China Air and Naval Power

Update from PLAN land

2012-01-17T18:52:00.000-08:00

Every year, Chinese shipyards around the country stops working around Chinese New Year. Since Chinese New Year is less than a week away, we got some last minute photos from the Chinese shipyards.

First of all, we see the first two 056 class ships from HuDong shipyard. Now, there is also 056 under construction in HP shipyard, but these ones are more prominent and seem to be further along. There is still a debate on why PLAN even needs these ships, but that's a discussion for another day.

Secondly, we the work on 054As at HP shipyard continues to be extremely fast paced. The fifth ship (548) came back for work in HP shipyard.

The 7th one was launched a while ago.

The 8th one is amazingly far along considering the 6th 054A at HD shipyard just got launched a short while ago.

Finally, we got some new and interesting photos out of JN shipyard.
It looks like the 5th 052C just got launched very recently. The 3rd one has made a return to the shipyard after all the sea trials. I thought it was already commissioned. The next 3 photos show them from different angles. The 3rd one is definitely joining the navy soon. The 4th one has quite a bit to go before being ready to conduct sea trials. The 5th one looks to be slightly less finished than the 3rd and 4th one when they were launched. My feeling is that it was launched at this point because they needed the spaces in the dry dock halls for new ships.

We see below two new ships going into the dry docks and they appear to be the 6th and 7th 052C. I'm not sure if both of them will be 052C, because the rumour is that 7th ship would be in the 052D series.

So, there is a lot of activity going on in the Chinese shipyard. The work will probably stop a month, so we won't have much to see for a while.

I will be posting less often in the coming months

2012-01-17T16:02:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

As you guys probably have noticed, I'm posting less frequently than I used to. The reason is that I got engaged a month ago and simply need to spend most of my free time preparing for my upcoming wedding rather than talking about Chinese military. That does not mean I will stop posting, but that I will be posting less frequently. Also with the upcoming Chinese New Years, there is just not as much news coming out as other parts of the year. Cheers everyone.

Feng

The year that was and the year that is coming for PLAAF

2012-01-01T22:19:00.000-08:00

This past year was a really interesting one for PLAAF. The unveiling and first flight of the J-20 project early on in the year really set up wide spread interest inside and outside of China. While PLAAF had numerous worthy developments, this was definitely the biggest story of the year and continued to occupy our interest throughout the year. As the year progressed, we saw J-20 making more and more test flights until the news/pictures of J-20 test flights became old news.

I have followed PLAAF for many years, but the J-20 project has really transformed the way I look at PLAAF in many ways. I think I was most struck by how relatively transparent the J-20 project has been compared to other past PLAAF projects. When the J-10 project was in development, there were a continuous barrage of photoshoped and fake J-10 pictures until well into the middle of this past decade. In fact, I don't think the first real J-10 picture came out until 2001 (3 years after the first flight). While security around high profile PLAAF projects have loosened up over time as we saw with the unveiling of J-10B and J-11B project shortly after their first flight, I was still expecting a couple of years of fake J-20 photos before genuine stuff comes out. Even if you had asked me in November of 2010, I could not have predicted seeing this many photos and videos of J-20 making test flights from CAC. After all, even a project looking for export orders like Russia's PAK-FA has not been covered to this extent. Obviously, the increasingly more open Chinese society and the evolution in Internet and photo technology has made it more difficult than ever to hide a project like J-20 in a crowded city. Even so, I think this shows China is increasingly confident about its domestic industry. It feels good about displaying its latest technology to the world. In addition, it seems that CAC has much more relaxed security than SAC, because we have seen far more photos from CAC than SAC. In 2012, I expect to see more J-20 photos coming out. Hopefully, there will be one more prototype for flight testing, but it will be several more years before we start seeing production version of J-20. Just as importantly, the progress of the WS-15 project will be something important to focus on. Although, we might not get any kind of update this year.

As we see photos out of CAC of J-20, we also see plenty of photos of J-10 coming out. By now, we have identified 7 regular J-10 regiments, 1 FTTC J-10 regiment and 12 J-10s with August First flight demonstration team. It seems like there were enough J-10As produced this year to equip one more regiment. J-10B has been conducting flight testing for a little over 3 years now, so I would expect the production to shift to J-10B next year. We saw increasing number of photos of J-10B this year including No. 1035, which flies with WS-10B engine. We also saw that J-10B is equipped with some type of electronically scanned radar. Although there are still debates over whether the radar is active or passive, I have read enough sources to believe that it is equipped with AESA radar. Once it enters service, J-10B should be the most capable air combat fighter jet in service. In 2012, I will be looking to see where the last J-10A regiment will be at and where the first J-10B regiment be sent to.

There were also some other acitivity coming out of CAC. The JF-17 project has yet to obtain any new customer, but it continues to get more orders from Pakistan. We can also see more pictures of prototype 06 conducting different kind of testing out of CAC. In 2012, I'm hopeful that JF-17 will land more customers and read about more JF-17 development in PAF. Not much news have come out regarding the WS-13 project, so it's hard to say when JF-17 will be able to remove RD-93 from the supply chain. Another aircraft that we saw this year out of CAC is the Soaring Dragon UAV. CAC's previous UAV effort in Sky Wing did not seem to go anywhere. So in 2012, I will be looking out to see whether this Soaring Dragon will make any in road into PLAAF.

SAC has also had a lot of activity in the past year. Since Taihang has now finally started to be mass produced, J-11B/S production has really ramped up in the past couple of years. We are seeing J-11B/S in at least 4 regiments and possibly more. Most importantly, the production version of Taihang is finally getting the kind of production usage needed to sort out all of the problems. Once these fixes are applied, we will start seeing Taihang equipped on J-10B and J-15. We also saw a lot of J-15 photos this year, including one prototype that is equipped with Taihang. I think that J-15 will have to be installed with Taihang when joining service, so it's good to finally see a Taihang J-15. As we stand with the 3rd sea trial of Varyag completed, I think that J-15 will not be ready to take-off and land on Varyag for another year or two. In 2012, we should watch to see possible new J-11B regiment and the appearance of the mysterious J-16 project. I definitely think SAC is developing a fighter bomber, whose photos should come out next year. However, I still have some doubts about the mysterious 4th generation SAC project. Even though many sources have stated this aircraft is about to appear in the near future, I think we should tamper our expectations until actually seeing photos coming out.

We don't see nearly as much news coming out of other Chinese aircraft companies. There were some rumbling of a new JH-7B variant, but that has turned out to be fakes. H-6K project seems to have ramped up with the signing of more D-30KP2 engines. L-15 project has finally started low rate production, but it is still not ready for PLAAF (partially due to the foreign engine). JJ-9 has joined PLA in good numbers and even got navalized. I don't think JJ-9 has defeated the L-15 project, but Hongdu does have to show PLAAF that L-15 is the right choice. In 2012, I expect to finally see the first flight of the large domestic transport project. At the same time, the Y-9 project should also finally take its first flight. In both areas, PLAAF badly needs these projects to be sucessful. Shaanxi AC also needs to be able to ramp up production to support transport orders and special missions unit.

As with all even years, a Zhuhai air show will be held in 2012. I'm excited to see what new products will come out in this next Zhuhai air show. We will hopefully see displays of more UAVs, PGMs, ground attack missiles, air-to-air missiles, aero engines and different types of avionics. We often get to see more exciting PLAAF developments in Zhuhai than at any other time of the 2 years cycle. I have read about numerous new air-to-air missiles and have seen some possible photos of them. Hopefully, we will start seeing the next generational of Chinese IR guided short range and radar guided medium range AAMs showing up.

I think the appearance of J-20 alone has made this a really great year for PLAAF. The appearance of the often talked about 4th generation SAC project will make things even more interesting in 2012. Now that China has finally made some serious progress with Taihang production, I have slightly raised my hopes for future aeroengine projects. Compared to PLAN, PLAAF suffers from not having the same industrial production base. Even though AVIC1 has really been successfully developing new aircraft, the production level for most domestic projects are still not great. In areas like bombers, large helicopters and transports, AVIC1 just cannot produce enough of them. Even so, the improvements in subsystems like radar, E/O sensors, flight control system, medium range missiles, PGMs and engines have been really significant in the past few years. I want everyone to not just become enamored with J-20 or other new project, but also think about production level, industrial base, PLAAF training and PLAAF doctrine. I have talked extensively about the challenges that PLAAF have faced in bringing up the level of its training and doctrine. These are all things that make a first class air force. If these issues don't get addressed, even a successful J-20 project will not make PLAAF an elite air force.

Reflecting PLAN in 2011

2011-12-17T17:20:00.001-08:00

2011 has been a really hectic year in PLAN world. Although I have personally not had a chance to post as many updates, this years has seen non stop activities around different shipyards. When I write annual reviews like this, I'm almost afraid that I will miss an important part. As I wrote previously, the second wave of PLAN shipbuilding activity begun in 2010. The pace has only picked up in 2011. This blog entry will explore this and much more.

During this past year, we have seen the Varyag project move into the sea trial stage. Varyag's first and second sea trials captured some headlines around the world and was discussed quite a lot on this blog. While Varyag will most likely function as a training and test ship in the coming years, it is the most noticeable step taken by PLAN to shift from a green water fleet to a blue water fleet. As China learns to operate its first carrier, it will be fun for PLAN and other naval followers around the world to see how China intends to operate future carriers. Personally, I have already been trying to identify the different close in defense systems and sensors they have installed on Varyag. One thing that seems certain is that PLAN would like to follow the path of USN rather than USSR in carrier doctrine. We have already seen them remove all anti-ship missiles and long range SAMs from Varyag to allow more space for other stuff (including hangar space). We have also seen the development of fixed wing AEW project as well as the purchase of Ka-31 and the ongoing Z-8 AEW project. The J-15 project is also expected to be far more multi-role than the original Su-33s. Basically, PLAN is trying to modify a carrier that was original designed to conduct ASUW on its own with a limited number of Su-33s providing air cover to a carrier that relies on its air wings for all aspects of naval warfare. The amount of electronics on Varyag's island also indicates that Varyag is not only expected to provide command & control for supporting fleet, but also targeting info in an integrated environment. As we move forward in 2012, it will be interesting to see the continuing evolution of this ship..

Aside from the much talked about Varyag, Chinese shipyards have continued to pump out naval ships capable blue water missions. The lead ship (866) of the Type 920 class hospital ship has also been quite busy this year. It has been an important part of PLAN's display of soft power and was sent around different third world countries on a good will tour. The Type 071 project has continued to roll forward with the induction of the second ship (999) into the same flotilla as the lead ship (998) and the launching of the third ship. We have also seen newer amphibious ships under construction in HD shipyard. In the past year, we have seen more evidence of PLAN learning how to operate something of Type 071 class with the induction of Type 726 hovercraft (Chinese LCAC). We have seen different helicopters take off/land on 998 as well as many amphibious vehicles (and even a MBT) operating from 998 and Type 726. Clearly, they are still learning to use it, but PLAN appears to be quite pleased with the Type 071 class. The new class of submarine tenders also saw two new units launched in Guangzhou shipyard. The lead ship (864) was equipped with the LR7 submarine rescue system from UK. It will be interesting to see if the next two continue to use that or an indigenous option. Consider they already have 3 other large submarine tenders, they may not be building any more ships of this class. Aside from these major naval projects, I find the launching and possible induction of the No. 88 "life style" ship to be the best indication of PLAN's blue water desires. From all of the pictures I have seen, this ship looks to be a ship where sailors (who have been out in the sea for a long time) can party and release stress. I guess that's PLAN's substitute to having port calls.

Aside from all of the larger ships, Chinese shipyards have also continued to building different classes of warships. The JiangNan shipyard is in the midst of building a second batch of 4 052C class ships. The first one seems to have already joined service with East Sea Fleet. The second one was launched a few months ago and will probably start sea trials sometimes after Chinese New Years. The third one looks to be close to launching and the fourth one is still just many large modules. We know that these ships are using indigenously produced QC-280 gas turbines rather than the original GT-25000 gas turbines from Ukraine. Other than that and probable upgrades and fixes to sensors and command system, I don't really see any change from the first two 052Cs. After these 4 052Cs, the next batch of JN destroyers will apparently have some real changes. We will probably not see these new ships until 2013. The two ships from the 052 class finished receiving their major upgrades this year. They should stay in service for a decade or two longer. I do expect old Type 051 class ships to start retiring in the next few years, but we will probably see the number of PLAN destroyers increase with the rumored production plans at JN shipyard.

