

Anonymous said...

haha with all my respect to u , u have no idea what are you talking about. first it is a NOT a fighter jet , second the airframes are brand new, third it got more advanced avioncis than most f-16s and it is a precision bombs truck it carries 9-tons of munitions (some say 5-tons due to the engine)

bigdaddy said...

Whatever it is, it looks like a piece of uninspired shit. You can split hairs all you want, but the fact of the matter is that it is obviously the product of backward, uncreative minds.

Feng said...

you really are wasting my time.

As long as Russian still use su-24 and British still use Tornado, there is nothing wrong with China using JH-7A.

Jiang said...

And do not forget that Americans are still using A-10 with terrible avnoics, they are also keep upgrading AH-1 due to the fact that they are current LACKING mondy and they also cancled and wasted a bunch of money on the so called ADVACED commance!!

Also, the F-22 raptor is facing cancling as well and they keep upgrading the F-18 and call it super hornet to make it sound good. While no one denys that US has the best millitary hardware, but still face it they face Finicial problems as well. SO actually JH-7A is quite good compare to Tornador and a lot better than A-10 due to the fact that it can lunch long range strikes while A-10 can not.

Feng said...

A-10 is getting upgraded right now, because its shown to still have value in the Iraq conflict. There is no question the economic problems are affecting everyone though.

bigdaddy said...

feng, the logical consequence of your statement is that if the Russians stopped using Su-24s and the British stopped using Tornadoes, then it would look very wrong for China to still use the JH-7A. How ridiculous! Typical copycat mentality.

BTW, for your info, the JH-7A cannot even compare to the Tornado.

Jiang said...

JH-7A is better than Tornado, it has newer air-frame and better avoincs, also stealther. JH-7A is newer and can also carry more payload. Just go check the cockpit of JH-7A anc compare it with Tornado you will see the results.

NOW STOP COMING UP WITH SH!T POST!!!

Type99 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Type99 said...

Indians and Americans regularly dismiss Chinese weapons. Americans do have a point because they are a superpower. Indians lol. They buying rifles from Israel because DRDO cannot make modern designs.

Jiang said...

Indians sucks!!! The only reason they dismiss Chinese weapons is because they are jelous, they can not make any weapons not even the A-Junk tank, after 35 years still not finished, Late Comes Aircraft 30 years still not out. Pakistan can make better weapons than indians, such as MBT-2000 tanks, and JF-17, the Pakistanis are a lot smarter than indians knowing that they can not make weapons by themselves so they cooperate with China, and learn from China's wisdow, but Bhindia will never learn!!!!!

indians also got their Ass kicked in 1962 when China is weak!!! Now Pakistan is China's best friend and ally and they also possess NUKES!!! now indians will NEVER capature Pakistan!!!

All they can do is barking like COW, and eventually will get turn into a steak and got eat!!