The 054A project has also continued to sail along. These ships have proven to be very capable of long range missions in all of the deployments to Gulf of Aden. PLAN seems to be very pleased with its performance, because it has ordered more 054A than what was originally expected. At least 9 054A have joined service by now (4 in SSF, 4 in ESF, 1 in NSF). On top of that, 4 more 054A have been launched with one of them currently undergoing sea trials. I do believe that 054A production is drawing to a close and they will start producing 054B soon. The 054 series of ships should eventually replace the 053 series of ships. However, many of the 053 class ships are still quite new and have undergone upgrades in the past year. The 6 Jianghu-V ships (558 to 563) finished modernization this year and should continue to patrol South China Sea for a while longer. The 4 Jiangwei-I ships have received new TAS system in the past couple of years and appear to be going into docks for more upgrades. Similar to destroyers, the number of PLAN frigates should also increase in the next few years.

052C and 054A are part of PLAN's move to become blue water navy, since they are likely part of PLAN's first carrier group and expeditionary strike group. There are also newer littoral ships that are coming into service. The 022 class production have almost stopped completely now. Enough of them have been produced to replace all of the old FACs. We have been waiting for an OPV class to appear between 022 and 054A class to guard the littoral waters and patrol in South China Sea. For a while, it seemed like all of the newly built cutters will be taking that role, even though they are practically unarmed. Finally, the long rumored 056 class ships are now under construction in multiple Chinese shipyards. We have already seen 056 hulls forming in HuDong and HuangPu shipyard (part of the reason why I think 054A production is stopping), but smaller shipyards around the country are also expected to be building 056 ships. While I am still waiting to see how 056 will turn out, I do expect it to eventually replace a good number of 037s in the service. Some may even serve in the role of sub-chasers. MCM ships have also restarted productions again. This year, we saw the 5th Type 081 minesweeper class ship and the 2nd Type 082II minehunter class ship joining force. With the ramp up in production at JiangNan shipyard, I certainly expect to see more of these ships produced in the coming year. In this area, PLAN is finally catching up to the wave of MCM ships that came out in Europe in the 90s. PLAN will need to develop blue water MCM capability eventually, but they need to learn how to use these things first. And finally, numerous 039B class (Yuan) submarines entered service this year. I have now completely lost track of the count, since they don't paint numbers on the diesel submarines. I think at least 3 039B from Wuhan shipyard and 1 039B from JiangNan shipyard joined service. The mysterious new diesel submarine that some have named Qing class seems to be undergoing extensive sea trials right now. I don't expect this class of ships don't be mass produced for a while. It seems like they are really building a lot of 039B class and might do so for another year or two. After which, I think Song, Yuan and Kilo submarines will represent the majority conventional submarine force. From that, I can say the diesel submarine fleet has modernized faster than any other area of PLAN. In comparison, the latest nuclear attack submarine is still stuck at least 2 generations behind Virginia class. There has been rumors that a 095 class submarine has been launched, but we won't find out for a while if that's the case.

Naval aviation also continued to modernize this year. The first naval regiment of J-10 and J-11B were formed this year. Naval aviation for PLA is very different from that of USN. The fixed wing aircraft do not operate from any ship. They are just expected to operate jointly with ships in naval warfare. Previously, PLANAF consist mostly of the extremely short legged J-7 and J-8 aircraft. By this year, all of the naval aviation divisions have at least one regiment of J-10, JH-7 or flankers. At the same time, more Y-8 special missions aircraft have been produced this year (including the new ASW aircraft). This means PLANAF should at least be able to help out naval ships in littoral conflicts. Back in the days, they were pretty much useless. In the coming year, I expect to see more Y-8 special missions aircraft and naval helicopters to join PLANAF. One of the biggest problems of PLAN is the shortage of helicopters. This problem is getting better with the induction of more Ka-28/31 and Z-8s, but will remain a huge problem until Z-15 enters service.

As I look back in 2011, this was a really exciting year to follow PLAN. I have spent a lot of time talking about new toys that PLAN is getting. That's something which is relatively easy to quantify when one follows PLAN. The much harder question to answer is the software part of modernization. With all of these new hardware, how much has the training and doctrines improved to be able to effectively use these new weapon systems? With all of the new ships coming into service, PLAN will need to train new sailors to be able to operate these new ships. I have read many articles about large military exercises, new training methods and great achievements by PLAN. However, much of those pieces just seem to be propaganda. It's easy to see that PLAN is happy with ships like 052C, 054A and 071, but it's much harder to compare PLAN training to that of Western navies. We have certainly seen PLAN sending ships on more missions away from home. Gulf of Aden deployments have been a great success. Hopefully, that will also lead to greater understanding and cooperation with Western navies. We have also seen more joint exercises and port calls in the past couple of years. Hopefully, that will also lead to better relations with other nations. However, the recent naval expansion has also caused a lot of discomfort among China's neighbors. While I'm not advocating that PLAN should stop modernization and transformation into a blue water navy. It should also be mindful on how its actions will affect its neighbors.

Looking forward to 2012 and beyond, it's easy to see that this modernization process is not slowing down. All of the major naval shipyards are continuously churning out new ships. In a couple of years, we will start seeing fixed wing aircraft take off and land on Varyag. The greatest support for PLAN modernization comes from the launching of 893 test ship. As recently as 2005, PLAN only had one ship (891) to test out new sensors and weapon systems. Now, it has 3 ships testing out new weapon systems. I have read about quite a few weapon systems that they are developing, so I'm waiting to see them appear on these test ships. I do also see possible problems ahead. With China's economy facing a turbulent future, that should also effect the amount of money it can spend on its navy. It's unlikely to face the same level of austerity as European countries, but it should also not get overly ambitious with new developments.

What would happen if European embargo is lifted

2011-12-03T07:36:00.000-08:00

I had originally wanted to just do a comparison of European and Chinese military industrial complex and talk about the gap between them. After thinking about it a little bit, I figure that this might be too difficult to do due to my unfamiliarity with much of European military industry. Instead, I think I'm going to revisit the topic of what China can buy from Europe once the European arms embargo is lifted.

With all of the recent tension in the Eurozone, I believe that it will eventually break down due to the unsustainability of this system. There will be much discontentment amongst EU member states countries over the austerity measures imposed by Eurozone leaders. At some point this will blow up in many of the peripheral countries, which will lead the EU member states to puruse more individualistic policies. We could see a complete repeal of the arms embargo by EU or by individual countries within EU, while certain countries (like UK) will still maintain arms embargo due to their relationships with America. While different EU countries would likely pursue different levels of military clearance when it comes to exports to China, I will make the assumption that most non-strategic systems from EU countries will be available to China.

For a look at how I think lifting European embargo will help China, we can take again at the cidex article. The part about Norwegian manufacturer Sensonor was most enlightening.

Sensonor’s MEMS gyroscope components offer the possibility for radically improving the accuracy of Chinese missile systems and precision-guided munitions. The central component is the STIM202 Butterfly gyro, which is a 55-gram miniature module that replaces previous-generation fibre-optic, ring laser and mechanical gyros .....
If the Sensonor technology is purchased by Chinese industry in significant numbers, their missiles and other guided weapons will achieve levels of performance and accuracy comparable to their western counterparts, but at a much lower total system cost. Even though Kotel in China are already producing a similar product, the people from Sensonor said that they are not worried about their product being reverse-engineered and illegally copied....
Why selling this product into China is not considered a violation of the EU arms embargo on the PRC is unknown. Having no ITAR content may be one issue, but the significant increase it will bring to the accuracy of Chinese weaponry certainly violates the spirit – if not the letter – of the EU embargo.

What I want to illustrate here is that EU companies are already helping PLA modernization even with the arm embargo in place. When China wants to purchase platforms or technology from Russia, it has to deal with Rosoboronexport and Russian government. Unlike its dealings with Russia, China relies on EU companies more for components and subsystems rather than whole systems. Small European companies like Sensonor provide quality commercial off the shelf products that can be used on missiles, avionics and platforms. The entire Russian defense industry has progressed more into the world of capitalism, but much of its practice is still stuck in Soviet Era mindset. The Russian companies that produce components for military systems can do so for Russian weapons, but they are not commercially competitive. In fact, many Russian weapon platforms (for domestic and export) are using European suppliers now. Similarly, China has been purchasing whatever dual use components it can from EU companies. In many cases, Chinese suppliers do exist, but the European suppliers may produce higher quality components. As in the case of Sensonor's MEMS gyroscope, Chinese missiles and PGMs have benefited with increased accuracy. I feel like if the European embargo gets lifted, more EU suppliers will be able to support different COTS components for Chinese weapons. That will simply improve the quality and price of Chinese weapons. And this will be the case even if it takes another 50 years for the embargo to be lifted. We are in globalized world economy where most products require suppliers from different countries around the world. Even if the Chinese manufacturers can build everything, they will never be the most competitive supplier for every component. As shown in the recent scandal over fake Chinese components, even US military systems require parts from everywhere around the world. Having the option of purchasing from a technologically advanced base like EU could only be very fruitful for new Chinese weapons.

At the moment, China already benefits from working with numerous EU suppliers. Certain weapon systems like HQ-7 SAM, Type 360 radar, 100 mm naval gun and PL-11 AAM are from contracts signed prior to the arms embargo. Other subsystems like Sky Master surveillance radar, SEMT Pielstick engines for different PLAN ships, Kamewa waterjet propulsion for 022s, Arriel-1 engine for Z-9s and different parts of Z-10 have been allowed to export under the dual use umbrella (or too old in the case of WS-9 engine). China has even been able to leverage the dual use nature of helicopters to enter into co-development projects for EC-120 and EC-175. China is also able to enter into co-development projects with European companies for WZ-16 (to be used on EC-175) and SF-A (the domestic option for C-919). I would imagine that propulsion technology is one area where China would seek for help if arms embargo gets lifted. Different types of turbofan engines and gas turbine would become available for aviation and naval platforms. The other areas that China can purchase from EU countries are radars, different types of sensors, combat systems and sonars. As we’ve already seen with foreign participation in the avionics of C-919, China still has a lot to gain for cooperation with Western companies. Due to concerns over IP, what EU countries are willing to export to China may not be better than Chinese products in many cases. China could also purchase European technology for air defence technology. In many of these areas like Long range SAMs, China has already made significant progress in the recent years. However, they could still cooperate on some kind of medium ranged active radar guidance naval SAM based on Aster-15 to replace the semi-active radar HQ-16. They could also cooperate with European countries on Anti-aircraft artillery as most of PLA’s AA artilleries are developed based on what they imported in the 80s. They could also obtain different kind of air defence ammunitions like DART to improve the capabilities of the 76 mm naval gun and future naval gun class. I don’t think China needs to import gun systems, but they could certainly get help on improving target acquisition and guidance. They could also cooperate with European countries to obtain the latest torpedoes. The capabilities of Chinese torpedoes are rarely mentioned, so it’s hard for me to get an idea of where they are. However, Europe certain has advanced light and heavy torpedoes that China could purchase.

There are also whole systems that China could purchase from Europe. European countries are generally fairly advanced in weapon sectors that highly leverage civilian technology like helicopters and transports and comparatively less advanced in weapon sectors that require specialized military industries like any kind of strategic platform like nuclear submarine and aircraft carrier. China can certainly purchase different kind of naval helicopters like NH-90 for the navy. It can also purchase large transport like A400M or the A330 tanker or a platform for AWACS. Even though China is making progress in these areas, it’s still quite far behind Europe in large aircraft. I’m not only talking about R&D, but also production capabilities. China is still probably a generation behind Europe in submarine technology. Even the latest submarine we saw out of WuChang shipyard is still behind the likes of U-212 and Scorpene in terms of acoustic levels and signature management. I don’t think China needs to purchase entire systems, but it could cooperate with European companies like DCN to improve the design off future submarines. Other than these areas, I can’t see a compelling case for China to purchase any other large system from Europe.

New Chinese ASW aircraft

2011-11-19T07:34:00.000-08:00

The long rumoured ASW aircraft has finally been revealed. In recent photos from an airport (my guess in Shaanxi AC), we see Y-8 ASW aircraft (dubbed HIgh New 6) amongst them. Here are some of its photos. You can see from here that it has a large surface search radar under its chin, a FLIR sensor, internal bomb bays on both side of of the middle section of fuselage, a series of antennas underneath the fuselage and MAD boom at the back. You can also see a large window on each side of the rear fuselage for observation purpose. The aircraft itself is using the Y-8 Category 3 platform as can be seen by the 6 blade propellers.

Before anyone gets overly anxious or excited about this ASW aircraft, one should remember that there are over 100 P-3Cs in service with JMSDF and over 150 P-3Cs with USN. Since this is only a second generation ASW aircraft, it's probably a generation behind P-8 Poseidon in terms of the platform and sensors. At the moment, there appears to only be 2 of this aircraft. When one considers all of the different types of Y-8 special mission aircraft and the production capabilities of Shaanxi AC (around 10 such platform a year), it's really hard to see this number will go much higher in the next years.

In the same set of photos, we also see the tails of other Y-8 aircraft. Two of the tails are for Y-8 ASW aircraft, two are for KJ-200 and the remaining two are for unidentified platform.

We also get a picture of these aircraft from outside. It seems to indicate the existence of 3 KJ-200 here.

We see a KJ-200 painted in PLANAF colours with number 9421. We've previously seen a KJ-200 with number 9371. This should be joining the same PLAN regiment. The other two maybe joining the same regiment too or maybe for a new unit.

I have a previous article on the Y-8 special missions series of aircraft here.

Gap between China and Russia

2011-11-15T14:02:00.000-08:00

After I posted the last blog entry on rebuking Kanwa's support for Russian military industrial complex, there was quite a few passionate responses in the thread. More interesting, there was a thread on Sinodefenceforum about whether or not China is now ahead of Russia. As you can imagine, it turned into quite a heated thread.

For me personally, there has been several areas where China has exceeded Russia. This strategycenter article on CIDEX 2010 highlights the current disadvantage that Russia faces vs China in military development.

Russian specialists will point out that they are now at a huge disadvantage to the Chinese in two very significant respects.
One is that the commitment by the central government in resources to the defence electronics sector is both sustained and serious. “They can take a field where there is nothing but flat land and wild grass,” said one Russian company representative, “and the next thing you know there is a full-blown factory or design centre there turning out a world-class product.”

The other advantage to China is the unfortunate reality of actuarial tables. Younger scientists and engineers who are needed in Russia to form the next-generation of weapons designers are leaving the nation in droves. A few years ago the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) estimated that 70,000 scientists and specialists from Russian defence institutes and military-industrial complex enterprises had left the country.
...
The consequence is that whereas the age of the average defence industrial scientist or engineer in China is about 30 and around 40 in the US – it is 50 years or more in Russia. China’s industry is growing and advancing, while Russia’s will effectively be dying off before too long.

The same article also talks about CETC becoming increasingly competitive around the world market. This is a trend we are seeing amongst all Chinese defensive firms where air shows and weapon shows are seeing more and more displays from Chinese companies.

With this advantage in mind CETC is beginning to turn its focus more towards expanding export markets. This is all mostly due to the fact that Chinese companies used to be limited to trying to sell to countries that could either not purchase from the West or only had the financial means to purchase low-cost Chinese products. Now the electronics giant is encroaching on territory such as South America that would have normally been the preserve of US or European firms.

With this objective in mind, CETC are now more actively participating in international defence expositions outside of China and establishing themselves as players in the competition in emerging markets. In this sense they are in the same category as other Chinese arms export companies like Polytechnologies or Norinco, both of which exhibited at the Eurosatory show in Paris for the first time ever this past June.

In the field of defence electronics, even the Russians are admitting that China has passed them. The other field that China has clearly surpassed Russia is naval shipbuilding. In both cases, we can see China's defense industry benefiting from the globally competitive civilian manufacturing industry. China's defense industry are still trailing in these areas, but have become increasingly efficient and cost effective. After the dissolution of Soviet Union, many Russian defense companies simply did not have the quality and efficiency to compete in the civilian market, so they have not made much progress in the past 20 years.

So, which areas are China still really trailing Russia and how long will that last? As mentioned in the previous article, I think China lags behind Russia the most in strategic systems. At current time, China is a couple of generations behind Russia in nuclear submarines and strategic bombers. China is probably conducting sea trials for 095 class SSNs right now, but I guess it will take another 20 years before it can build something on par with Yasen class (if that class turns out as good as Russians have claimed). China is probably similarly behind in SSBN. In the area of strategic bombers, China will probably catch up through the development of UCAV rather than building something in the tu-160 class. China is also behind Russia in ICBM and long range cruise missiles, but that gap is much smaller due to the significant funding toward Second Artillery Corp.

In conventional weapons, China has imported engines, large helicopters and SAMs from Russia in the recent years. These along with large transport/tankers are also the most obvious areas where it is trailing Russia. Propulsion has clearly been the achille's heel in all recent Chinese weapon development. We are finally seeing results from fighter jet engine projects like WS-9, WS-10A and WS-13. Production problems for WS-10A have been well documented, but the all important WS-10A is finally being mass produced and used in all the new fighter projects. More importantly, WS-15 is apparently making real progress and will be ready by the end of this decade. Theoretically speaking, China would've catched up to Russia in fighter jet engines by then, but we may still see a lot of production related issues hindering progress. We are seeing a whole host of new turbofan engine projects under way (from recent airshows) aimed at different military aircraft like fighter jets, transports, trainers and UAVs. High bypass engine for large transport and small turbofan engines for advanced trainers/UAVs have had slower development. In both case, China has put in less funding into these projects. China has been copying Russian/Ukrainian engines for these sectors. They are putting a lot of resource into high bypass engines for the purpose of military transport and also civilian airliner projects. In the latter case, I think they may find some assistance from more prominent Western companies on these projects, which may help speed up their development. I do expect China to catch up to Russia in different classes of turbofan engines by the middle of next decade. China has also experienced disruption in naval projects and army projects due to the weakness in propulsion technology. In both of these cases, they have been able to license produce some Western engines, while suffering constraints on other projects. For example, the second batch of 052C ships were delayed due to delays in the QC-280 project. Since the Ukrainians produced gas turbines during Soviet time, China is actually not behind Russia in naval gas turbine. However, it is playing catch up to Zorya and need some more years of development before it can develop the full line of gas turbines required by its naval. China is also behind Russia in both large helicopters and turboshaft development. In the latter case, it has been able to leverage civilian projects with European companies into co-development projects (like WZ-16) that should eventually yield fruit by the end of this decade. In the former case, China is working with Russia to develop heavy transport. It's uncertain when China will catch up with Russia or if it needs to catch up with Russia. Russia has a lot of expertise with larger helicopters whereas China has just been doing better with smaller helicopters due to its cooperation projects with European companies. Large military transport and refuellers are certainly areas where China need to catch up with Russia. Many domestic projects have been halted (like KJ-2000 and ABL) due to the lack of platform. The Y-20 project and C-919 should both be ready by 2016. At which point, China will have aircraft that are on par with Russian equivalents. However, Russia does have a lot more experience in developing large aircraft than China and have wider range of transports available. As seen in the recent agreement for co-development of wide body civilian airliner, China believes that it can still learn a lot from Russia in developing larger aircraft. Since both countries are putting a lot of funding in this area, it's hard to say when China will catch up to the R&D capabilities of Russia. With the development of HQ-9, HQ-10, HQ-12 and HQ-16, China has really been advancing in air defence weaponry in the recent years. In naval SAMs and CIWS, I think China has already caught up and surpassed Russia. However, I would say it's still trailing Russia in land based SAMs when one compares S-400 and S-300V to HQ-9. Buk-M1 and Tor-M2 are also more advanced than the HQ-12 and HQ-7 that China is currently fielding. I have certainly read a lot of rumours about new long range, medium range, short range and anti-ballistic SAM projects, but they are still years from deployment. Until then, China will continue to apply incremental changes to different modules of HQ-9 and HQ-12 air defence system. We should see continued improvement in range, guidance, ECM capabilities of these two system. I think China will probably catch up to Russia in 10 years at its current trajectory. Another area that China is clearly behind Russia in is supersonic anti-ship missiles, but I think that's because China is choosing to go the Western route of carrying subsonic anti-ship missiles.

There are also numerous other areas where you can make a resonable argument that China is behind Russia, but I think the greater investment toward China's defence industry will tilt things toward China in the near future. More than anything, the greatest weakness in China's defence industry is propulsion technology. From turbofan engines to gas turbines to nuclear reactor turbine to turboshaft to diesel engines to missile propulsions, China has needed outside help for most of these projects. If China can catch up to Russia in propulsion technology, it will be able to shake any remaining reliance on Russian imports.

On the other side, I think China has also surpassed Russia in several area. As mentioned previously, China's defence electronics industry is now ahead of Russia in most areas. We saw AESA radar deployed on KJ-2000/200 and 052C several years ago and Russia are still several years away from deploying operational AESA radar on AWACS/naval ships. We are also seeing what appears to be first generation of AESA radar on fighter jet on J-10B, while Russian AESA radars seem to have production issues as indicated in the strategycenter article. We have also seen a whole range of new air defense and battlefield radar that CETC is developing that are doing quite well in the domestic and export market. I have not seen the same portfolio of Russian products in the export market. From recent CCTV news reports, we have been able to contrast the combat central of domestic naval ships with that of imported Russian naval ships (kilo and Sov class). We are seeing that the domestic ships have much more digitized and informative system than the more analog based Russian ships. We have also seen the new electronic equipments and systems deployed with the army and PAP. In this blog entry that I read a few months ago, it talks about how Russian general Makarov sees Chinese army been capable to operate much faster due to adoption of modern digital technology.

The gap between China and Russia in naval shipbuilding seems to be just as significant. PLAN expansion has included small ship (Type 022s, 056s), large ships (type-071, submarine tenders, ELINT ship, type 920 and new replenishment ships), complex surface warships (052C and 054A), MCM ships and conventional submarines. Even China's major civilian maritime agencies have seen tremendous expansion in their fleet of cutters. Only the USN has seen more naval shipbuilding in the same period. The Russians have been able to build Soviet era designs for export like kilo class, Talwar class, Sov class and Gepard class. It has struggled building new shipping classes like Borei, Lada, Project 22350 and the Ivan Gren class. It has also struggled with refitting of large Soviet era warships. The cost overruns for INS Vikramaditya has been well documented. Russian shipyards have reduced capacity compared to Soviet times and simply cannot complete work on time or on budget. I've seen some ambitious Russian naval designs for export in weapon shows, but who really knows when Russia would actually be able to deliver those product. We hear and see a lot of new Russian naval subsystems like CIWS, SAM, AShM and FCR in weapon shows and don't hear that much about Chinese naval subsystems. However, we see so many new naval sensors and weapons being installed on test ships and later installed on new shipping classes. With the launching of the 3rd naval test ship (893), I can only imagine the pace of such development is further picking up. Many of the recently developed naval sensors/weapons (like the ones on 054A) are developed based on Russian subsystems, but the next generation of naval sensors/weapons should move China comfortably ahead of Russia. The new Chinese subsystems will be installed and tested out on new platforms, whereas the Russian ones have no platforms to be installed on. So, I think that Russia will also be falling behind China in most naval subsystems.

Other people may disagree, but I think China is also ahead of Russia in UAV technology and PGMs. In the recent Zhuhai air show and international air shows, we have seen many different Chinese unmanned systems displayed including UCAVs, unmanned helicopters, surveillance UAVs and Recon UAVs. China has exported some UAVs to Pakistan and is also developing and inducting new UAVs into PLA and PLAAF. I think it will be just a matter of time before those CAC UAV projects get inducted. At the same time, Russia really has not developed anything in UAV field. It has been importing different UAVs from Israel. China's development in different PGMs have somewhat been tied to its UAVs. Many new types of small SGBs, TGBs and LGBs have been developed, so that they can be carried by UAVs and internal carriage of next generation aircraft. We are also seeing miniaturized ground attack missiles and ATGMs developed to be carried by UAVs. Overall, we have seen a huge expansion in the arsenal of PGMs available for different Chinese aircraft. These new ground attack weapons have greater accuracy and longer range than what China had imported from Russia in the early 2000s. On top of that, they come in different sizes with different types of guidance. Even J-10s have developed greater multi-role capability with these developments. This is quite a feat considering that PLAAF desperately needed to import Su-30 and different ground attack missiles and munitions in the early 2000s to develop ground attack capability.

The other areas that I think China is clearly ahead of Russia (and most other countries for that matter) is short/medium ranged surface to surface missiles. China has been putting a lot of funding in this area in the recent years due to the Taiwan threat and the importance of Second Artillery Corp. Aside from the much talked about anti-ship ballistic missile, it has also developed new variants of DF-15, DF-21 and the mysterious DF-25 missile. At the same time this was happening, Russia did not develop this area due to the INF treaty.

There are other areas that where you can argue China is ahead of Russia, but I think it's quite significant that China has basically surpassed Russia in all of conventional naval weaponry. Considering where the two countries were 15 years ago, that represents quite a lot of progress for China and lack of progress for Russia.

I also want to explore the gap between China and European Union in the near future. With the disintegration of Eurozone, I think the European embargo might be abolished in the next few years. The question is what will China still want from Europe at that time.

Rebuke against Kanwa

2011-11-06T19:55:00.000-08:00

I’ve been a long time follower of Kanwa magazine. Even though I do not have much regard for the quality of writing, I do find its interviews and news from weapon shows to be quite good. In fact, Kanwa became a good PLA sources back in the days, because it had many contacts with Russian military industrial complex. Even though I don’t always agree with the view points of the people that Kanwa interviews, it’s always interesting to see what they have to say. However, Kanwa has been forced to do more and more of its own analysis in the recent years, because of China’s reduced reliance in Russian weapons. While the sections on weapon shows and Chinese imports/exports are still quite useful, it’s analysis have generally been extremely painful to read. The problem is that Kanwa has a very narrow view of Chinese military industry and believe that everything China produces must be somehow copied from Russia. As a result, it tends to vastly underestimate the capabilities of newer systems even though official news reports already disproved kanwa’s estimations. Even now, it still insists that Type 071’s displacement is under 10,000 ton when official reports put it at 19,000 ton (in reality, it’s dimensions are almost the same as San Antonio class). As I read through newer issues of Kanwa, I’ve often have to just skip through the ridiculousness of some of the Kanwa articles. In the November issue of Kanwa, there was an article so off that even I could not ignore it.

In this article, Kanwa tries its hardest to argue that the gap between Chinese and Russian military industrial complex is increasing rather than shrinking. I will just go through each of Kanwa’s points and look at whether they are accurate or not. Kanwa starts by looking at the nuclear technology between the two countries. Post Soviet Union, this is probably the one area that Russia has put in heavy investment to try to stay on par with America. Kanwa talks about the latest ICBM and the development of Borei/Bulava class. The cost overruns and launch failures on Borei and Bulava project have been known for a while. I do think that this new generation of SLBM and SSBN will join service in the next few years due to the huge investment that Russia has allocated toward it. It would be easy to argue that Russia is ahead of China in ICBM/SLBM technology (which is what Kanwa did), but it would be hard to argue that the gap between the two countries is expanding here. Considering what the Second Artillery was fielding prior to DF-31 and JL-2 as nuclear deterrent, the PLA leap in this field is quite large. Even if the 094 class is extremely noisy, that’s still a couple of generations ahead of operating something like the 092 class which could not even hold intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Next, Kanwa argues about the conventional forces. Interesting enough, instead of making any argument that the gap between Russian and Chinese designs is expanding, Kanwa ended up arguing that Russian weapons are still better. Well, I don’t think there has ever been any doubt that Russia is still ahead of China in many areas of weaponry. Looking at the weapon systems that Kanwa compared:
KJ-2000 - Kanwa thinks that it is in testing phase and has not reached maturity. It used the small number of KJ-2000s and China’s desire to purchase Phalcon system as the proof for this.
Reality: The limited number of KJ-2000 is due to the lack of available IL-76 or equivalent sized transports. PLAAF has been very pleased with its performance and have inducted both KJ-2000/200 into service. AEWC&C is one area where China is ahead of Russia.

Next generation fighter jet program – Kanwa argues that J-20 used AL-31FN and is a demonstrator, so it is behind the Russian program. Kanwa states that PAK-FA already has 117 series engine to be able to perform supersonic cruise and has AESA radar that is in second year of testing.
Reality: J-20 is unlikely a demonstrator program, because PLAAF has publicly stated that they expect its 4th gen program to be inducted by 2017 to 2019. In fact, SAC is also reported to have an ongoing 4th gen program. Even if J-20 is not 5th gen by Western standards, it is certainly a much large evolution over previous Chinese fighter jet than PAK-FA is. I see PAK-FA as basically just a stealthy version of Su-27. Neither aircraft are in the same league as F-22/35 in terms of stealth technology. Engine is clearly one area that China is behind Russia, but the WS-15 project is going pretty well by all report. J-20 will certainly not be fielded without AESA radar and the ability to cruise at supersonic speed.

SAM – Kanwa argues that the 125 KM HQ-9 is behind 200 km S-300PMU2 and compares even worse versus the 400 km range missile under development. In naval SAM, the 9M96E system is much more compact, modularized and digitized than China’s Rif-M.
Reality: I won’t argue that HQ-9 is better than S-300PMU2, because Russian SAMs have always been very impressive. HQ-9 is however a couple of generations ahead of the HQ-2 systems that it’s replacing. We will have to wait to see what comes after HQ-9. In terms of naval SAM, I don’t understand why it compared 9M96E to Rif-M instead of HHQ-9 or HQ-16. China is certainly developing its own equivalent of a MK-41 launch system, while Russian naval SAMs have to wait for their ships to be ready.

Anti-ship missile – Kanwa argues that China does not have any kind of vertical launch system for AShM or indigenous supersonic AShM.
Reality: China is simply going Western style of using the much smaller, high subsonic AShM. I do foresee that future PLAN VLS will be able to launch AShM. It’s hard to argue that this is a field that China is doing badly in.

Ground attack missile - Kanwa argues that China is behind Russia, because KD-88’s range is only 220 km compared to 300 to 400 km range of Club/Yakhont.
Reality: Clearly, a smaller missile like KD-88 will have shorter range than a larger missile like Yakhont or Club. PLAAF uses a combination of KD-88, KH-59ME and KH-31/YJ-91 for different strike and SEA missions. Range is not the most important factor in ground attack munitions. China has put a lot of investment in different ground attack munitions in recent years and has produced a whole new generation of advanced guided missiles of different sizes. I would say this is one area it has clearly surpassed Russia in.

Naval Propulsion – Kanwa states that the major combat ships are all using locally produced version of French and Ukrainian engines.
Reality: This is the Achilles’ heel of PLAN. 052C mass production was delayed because QC-280 (domestic version of DA-80) took a long time to be ready. Even so, it’s hard to argue that Russia has improved more here, since Russia is getting all of its gas turbines from Ukraine too.

Naval MFR – Kanwa argues that Chinese electronics industry is behind the west and have not made miniaturized version of 052C, whereas Russia has come out with Zhuk-AS.
Reality: China has not made smaller version of those AESA radars, because none of the recent ships have needed it. The larger radar panels are needed for something like 052C, so that they can have more power and track targets further away. The 052C radar arrangements mirror that of SPY-1D on Burkes. Zhuk-AS is not even equipped on any operational ships. If a new PLAN frigate needs a smaller MFR, it will be developed and tested. Kanwa does not seem to understand the basics of naval ships. This is clearly another area where China is ahead of Russia in.

Kanwa tried to use these examples to prove that China needs to spend more time to be good students of Russia. It stated that by copying from Russia, China fell in an ugly continually copying rather than developing its own stuff.

Kanwa is clearly allowing its loyalty toward Russian military industry influence every argument here. In many of its examples, China actually came out with products ahead of Russia. China learnt what it could from the Russian weapon systems that it imported and then developed a whole range of weaponry. One cannot underestimate the contribution that Russia has made toward Chinese military industry. At this point, China has to develop new products independent of the Russians and has done so in many different areas. Kanwa’s desperation to argue against this made most of its arguments extremely muddled. It did give credit to China for UAVs, T-99 project and naval shipbuilding program, but only spent one very short paragraph on that.

I think there are still several areas that China is behind Russia that it can learn a lot from. It is clearly behind Russia in strategic systems like strategic bombers, nuclear submarines and ICBMs. It is also behind Russia in aerospace engine, surface to air missiles, large transport/tanker, medium/large helicopters and diesel submarines. China still imports these weapon systems from Russia. However, China has also surpassed Russia in many areas. I think China will simply surpass Russia in more areas in the coming years as the domestic industries receive more and more funding. I have a terrible feeling that Kanwa articles will degrade even more in quality as Russia becomes even less relevant in PLA development.

My thoughts on economics and politics

2011-11-04T22:35:00.000-07:00

As we all know and have experienced, the world has been in a prolonged economic uncertainty since 2008. Although many countries had economic recoveries starting from the second half of 2009, the world now seems to be falling into further economic hardship with the European Sovereign debt crisis and housing bubble bursting. For the former, I'm referring to the ongoing problems in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy. For the latter, I'm mainly referring to the housing market problems in China, Australia and Canada. In such harsh economic climate, the debate of military expenditure is important for not just America and NATO countries, but all of the countries around the world. Both China and America are facing possible leadership changes in 2012. At the same time, governments around Western countries are facing the possibility of collapsing over austerity measures and general discontent toward banker bailouts. The topic I've been thinking about in the last few weeks are whether leadership around the world is up to the task of handling the problems that are facing us.

I often talk about the reasons behind the buildup of the PLAN fleet. My message has been that the Chinese economy is so much dependent on energy security and maritime trade that it needs a strong blue water fleet to protect the sea lanes. Of course, that's not the only reason we are seeing larger budget for the navy. Other reasons include the desire for projecting soft and hard power (achieve political influence), national pride, buying support from the military and supporting the military industrial complex. Even though I'm an avid military follower, I tend to believe that military buildup should only happen to support and ensure an environment for economic growth. Contrary to what the military industrial complex would like people to believe, spending toward the military does not naturally help the economy. If the weapons that are produced are not used in a way to enhance the economy, then they don't help a country's productivity. (Similarly, if a government spends the same amount of money on building roads that lead to nowhere, they will also be wasted.) In cases where a government puts too much spending into the military for non-economical reasons for a long period of time like in USSR, you eventually see a complete collapse where neither the economy nor the military survive. For all of the faults of the Chinese leadership, the one thing it did realize after Cultural Revolution is that economic development must take place before it can build a stronger military. Amongst many of its policies to liberate the market in the 80s, Deng Xiaoping also liberated the Chinese economy from the weight of military expenditure by cutting it 10 years in a row (or something like that). During this time, many domestic military projects had to be abandoned due to lack of funding. Even J-10, the most important project in PLAAF history, almost got axed in the 90s. I'm sure many people in PLA complained loudly back then, but it is hard to argue against the success of such policy now. Comparing this relatively orderly retreat in military budget to that of the complete collapse in Russia, I think most people would prefer to go down China's path. I'm not here to just applaud China and put down Russia, but rather to show the importance of keeping military expenditure in check even during times of security needs.

By now, many of us have the freedom to move to different countries around the world for better economic prospect. All of us want to be in a land where we can live comfortably and be prosperous. More than ever, countries around the world need to keep economic security so that it can attract the best talents around the world while keeping its best at home. For example, I moved from Canada to New York, because the job prospects are better here. However, I may move to a place like Singapore in the future that is well developed and has low taxes. Countries that can provide economic security and development will become more prosperous, technologically advanced and militarily strong. Clearly, America has always been one of such nation and has also benefited tremendously from absorbing the brightest around the world. In the past, a country's economic security is provided by a strong military, but that's no longer the case. Now, they can also be threatened in the major manufacturing industries, commodities markets and banking systems. Even though these threats generally don't kill people with bombs and bullets, they do bring hardship and eventual overthrow of governments.

For an example of threat to financial systems, the Icelandic economy collapsed a couple of years ago and the nation's banks were saddled with debts from market speculation. The Icelandic government initially bowed to IMF pressure to impose austerity measures and pay back the debts owed by the banks to British and Dutch creditors, but the Icelandic people revolted and overthrew their elected government. The new Icelandic government has since rejected all proposals that it views as unfair to payback foreign creditors. The similar drama is playing out in Greece except that they have not overthrown the government yet. At the moment, everyone in the country is striking over the austerity measures and Greece is barely functioning as a nation. They will definitely default (even if it's called voluntary) and probably will leave the Euro zone. In fact, the current debt problems along Southern European countries will probably result in the end of Euro as we know it. The more fiscally sound nations like Germany and Austria will use a new currency, whereas the remaining countries will use a much weakened Euro. Along the way, millions of people will suffer due to sovereign debt problems brought about by public sector debts and private sector debts that are guaranteed by government. Of course, the same threat is looming for China and America, which I will talk about later.

For example of threats from commodities markets, we only need to look at the Arab spring. From late 2009 to early 2011, there were a lot of inflation in the commodities market. Such inflation never shows up in our CPI (which does not include food and energy), but is clearly felt by everyone around the world. While some of that inflation is caused by demand in China, much of that is caused by speculation in the global commodities market and debasement of currencies around the world. So as a result of living in a globalized food and commodities market, Arab countries faced high inflation despite being mired in an economic slump. When faced with stagflation and lack of freedom, the local population rioted and threw out the dictators. I do want to point out that when people are faced with extreme hardship of stagflation (inflation + depressed economy), they will protest and riot against their government regardless of whether they are elected or not.

A large part of the reason behind inflation in global commodities market came from the so called currency war. For the past few years, most major currencies around the world have been eagerly debased by central banks in a way in order to stimulate the export sector. Some of the most well known cases of such currency debasement include the many rounds of QEs by the Federal Reserve, the pegging of RMB to USD, the efforts by BOJ to keep Yen down, the QE efforts by ECB and the hard cap set by Swiss national bank to hold up EUR/CHF exchange rate. Basically, every country kept loose monetary policies in order to not rise too much against USD and Euro. Contrary to what the politicians may tell you, this is not just a Chinese policy, but something that central banks of most major currencies try to keep their export industries competitive. When you combine this with cheap money and excessive lending practices in growing countries like China and India, the world faces an expansion in credit that results in inflation in spite of economic downturns in many countries.

At the same time, we are also facing the prospect of trade war between major economies. During good times, large trade distortion as we see now with China and US results in political tension. During bad times like the great depression, we see protectionism amongst the world economies and result in extended period of economic pain. When governments around the world put in stimulus packages in 2009, many of them put in "buy-at-home" clauses to try to stimulate the manufacturing industries at home. In spite of such clauses, we've seen recovery amongst major manufacturers around the world due to trading. With the recent rhetoric coming out of US senate, it appears that we are facing a looming trade war between China and America. I will talk about later why I think policies of politicians from both countries are not helpful.

And finally, we also face this sovereign debt war. Due to the abandonment of gold backed currency, countries around the world have been able to run prolonged period of fiscal deficits through fiat currency. It's safe to say that most countries around the world have lived beyond their means and now the market is punishing some of them with ever increasing interest rate. In the case of Greece, the country is on life support and will default at any moment now. The last minute voluntary haircut deals simply can't rescue the country from the ever increasing borrowing cost. And when it does default, the two main groups that will suffer are the Greek Pension fund and banks. The former leads to the collapse of social safety net and the latter leads to bank insolvency. The same problem is also facing other PIIGS countries, some peripheral European countries and states like California and Illinois. Even though pension fund reforms and some bank insolvency may be the best way to go, a lot of people will experience pain in the short term. My point is that perpetually running up deficits will catch up to a country sooner or later.

As I've watched the primary season for the past few months, I cannot help but be disappointed with the current political discussions. We have an economically illiterate president who cannot move past blaming all of his problems on the Republicans. The Republican primary debates never seem to move past who flip-flopped, who was once a democrat, how fast they will repeal the Obamacare and how much taxes they want to cut. Other than Ron Paul, it’s hard to find any honest politician not completely bought by Wall Street, the Koch brothers or the military industrial complex. There seems to be a belief from the democrat that the economy cannot start up again without more stimulus packages. And the republican belief seems to be that the economy will magically start to expand as soon as tax and regulations are cut. While I do generally side with conservative positions on lower taxes and regulation, I think the politicians really do underestimate the effect of the debt issues around the world. People in America are not going to start spending money again until they start to save more money and feel more optimistic about job prospects. As importantly, demands around the world are going to remain down with Euro sovereign debt crisis, political unrest in the Middle East and housing bubble bursting in China/Australia/Canada. And probably just as importantly, nobody is talking about what would happen to America once states like California, Illinois and New York face the same debt pressure from bond market that the Eurozone countries are facing. Will the federal government bail these states out like they've already done with the auto industry and Wall Street? And what would happen if the market turns its attention to the US treasury market? On the face of it, American public debt is even worse than many of the Eurozone countries that are already in trouble, but the interest rates are now at an all-time low due to the market perception of US dollar as the safe haven. If the interest rate goes up at all, that would have huge impact on federal budget. Just think about how many American individuals, banks and pension funds would be affected if the values of their government or state bond drop? Clearly, neither the US federal government nor the state governments can perpetually run up deficits. Numerous municipal governments have already filed for bankruptcy. Yet I continuously read about apocalyptical scenarios if defense spending or medicare or social security gets cut. The reality is that the excessive spending now will eventually have to be balanced somehow by either depreciated currency or default. By justifying certain things can't be cut now, the price will be much harsher later when austerity measures and inflation are forced upon the population as we are seeing in PIIGS countries. Once that happens, there will be rioting on the street like what we saw in so many other countries in the past 2 years. Instead of telling the truth to the country, most politicians only want to stay in power and blame other sides. Similarly, we are seeing the same blame game put on Chinese currency manipulation, because China is an easy target to go after. Aside from the fact that many major currencies are engaged in currency manipulation to try to increase export, it is also impossible to determine whether RMB is really undervalued or overvalued. As I explained in previous articles, on top of the 25% appreciation against USD in the past few years, China has also seen minimum wage go up 20% in many of the export dominated provinces in the last year. The minimum wages were increased due to rising inflation across the country caused by credit expansion. My point is that Chinese gov't cannot control laws of economics. Rather than blaming the currency manipulation, other reasons like cheap credit, business friendly labour laws, less regulation, lower taxes and market access contribute more to the trade imbalance. American gov't should fight for equal market access for its companies, but it should also try to be more pro-business.

At the same time, China is also nearing leadership change, since the next generation of leaders lead by Xi jinping will be taking over in 2012. In the past couple of months, we are really starting to see the housing bubble bursting in different cities around the country. The reality is of course the housing prices in many cities have gone up too much in the country due to cheap money and speculation and they need to come down to a more reasonable level. At the same time, many small businesses in the export provinces have gone under due to rising labour cost. Chinese banks are also on the hook for a lot of debts from cheap credit to big companies and local governments. It seems like China is heading into an economic downturn at the same time it is also fighting inflation issues. If past is precedent, inflation issues normally go away as soon as the economy slows down and unemployment rate goes up, so the latter may become a smaller concern. Hu jintao and the other leaders that are retiring next year would most likely not want any kind of economic turmoil to blemish their political legacy, which means they could try to bail everyone out, when they should allow for correction in the housing market and for certain local governments and businesses to fail. In the event of an economic downturn, Chinese leadership should allow for correction of imbalances caused by the boom period rather than trying to stimulate the economy further. It was painful in the late 90s in China when the government let many SOEs fail, but that became one of the major reasons for the past 10 years of economic growth in China. It was also painful for some people when China cut down the size of the government and stopped communist era food rationing, free housing and “universal health care”, but the liberalization of market has been an overwhelming success for most people. So, will Chinese leadership do the right thing this time and allow the market to correct itself? Unfortunately, I think China will try to further stimulate the export sectors and increase infrastructure spending.

Contrary to popular belief around the world, running a perpetual surplus is not a good thing. The two most popular examples to look at are the trade distortion between China/USA and Germany/Rest of Eurozone. In the former, China is exporting a lot of good to America without getting the same amount of goods back. In an ideal trading environment, that would lead the Chinese exporters to convert the currency back to RMB and increase the value of RMB vs USD. Eventually, the currency exchange rate move back and forth to reflect the productivity of the country’s work force. In the case of China/USA, China has very strict capital control, so exporters who get paid in USD would have to exchange with Chinese banks to get RMB back to pay its workers. As a result of trade imbalances, China has a huge reserve of USD. Unfortunately, China has to use that USD to buy things denominated in USD like natural sources or exchange it for another currency like EUR or JPY. In both cases, the transaction would simply depreciate the USD (and RMB as a result of currency peg) and increase the cost of the living for Chinese people. The other scenario is for China to take that and invest in USD denominated investments like treasury bonds, other fixed income securities, US Equity market or US companies. Those investments may go up or down. So the result of a huge Chinese reserve of USD is inflation for any currency tied to USD (including RMB) and a lot of USD held in America. We are already seeing the result of the inflation in China, where labour costs are going up 20 to 30% and low cost manufacturers are going out of business. If the large amount of USD is not eventually used to purchase more American goods for Chinese people, then that huge reserve will be wasted. And since the great American demand for foreign product results in spending beyond its means, you see large amount of private and public sector debts that are also held by China and other foreign creditors. America can either further debase USD or it can default on its debts. Either way, China’s USD holding will lose large portion of its value. So instead of getting back American products that can improve the lives of Chinese people, America ends up getting all the Chinese products for essentially free. In the case of Germany vs the rest of the Eurozone, the adoption of the common currency has allowed Germany to consistently run up trading surplus vs peripheral Eurozone countries due to its competitive advantage over them. Since the PIIGS countries cannot use export to grow their economy, many of them have grown through housing bubbles which have now burst. At the same time, German banks continually invested in these economies to help maintain the trade imbalance. We now get to the point where PIIGS countries are in heavy debts from the trade imbalances and are attacked by the bond market, because they don’t have a competitive domestic industry to export out of this debt. The German banks will suffer huge losses in the PIIGS countries, because they borrowed money to keep this trade imbalance going. Please note that US, Japan and UK have worse public sector debt (and also worth private sector in the case US) than PIIGS countries, because all of their debts is in their own currency that they can simply just print more.

What I’m saying is that China should not continue this export and investment driven growth, even though the Chinese politicians may find it easier just to continue this “formula for success”. I see that even though they publicly say that they do not want trade surpluses, their policies in the past have been to help the export industry whenever the economy is heading toward a slowdown. In the past, they have also invested in a lot of public infrastructure project that have helped grow the Chinese economy, but more and more of the new infrastructure projects in the recent years have proven to be wasteful. More importantly, China has recently adopted policies that are different from Deng’s time. It is adopting policies that are more confrontational with its neighbours. I think that Chinese leadership is throwing more weights around its neighbours, because it developed new confidence during the economic downturns of 2009. While I do think that China will eventually establish hegemony in its backyard like America have done in the Americas, it will have to do this slowly through greater economic integration and spread of its culture to neighboring countries. Many of the neighbours surrounding South China Sea have large Chinese expat population and similar culture to China and would probably support Chinese leadership better than other countries around the world. During a period of economic uncertainty as China is going through right now, it should concentrate more on building economic relationship with neighbouring countries rather than throwing its weight around. As China’s military grow with its growing economy, China will bound to make its neighbours feel uneasy. That’s why it has to work extra hard to have confidence building measures with its neighbouring militaries.

So, as I look at political situations in China and America, I see both countries facing similar issues with economic downturn looming. The major currencies of the world are already engaged in a currency war that is causing inflation, economic stagnation and political uncertainty. At the same time, the senate is passing a bill that could trigger a trade war with China, which will cause pain for all of us. The cheap exports that China sends to America would likely be replaced by other low cost third world countries while American consumers would face more expensive goods. There are structural issues that America needs to make to have less debt and become more competitive in the world market. At the same time, China also needs to make policy changes to shift away from export and investment based economic growth. Both countries are facing such economic firestorms that they need to spend less time thinking about how to preserve its leadership in the world and more time on solving economic issues facing the world. If the two countries spend more time on the former, we will continue to move in a path of confrontation. If the two countries spend more time on the latter, we could have more engagements, better relationships and better livelihood for everyone around the world. I also think that the economic problems that are now hitting Eurozone will spread to China and America, which will force both countries to spend more time shoring up domestic debts problems. At which time, I don’t think either military will be happy about their reduced influence.

This brings us to possibly the most shocking part of the recent debt crisis -> what I call the war against sovereignty. In the past week, we have seen democracy and sovereign completely removed from the hand of Greek people. For the past year, Greek Prime Minister Papandreou has been bowing to ECB, IMF, Sarkozy and Merkel by continuously imposing austerity pressure on Greek people and selling off any remaining profitable Greek assets. Austerity measures have only imposed more taxes on Greek citizens and choked life from the economy. Instead of reducing Greek debt, these continuous rescue packages only simply kicked the can down the road. Papandreou and his government has practically been stripped of all power and forced to do the bidding of unelected officials of ECB. When I look at Greece in the past year, I can only see politicians from both parties comply with the demands its EU creditors, whose only goals are to protect the European banks. The prolonged process has not only choked the life out of the Greek economy and its people, but also made Greek debts situation more unsustainable. The moment Papandreou tried to give power back to the Greek people to let them decide their own fate, Eurocrats from both inside and outside of Greece jumped in to crush any hope of referendum. Instead of giving Greek people a chance of voting for their future, the opposition party and Papandreou's own cabinet revolted to comply with the wishes of Sarkozy and Merkel. The worst part is that Greece is now certain to default and will be forced out of Eurozone. Greece should have defaulted much earlier and went back on the drachma, but now the entire nation has grounded to halt from all the austerity measures and strikes. Even if Greece had the strongest military in the Eurozone, it would not have been able to defend itself against this intrusion of its sovereignty by international banks and Eurocrats. Not a single bullet was ever fired, but the Greeks have lost all sovereignty and democracy. Similar attacks against sovereignty are occurring in all the other PIIGS countries. The bond market has started to attack the public sector debts in Italy, the third largest economy in Eurozone. When Silvio Berlusconi dared to land at the G20 meeting without any new austerity and reform plans, European leaders sent in officials to Rome to look over Italy's books to check the progress of previous reforms. Berlusconi is already facing charges of bribery and tax fraud; the added pressure from failing to please the Eurocrats has basically put his coalition government on the edge of collapse. The pressure on Italy will not stop after Berlusconi resigns. There will simply be more pressure on Italy, Spain, Ireland and Portugal to give up on their sovereignty and comply with the demands of ECB and Eurozone. All of these measures will only kick the can down the road and impose more unbearable austerity on the people. Right now, the financial market's attention is on the Eurozone, but the EU sovereign debt issues will eventually be resolved in one way or the other. After which, the market will turn its eyes on the unmanageable public sector debts in US, Japan and UK. These countries have the ability to print their own money endlessly, so it will be interesting to see how the debt situations in these countries will play out.

What I want to show is that aircraft, submarines and tanks cannot save a country from a war against on sovereignty by the financial markets, so addressing the debt issues is imperative. Greece has already lost sovereignty to the unelected ECB/IMF. Other PIIGS nations are losing sovereignty. China and America really cannot afford to get into an arms race when looming economic issues can bring both countries’ debts situations to the forefront. The two countries should work together to balance out trade distortion. That means China should loosen some of its capital control and market access, while America needs to create better environment for its business to grow. Having closely followed the American election season coverage and the incoming Chinese leadership shuffle, I feel like we will simply get more politicians who are not willing to make the tough decisions needed to avoid the problems we have already seen in Middle East and are seeing in Eurozone. Fiat currencies have allowed governments around the world to run up huge public debt. Cuts have to be made in all sectors of the government, while failing banks/enterprises should not be bailed out. Military spending must be part of the cut. If that means reduced global ambitions, then the country must be prepared for a more humble foreign policy.

Update from PLAN land

2011-10-17T07:46:00.001-07:00

We saw a good amount of update this past week from different shipyards around the country, so here is a look at them.

First of all, the long wait is finally over and the 3rd 052C has started sea trials this past weekend. I think it actually spent at least a year after it was launched before starting the sea trials. I'm hoping that the next few units would not be outside for as long. This 052C and the next one will probably end up in ESF.

We also have some pictures of the other 052Cs in JN shipyard. The first one is the 4th 052C.

The next one shows the 5th unit. This one looks quite far along and could be launched before the end of the year. Although, they still have to install some stuff on there first.

On this photo, you can barely make out what looks like the 6th 052C on the left side and the 5th 052C on the right side.

We also have some 052C modules outside. I can't really say whether these are for the 6th 052C or for ones after that.

We also have some updated Varyag photos. It looks like there is still quite a bit of work that's been done.

A couple of MCM ships have joined service. The first two shows 841, the 5th of Type 081 class. In this one, it has installed the new 30 mm main gun (that we first saw on 885 replenishment ship) and cut lines in the bow section of the hull (like what we saw in the second batch of 054A). This should be joining the SSF.

The next photo shows 818, the 2nd of Type 082A(??) mine hunter class. It's a little harder to make out changes in this one, but it should be joining ESF.

At HD shipyard, the 6th 054A is now back in the docks. I guess it was let in the water just to allow the 3rd 071 to be launched. We see more photos of the 5th 054A and the 2 071 class. It's interesting that we still see scaffolding on the 2nd 071 even after it has returned from the first set of sea trials.

I also have this photo of Type 726 Chinese LCAC carrying a ZTZ96 MBT. I think it should be capable of carrying more, but we haven't seen that yet. There was a recent article that interview the captain of the lead unit of this class. Interesting thing of note is that the width of Type 726 is only 1.8 m less than the width of the Type 071 well deck. Also, the article talked about reaching speed of 55 knots. Although, I'm not sure if it's referring to cruising speed or maximum speed there.

This pictures shows 540, one of the Jiangwei-I class ships, going into the docks for some refitting. I don't think the work will be as extensive as what was done on 052A class, but it's worth noting the continuous refitting that PLAN is doing to keep its older ships relevant (rather than just build new ones). Maybe that's something USN can learn about in their so called austerity era.

At HP shipyard, there is not that much activity. The 6th 054A is still sitting outside and the 7th 054A has a couple of months to go before it's ready to be launched. At the same time, they still have more 022s lying around. I thought the 022 production at HP shipyard ended a long time ago.

There have also been some updated photos of new 039B (Yuan modified) units and of that new experimental SSK, but I feel a little inadequate to post them, since I have lost track of how many 039Bs have been launched. I think it's 4 from Wuchang shipyard and 1 from JN shipyard, but that's just a rough guess.

So, that's all I have for this time from the numerous shipyards.

I have recently thought about writing an entry on the economic problems that lie ahead of us and how that would affect future international relations and the different world militaries. My current frustration with political progress in the US, Europe and China will make that an extremely long article, so I simply do not have time to write that right now. Maybe I will be able to sit down and write something in two weeks when I have a long flight to the west coast for a friend's wedding. The point that I want to emphasize is that ensuring good livelihood and happiness of the average population is the most important part for a government. At the end of the day, every RMB/dollar that's spend building these ships is one less RMB/dollar that can be spent on domestic programs. It's easy for PLAN followers to get excited about new ships and naval technology, but that cannot be sustained if China (or any other country) suffers through economic hardship. You guys will have to wait for another day to hear my rant!

Latest activity at HD shipyard

2011-09-27T07:11:00.000-07:00

I know that I haven't posted any updates of PLAN for a while. Yesterday, I saw some pictures that are truly worth posting. A little while ago, the second Type 071 LPD finally sailed off for sea trials after spending better part of the past year next to the docks. Now, we have seen the 3rd Type 071 LPD launched. At the same time, the 6th 054A from HD shipyard was also launched. The interesting part was that they were in such a rush to put this ship in the water that they had not even painted it. I guess HD shipyard was getting nervous HP shipyard might launch its 7th 054A before the 6th 054A from HD gets launched. Either way, there is quite a bit of progress at Hudong shipyard recently.

Here are some pictures of the third Type 071. There is also at least one more large amphibious ship that is current been assembled. I didn't see any recent pictures of it, so don't know if it's another 071 or a new ship class. There are some rumours floating out there regarding how many Type 071s are procured, but nothing conclusive.

999 has also returned from initial sea trials. This picture shows the 2nd and 3rd Type 071s along with the 5th 054A from HD shipyard.

Here are pictures of the 6th HD 054A along side the new Type 071 and then put in the water.

A little bonus for you guys courtesy of Shenyang AC. Any comments on this one?

Chinese 500 ton FAC for Pakistan

2011-09-19T08:24:00.000-07:00

In late February 2010, PN issued a tender for procurement of two 500-ton Fast Attack Craft (FAC).

The main characteristics for the FAC as follows:

-Full load displacement of 500-600 tons
-Overall length of 60 meters (196.8ft)
-Radius of action equal to or greater than 500 nautical miles, max speed 30 knots
-Complement of 55-60 personnel
-And fitted with the following weapon and sensor systems:
-8 Chinese C-802A SSMs
-Two 25mm close range semi-automatic EO/IR AA guns
-Two 12.7mm machine guns
-Chaff and IR decoys
-Air/Surface search radar with track while scan (TWS) function
-Electro optical director and fire control radars for associated weapons
-Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) System
-Modern C3 System

In December of last year, a Chinese firm was selected to build these boats. In March of this this year, the keel laying ceremony of Fast Attack Craft FAC(M) of Pakistan Navy was held at Xinggang Shipyard, Tianjin.

Tuesday. Vice Admiral Tanveer Faiz Ahmed HI (M) was Chief Guest in the ceremony.

Pakistan Navy has signed a contact with China Shipbuilding & Offshore International Company Limited (CSOC) for construction of two state-of-the-art Missile Craft.

Construction of two crafts in parallel i.e. one in China and other in Pakistan at KS&EW, is in progress as a joint venture of two countries. Upon completion of construction activities in October 2011, the first Missile Craft will join the PN Fleet.

Note that the last part stated this ship will be completed by October of this year. We have received a couple of photos of it just last night. I'm still waiting for more photos to come out before making assessments.

This FAC will probably end up looking something like this:

The different procurement practics of China and India

2011-09-10T23:18:00.000-07:00

This is the part 5 of the series of reviewing the content of the recent book that I read. I will be exploring how India and China approached the purchase of Flanker series from Russia. If you guys would like me to write about something else related to PLAAF, please email me.

Back when I started following PLA, there was a widespread belief that Russia was willing to offer more advanced weapons to India than China due to India’s greater selection of suppliers. The superiority of Su-30MKI over Su-30MKK was used to illustrate the point that India was getting more advanced technology from the Russians. With the narrative that we see from Russian/Indian news sources, it was pretty easy to concede that point. After all, India did get licensed production to AL-31FP and the more advanced Su-30MKI. At the same time, it also makes sense that India would get more from the Russians due to their greater leverage.

I have already spent one part of the series talking about Russian assistance to the Chinese aerospace industry. Today, we can see that the Chinese aerospace industry is already capable of developing most aircraft and subsystems on its own. In fact, it has advanced to the point where it can now export an aircraft like JF-17 and its production line to another country. At the same time, India still relies on importing aircraft and technology from other countries. Looking back at 1990, India had been manufacturing more advanced aircraft than China under local licensed production, but China had more development experience with projects like J-7III, J-8 and numerous failed projects. Both countries had indigenous 4th generation fighter jet projects (J-10 and HAL Tejas). In India, all of the licensed production and indigenous development were done by HAL. In China, the aircraft projects were handled by different aircraft companies like Shenyang AC, Chengdu AC, Xi’an AC, Hongdu AC and Shaanxi AC.

I think that competition between the different aircraft companies certainly provides an advantage for China over India. In the competition for 4th generation project, SAC and CAC both came up with proposals and PLAAF picked CAC’s proposal. CAC was eventually able to develop J-10 with some Israeli/Russian assistance after 18 years. When SAC was given the task of licensed production of Su-27, some in PLAAF wanted to axe the J-10 project, but CAC was allowed to continue on its own through all of the problems. And now that CAC has developed J-10 and SAC has mastered the local production of J-11, both aircraft companies have to continually perform and innovate to get orders. In India, HAL was in charge of licensed production of Su-30MKI and also numerous indigenous development projects (including Tejas). I think when HAL is the only domestic company and all foreign suppliers have to cooperate with it, HAL is not incentivized to produce more efficiently or to innovate. Today, SAC and CAC have to continually compete against each other for new projects like the 5th generation jet, naval fighter jet and UAVs. At the same time, HAL is in charge of all Indian military aviation projects from in house projects like Tejas and MCA to licensed production projects like Su-30, MRCA and FGFA. When we look at the civilian airliner industry, the different aircraft companies in China have scored many more supplier contracts than HAL has. I think even as India is becoming more competitive in the world economy, its aerospace industry will continue to struggle if it faces no competition.

At the same time, there was a difference in the approach that China and India took with importing from Russia. When Russia was promoting Su-30MKI to India, it had not finished developing the technologies for MKI. The original 8 Su-30Ks had no difference from Su-27UB and many of the promised technologies were not developed and integrated until much later. The much touted AL-31FP also suffered numerous problems and the TVC nozzle had very short service life. Eventually, most of the MKI problems were solved. Su-30 is now the most important part of a growingly powerful IAF. However, HAL still depends on Russia, France and Israel for the production of Su-30. It still looks to Russia for future upgrades to Su-30. In comparison, China was only interested in more mature products. Its goal was not to work with Russia to develop the best aircraft, but rather to advance its local industry so that it can develop next generation aircraft on its own. Su-27sk was a generation or more ahead of what SAC was producing at that time, so the goal of the J-11 licensed production deal was for SAC to learn how to produce a modern heavy fighter jet. The MKK project was completed quickly because it was based on mature technology; whereas MKI was dragged behind by yet to be developed technologies. MKK had much less capable avionics compared to MKI, but it was using a more advanced airframe based on Su-35UB. I think PLAAF always intended to produce a local variant of J-11 that uses Su-27sk, but indigenous avionics, engine and weapon package. As we’ve seen with J-11B/S, SAC has succeeded in developing and producing Chinese versions of Su-27s/ub. At the same time, MKK’s airframe will probably serve as the basis for SAC’s fighter bomber project. While MKI is a lot more capable in combat, MKK is better suited for what PLAAF needed at the time. The question is obviously whether or not India should’ve taken the same path that China did. That is something I can’t predict without knowing the Indian aerospace industry too well.

When I look at PLAAF vs IAF import procurements, I see two very contrasting philosophies. PLAAF chooses to import safe, mature products that can be developed quickly, whereas IAF chooses to import ambitious and more technologically advanced products. The former philosophy results in greater cost and time certainty, whereas the latter results in a better product in the long run. This philosophy also carried over to technology transfer when dealing with the Russians. By choosing a fully developed and mature aircraft like Su-27, SAC had more time to master the technology to produce Su-27 locally and obtain avionics upgrade as they become available through China and Russian suppliers. By choosing a more ambitious aircraft like MKI, India ended up paying Russia/Israel/France firm to complete their development while still reliant on these firms for future upgrades. At the same time, HAL had to deal with delays in MKI, whereas SAC was able to just focus on learning how to locally produce Su-27s.

It’s been 20 years since the dissolution of Soviet Union. China and India were at around the same place economically back then. Although China had already opened up and was on a better path economically, India had the advantage of been able to purchase from many foreign suppliers. Even though India got the better aircraft due to their greater leverage, I think this entry showed why China made the better procurement decision in the long run. Many have argued that China got to where it did because it was better at copying designs than most other countries. I believe that’s only part of the equation. Competition and more pragmatic procurement practices are also important in taking the Chinese aerospace industry to where it is right now.

Evolution of PLAAF doctrine/training

2011-08-30T21:31:00.000-07:00

This is the part 4 in the series of reviewing the content of the recent book that I read. I will be looking at the evolution of PLAAF training and doctrine. This is one area that is hard to write about, because we simply don't have many English based sources and the Chinese sources often seem like propaganda pieces. The recent book by CMSI really did a good job on this topic and I hope that this piece will provide even more for PLAAF watchers.

In October of 1949, USSR sent 878 experts to China to build a flight academy and supply 434 training aircraft. Eventually, 6 fighter academy and 2 bomber academies were built. Due to Korean War, they rushed 350 pilots through the first academy in one year and did not even train in night combat or complex weather conditions. By May 1951, PLAAF had 17 aircraft divisions and 34 regiments. They served mostly in secondary role to Soviet Air Force in confrontation against USAF. As USSR was withdrawing from its former base in Lushun to return to China, it provided valuable training to 105 PLAAF pilots from 1954 to 1955. Soviet instructors provided PLAAF pilots with night training, advanced combat maneuvers and training in adverse weather conditions. In a defensive cooperation agreement signed in 1957, USSR agreed to increase cooperation in aerospace tactics training and theater level exercises. By that year, PLAAF had developed its first flight training manual based on the Soviet training manual plus experiences from Korean war and past training. From this point until 1964, PLAAF pilots regularly had about 122 hours of training a year, which matches Warsaw Pact standard. Even though PLAAF can see the importance of training, the ideological types in PRC leadership thought it was capitalistic to train. PLA has historically adopted a "people army" motto that relies on the large Chinese population and land mass and the ideological types wanted PLA to go back to that and to spend more time on communism ideology. Once the Cultural Revolution started, the ideological types won out in PLAAF's development. By 1966, PLAAF pilots were averaging less than 24 hours of training a year. From 1968 to 1971, they only averaged 37 hours 16 min a year. Most J-6 pilots in charge of night missions had never fired out of aircraft gun let alone launched an AAM. Due to high accident rate from low training hours, the training program became more and more simple. Even the pilot selection program for PLAAF changed from selection based on performance to based on their obedience of Mao's communist ideologies. Mao even gave orders to compress flight school program from 2 years and 4 months to 1 year. Much of the flight training and aircraft related manuals were destroyed as part of the Cultural Revolution, because that's what happened to anything book or cultural related at that period. A a result of thse changes, new pilots had to return to flight school starting from 1973, because they couldn't handle the PLAAF training. Only 6.2% of PLAAF could operate at night time and only 1% could operate during adverse weather conditions during night time.

The training programs and flight school recovered after Cultural Revolution and was back to normal by 1983. However, PLAAF doctrine, tactics and training did not change from 1964 to 1983. Even in early 90s, a visiting Russian Air Marshall commented that PLAAF doctrine and training had not changed much since the Korean War. Although PLAAF was a separate air force on paper, but it was just a tactical support for the army. Organizationally, PLAAF's military regions are the same as that of the army, because they were originally formed to support the army through air denial and CAS missions. PLAAF did not contain any kind organizational structure like long range aviation or Frontal aviation of VVS to carry out strategic tasks or offensive tasks independent of the army. In all of PLA's conflict since its formation, PLAAF has never attacked or defended on its own. The most number of sorties it had per day was only a few hundreds and done mostly during daytime. In the conflict against Vietnam in 1979, PLAAF never even provided CAP for its ground troops. This ground supportive mentality was not just a function of equipment limitations, but also part of the general doctrine/mindset within PLA.

Back in 1992, PLAAF was stuck with 1950s era training procedure of spending 160 hours on basic trainer before switching to jet trainer compared to 60 hours for Soviet AF. China still did not have even one AF training research book. When they first received Su-27s from Russia, PLAAF had many problems using this new aircraft even though the first converts had over 1000 hours of flight experience on J-6/7s. Russian flight instructor found that PLAAF was treating Su-27 like Mig-21 and were not utilizing all of the potential of Su-27. During 3rd division's training in Russia, they were found to be overly nervous in flight training and afraid of crashing their planes. PLAAF faced a dilemma of developing training that strikes balance between maintaining safety while increasing difficulty level. At the same time, PLAAF also did not have modern tactics to utilize Su-27. This was shown in exercises involving J-7 and Su-27, where a J-7E squadron was able to penetrate Su-27 defense on over 90% of confrontations. In the cat & mouse game between ROCAF and PLAAF, Su-27s faced strong EM pressure from Taiwanese ground based and aerial based ECM equipments. In fact, Taiwanese EW was able to cut off communication between PLAAF aircraft and ground base. ROCAF reconnaissance aircraft, ECM aircraft posed great risk to the UHF radio communication system of Su-27. Even with relatively weaker radiation, ROCAF fighter jets can seriously disrupt PLA communication when its comes within short distance of PLA units. Clearly, PLAAF needed to learn to operate 4th generation aircraft with new tactics under heavy EM pressure.

On top of the backwardness in doctrine and training, PLAAF also proved to be woefully inadequate in large scale exercises. In 1996 Taiwan exercises, PLAAF could not find a ground command that can direct different aircraft types, because PLAAF rarely had integrated training at that point. In most cases, a PLAAF command post can direct at most 12 aircraft n the air space around airport. When AF and naval aviation have exercises, AF controller is only in charge with giving instructions to AF and does not even know the movement or the goal of the navy. PLAAF was simply not capable of having large scale or joint operations prior to this decade.

Even with USAF's overwhelming display of power in the Operation Desert Storm and Kosovo, some members of PLA brass still did not understand the importance of a modern air force. When PLAAF was first showing off Su-27s to PLA brass, they were not showcasing its maneuverability or its ability to conduct BVR strikes. Rather, they were using Su-27s to launch rockets and dumb bombs. The Russians and most oversea China watchers have often wondered why Su-27s were used in this manner in PLAAF exercise when it was not designed for ground strikes (until later upgrades). It seemed that PLAAF impressed the heads of PLA with by the sheer large payload of Su-27s and its capability to destroy ground targets. Previous PLAAF aircraft like J-7/8 and Q-5 simply did not have the capacity to carry this much ground ammunition. I think that's also why PLAAF bought Su-30MKK. They wanted a platform that could show PLA that the air force could be used to launch large quantity precision strikes on targets far away from its base. I think Su-27/30 was used to transform the mindset of PLA so that PLAAF can become a more independent force that can conduct offensive operations by itself. Flankers were chosen over Fulcrum series because fulcrum did not have the payload and range to transform the role of PLAAF in PLA.

As early as 1987, PLA Daily had an article about a new flight center in Northern China that simulated an invading force. That flight test center is the FTTC base at CangZhou. It currently has three aggressor regiments (J-10, Su-30MKK and J-7E). They are tasked with developing combat tactics, flight techniques, training programs for new aircraft and conducting certification of new equipments. They are also tasked with defending Beijing. After the establishment of FTTC, the best pilots were sent here to conduct flight testing of new aircraft and equipments, while developing new techniques and tactics. In the 90s, FTTC spent more time on tactics training than trying out new flying techniques due to its lack of experience in modern tactics. Starting from 1988, FTTC received Project Grindstone to create blue army to simulate invader. This squadron simulated Soviet AF prior to 1990 and ROCAF/USAF afterward. Interestingly enough, they started off by simulating F-16s using Su-27s. FTTC also a had a cooperation agreement with Lipetsk Air Base in Russia to send their best pilots and controller to improve training and tactics. For example, FTTC pilots and 3rd division pilots were sent to train with Lipetsk's red flag Composite Training and Research Unit. The Russians found that FTTC and 2nd division pilots to be the most well trained pilots in PLAAF.

Chinese Flight Test Establishment (CFTE) has a flight test center in Xian-Yanling and a weapons integration testing (AAM, SAM & AGM) at DingXin. The next important part to the transformation of PLAAF was the establishment of a new air force test training test base in Dingxin that was built in June of 1999. As USAF shows every year in its red flag exercises and subsequent successes in conflicts, realistic arial war games are important for improving combat capability. Dingxin would be used to test out the tactics and flight techniques developed at FTTC. Since its establishment, the number of aircraft and the complexity of simulated war scenarios have increased every year. The simulations have really showed the disparity in the training level and intensity of different forces around the country. These exercises also showed which part of PLAAF's tactics and training manual are out dated and need to be changed. They have also given PLAAF a much clearer viewing of which regiments are better trained than others. The better trained regiments are also often rewarded with newer aircraft. Using new tactics from FTTC and simulations at CFTE, PLAAF have learnt to better utilize Su-27s and conduct different aerial combat missions.

Since 1999, Dingxin has also undergone three large scale expansion to double its size and allow the training for an entire aviation corp. Back in 1999, this base could only handle up to 20 aircraft performing test flight and training of a single tactics. Due to its small size, only pilots and command/controllers from elite units were allowed to come to train. After US's demonstration of its air power in Iraq n December of 2003, 3 different test training base and center combined to form the current AF test & training base. This is the only large scale aviation & air defense integrate training base in the country. It has a command and control center, air and ground tactical ranges, SAM base, AA positions, radars, simulated enemy command posts, a mockup of a Taiwanese air base, ammunition depots and oil depots. PLA also established China's first integrated EW training ground in Dingxin. This base was also the first to get a fiber-optic network and thousands of measuring/monitoring equipments (including telemetry, EO) to provide information for one of PLA's most digitized command posts. This allows for real time quantitative assessment of ECM pressure faced by different units. Over the past few years, over 95% of PLAAF and most of SAM units have come to Dingxin for simulated realistic training under intensive EM environment. Training in such environment has allowed PLAAF to gain the upper hand in its cat & mouse game with ROCAF. Many aircraft (including old aircraft like J-8 and Q-5) have received modern ECM pods and have increased confidence to operate over the Taiwan theater. In 2008, PLAAF made over 1700 flights to but not past the middle line of the Taiwan straits. RF-16 used to occasionally go past middle line to get more intelligence on PLA installations, but is now getting locked on before even getting there. In some cases, PLAAF takes off in response before RF-16 even does so. It shows improved reaction time and professionalism in PLAAF. Taiwanese air defense is now under very heavy pressure facing ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and air launched anti-radiation missiles from PLAAF and the Second Artillery.

Since 2005, PLAAF has been doing red sword/blue sword integrated tactics exercises to copy USAF's red flag/blue flag. Red Sword includes interdiction, CAS, SEAD, C3ISR, OCA (offensive counter air) training whereas Blue Sword is mainly revolved around air combat. It starts in January or March of every year and lasts several months to over half a year. By Red Sword 2008, exercises at Dingxin had progressed to complex division level or even military region level confrontations. Over 100+ aircraft of different types, radar units, communication units and ECM units were involved in these exercises. As one can see, PLAAF is training and developing tactics as a whole rather than just within individual military region. In this exercise, Su-30MKK, JH-7 and H-6 performed long range strikes with KD-88, KH-59ME, KH-31P and penetration of layers of opposing defense and launched bunker buster KAB-1500 and LGB-250. In fact, PLAAF fired more Russian A2G missiles in this exercise than Russia did in its 2008 Georgia conflict. This shows that PLAAF's role has changed from just serving for ground units to being able to operate independently to carry out attacks. The induction of AWACS also allows PLAAF to command & control over 100 aircraft. PLAAF can now send 30 aircraft of different types to South China Sea with aerial tankers and AWACS in possible disputes with Vietnam. PLAAF aims to form several AF strike group under the direction of Beijing MR for offensive missions. Each individual military region will simply exist for training and logistics.

PLAAF watchers, such as myself, have often fallen victim to being overly focused on the modernization of its hardware, because it is far easier to concentrate on new fighter projects or UAV projects. However, PLAAF tactics and training have also been undergoing a rapid transformation. The exercises over Dingxin are now frequently shown on CCTV7, China's military channel. This shows increased confidence in PLAAF over its improving training conditions. At the same time, a recent article talks about an experimental flight school programs that will shorten the pilot training including academic study and combat training to 5 to 7 years. If this move succeeds, it will put PLAAF roughly inline with US training programs. PLAAF is actively trying to learn better training programs and flight school programs from the West. It has increased training with other air forces in the recent years. In Peace Mission 2007, a JH-7A regiment performed better than a Russian Su-25 in a ground attack exercise. During the past year, PLAAF has held exercises with Turkey and Pakistan. According to rumours online, PLAAF actually did pretty badly in its exercise with Turkish Air Force, but learnt some lessons in the process. These are all growing pains it must experience to become a modern air force. So instead of just focusing on J-20 and J-15, we should spend more time on the evolution in PLAAF training programs. For naval followers out there, PLAN is also undergoing a similar transformation. Although, it seems like PLAN's training hasn't evolved as much as PLAAF training.

China/Russia military cooperation

2011-08-27T22:30:00.000-07:00

This is the part 3 in the series of reviewing the content of the recent book that I read. In the past, I have often been harsh toward the recent China/Russia military cooperation. I have frequently stated that the Russians have limited military technology that it can interest China with. I have also read many cases of bad quality and servicing & support of export Russian weapons. However, it is important to state clearly that China would not be where it is today without its military cooperation with Russia. In fact, this article will look at all of the areas that USSR and Russia have assisted in China military industrial complex. Although sometimes unwillingly, USSR/Russia has assisted China's military industry than any other nation. In fact, I would say that this military relationship has yielded more benefit for China than any other military relationship has yielded for any nation.

Back when PRC first founded, Chinese leaders went to their big brother in Soviet Union to learn everything it can from USSR. At that time, China was a very backward society ravaged by a century of war. China had not gone through the industrial revolution and had very few industries. In the 1950s, USSR provided China $300 million loan and used this to provide technical aid in 156 industries (including many militarily related ones) to China. I can't think of another example in the history where one country provided that much assistance in the industrialization of another country.

During the civil war, the communist side could not produce weapons on its own and had to rely on capturing equipments from the nationalist to be replenished. Clearly, this could not be sustained after the civil war was over. PLA received 60 divisions of equipment from USSR and formed its first motorized divisions with T-34, T-54 and IS-2 tanks. During Korean War, General Peng, the leader of PLA forces, saw the power of modern military technology and air power from the Americans. He realized that China could not win in modern battlefield with just ground troops. With limited resources after the war, he indicated to USSR that China only wants to buy high tech equipments like Mig-17/19, S-75 SAM and some AAA equipments. In 1949, USSR helped China build 6 flight academies, sold China 434 training aircraft and provided many experts to teach those flight academies. With the help of Soviet Union, PLAAF had expanded to 17 divisions and 34 regiments by May of 1951. USSR also provided China with complete blueprints, materials, production equipment and manuals on many of its latest aircraft and their subsystems like engines and missiles. In fact, USSR provided China with so much help, that PRC leadership mistakenly believed that it was easy to develop modern combat aircraft. It did not realize the amount of time and resources required to develop an aircraft until years of failed efforts by the Chinese aerospace industry. By the time of China-Soviet split in 1962, the Chinese aerospace industry could independently produce many aircraft as a result of Soviet assistance.

Even so, the Chinese aerospace industry was still very much in its infancy and had to deal with unrealistic expectations from PRC leaders. They did not know the amount of testing and work that Mikoyan had to before they arrived at the final certified design, so they gave very unrealistic timelines to Chinese aerospace industry to develop aircraft with really high requirements (like the failed J-9, J-12 and J-13 projects). The Chinese aerospace industry did not have the technology, resource or the experience to carry out those projects. Even after China received kits, parts and most documentations for Mig-21 prior to its split with the Soviet Union in 1962, it was not able to master the technology to mass produce it until the 80s. Through the turbulent days of Cultural Revolution and the budget cuts of the 80s, the only project that got completed was J-8. Even though it was a more conservative design than the abandoned projects, China still could not develop the avionics, missiles and engines to match the requirements until this century. In the late 70s and 80s, the Chinese aerospace industry did have some improvements from cooperation projects with the West (including the famous Peace Pearl project), but still did not have a successful indigenous design. After military embargoes were imposed in 1989, the future looked quite bleak for Chinese military aviation and PLAAF. J-8II aircraft still did not have BVR capability after the Peace Pearl project was canceled. The J-10 project was still years from completion and did not have an adequate engine choice. Worse still, Operation Desert Storm really showed China how far it was behind World leading air powers. PLAAF was so weak at that time that a Soviet backfire could've flown into China without escort, bombed Beijing and flown back without been threatened by J-8s. Without more aircraft, PLAAF was simply incapable of handling threats from USSR or Taiwan straits.

Even as China was enjoying a period of honeymoon with America in the 1980s, its relationship with the much hated USSR was also improving. By 1983, USSR approved export to China for parts to Mig and Illyushin aircraft. By 1986, China and Soviet relationship recovered to such a point that USSR was willing to sell Mig-23MLD and MIg-29. USSR understood from past experiences that China was looking to improve its domestic military industry rather than just buy some aircraft. They were even willing to offer licensed production of Mig-29 and RD-33s in China. I think only the Peace Pearl project prevented China from fully jumping on board with it. In most aspect, the Peace Pearl project was a complete failure, but it did allow Chinese aerospace technicians to interact with Americans. This experience gave China a more updated view of modern air warfare and aerospace development path. After it was canceled, China was left to turn back to Soviet Union. Although many had expected China to go for Mig-29, PLAAF started to inquire about the more powerful and expensive Su-27. At that time, USSR was already starting to reduce its military size under Gorbachev, so Sukhoi was really looking to get export order from China to replace the reduced domestic order. Given the history between the two countries, USSR's decision to allow the export of Su-27 to China (first non-CIS country to receive flankers) is quite astonishing.

The dissolution of USSR put the entire order in jeopardy. The new Russian government led by Yeltsin was enjoying a honeymoon period with the West. The reformist group of Andrey Kozyrev, Yegor Gaidar, Pyotr Aven and Alexander Shokhin was very keen on carrying out the Western model and did not want much to do with China. Not only was China in danger of not receiving Su-27, it had also received numerous reports that Russia was offering Su-27s to Taiwan. Here is where Chinese diplomats really went to work to try to get its relationship with Russia back on order. Sukhoi and the rest of the Russian military industrial complex were really hurting from a total collapse in orders. At the same time, Yegor Gaidar's shock therapy resulted in runaway inflation and much economic hardship in Russia. Russia was also not receiving the help it expected from the West for its economy. In my opinion, it is not surprising that loans from the IMF and World Bank did not help out Russia when one looks at their performance in the 97 Asian economic crisis. All of these weakened the influence that the pro-West group of Kozyrev and Gaidar had on Yeltsin, whereas more conservative members like Yevgeny Primakov pushed for more engagements with China. All of these factors led Yeltsin to not only allow the original Su-27 order to be carried out but also permit further military cooperation between the 2 countries. Yeltsin believed that Russia can stay ahead of China in aerospace, so did not worry about such cooperation with China. I think Yeltsin also saw the benefits of having a more balanced foreign policy from its trade deals with China in 1992. He was also intrigued by the success of China's economic reforms when similar Russian reforms were experiencing much pain. That will be a topic left for another day.

At this point, there were still internal disagreements on whether China should be purchasing technology from Russia/Ukraine or try to buy technology from the West or ignore what happened in the Gulf War. It's at this point that Liu Huaqing and others pushed to go the Russian route. Prime Minister Li Peng believed that China had a once in a lifetime opportunity to purchase technology and recruit scientists/engineers from Russia/Ukraine. Throughout all of its year of cooperation with the West, China had found that Western companies guarded its secrets much more closely. In projects like the Peace Pearl project and the MD-90 project, Chinese aerospace companies really were disappointed at how little transfer of technology they had received from the West. In comparison, it was truly amazing what the Russians were offering. China pushed for and signed on a deal for licensed production of 200 Su-27s along with transfer of technology. Although it did not receive ToT and license production to AL-31, it did receive high level of technology transfer, documentation, tooling and machinery for maintenance and repairs on AL-31F. China was able to build the largest AL-31F MRO facility and perform all of the maintenance and repairs on AL-31F by itself. You guys might have read the recent news that China was able to extend the life of AL-31 from 900 to 1500 hours. China also received a lot of cooperations from the Russians on its own aerospace projects. Yeltsin gave China permission to send aerospace engineers to Mikoyan and the famous TsAGI in Russia to study. They were even allowed to look through highly secretive projects. In the F-8IIM project, China participated in the co-development of Zhuk-8II with NIIR, which allowed its engineers to be involved in the development, testing and certification stage. The Russians also participated in the J-10 project and the Super-7 project with CAC. China was also able to leverage Ukraine and Belarus defense firms to receive help from them in missile technology, Su-27 upgrade/overhaul, carrier project and other things. And even though I have often been critical of Su-30MKK, it was always over MKK's avionics performance and weapon package. Having seen the advancement in Chinese avionics and weaponry, I think PLAAF made the right decision to pursue a platform that had improved payload and range compared the original Su-27. MKK is already quite an advanced 4th generation airframe in terms of its range and multirole potential. Any future fighter bomber from SAC should draw a lot of inspiration from MKK.

In the 20 years since the collapse of USSR, PLAAF and the Chinese aerospace industry have both transformed. Although a large part of Chinese aerospace industry's advancement have resulted from its own R&D and cooperation with the West, China's military aviation industry would not be where it is today without the high level of technology transfer between China and Russia. When all of this started 20 years ago, China was looking for cutting edge space, aviation, material, communication, electronics and weapons technology from Russia. Even though Russia was not the world leader in many of those areas, China was able to obtain those technology more easily and cheaply than from any other countries. That is not to say Russia got ripped off in the process. Chinese orders allowed Russian military industrial complex to survive through its darkest times. From all of the stories I read, it really did sound like many Russian military companies would not have survived without Chinese orders. And even with the reduced military cooperation between the two sides, Russia still stands to gain from all of the aircraft and subsystems that it sold to China. Even on the J-11 deal, I think it only backfired on the Russians because most people could not have predicted how fast the Chinese aerospace industry was going to be able to completely absorb its technology and create its own version with much better avionics and weaponry. Russia signed the deal with the expectation that they would be able to stay far ahead of China, but the combination of their stagnation + Chinese advancement have leveled the playing field. So as I look back on things, the Russians/Soviets really came to help China in two very critical point in its history. The first was when it first helped China to establish an aerospace industry after its founding and the second was when China faced military embargo from the West. It's hard to imagine Western countries offering the same level of assistance to China that Russia/USSR did.

I will also explore in a later blog entry on how China and India approached military cooperation with Russia. I will look at the differences and why I think the Chinese approach have worked out better.

China and Vietnam

2011-08-21T12:17:00.000-07:00

This is the second part in my series to talk about what I gathered from the recent readings. Since last year, there have been increased amount of noise from ASEAN countries about China's increased assertiveness in the area. The most vocal of those countries is Vietnam. That really is not surprising given that China's most recent major conflict was with Vietnam in 1979. This entry will attempt to look back on the role of the air force in security situations between the 2 countries.

By the late 70s, the Chinese regime was feeling increasingly encircled by Soviet Union and its allies. After Vietnam defeated the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia (China's only remaining ally in the region), China decided that it had to teach Vietnam a lesson. I won't go through the actual conflict here, since others would know about it much better than I do. However, I will use this conflict to demonstrate the inadequacy of PLAAF at that time.

After the Soviet-China split in the 50s, the Chinese aerospace industry basically had no advancement until well into the 80s, when it started cooperation with the West. The majority of its air force at the time of conflict were J-6 (Mig-19C). A crashed J-6 from this conflict showed that it had very little difference from the original variant of Mig-19C. At the same time, the radar on the J-5/6 were so poor that they were less capable than civilian aircraft radar, which were design for the purpose of avoiding collision. In many cases, human eyes could see targets before the radar could pick them up. On top of that, China was still using the extremely archaic PL-1 (K-5 copy) and PL-2 (K-13 copy) at the time of the conflict. Soviet AF had already found that PL-1 is completely ineffective in battle and PL-2 could not be used in cloud. So PLAAF was basically sending out a 1950s era fighter jet that could not pick out any enemy fighter jet. And even if it managed to pick out an enemy fighter jet, it had no way of shooting it down by missiles.

Another major factor against PLAAF was the decline in training as a result of cultural revolution. Back in 1964, PLAAF pilots were averaging around 122 hours of flight per year, which was comparable to the countries under Warsaw Pact. By 1966, they were only averaging 23 hours 45 minutes a year of training. Much of the training manual was also destroyed as part of the cultural revolution, so the pilots were not getting proper training even when they had flight time. According to the writer of the book, only 1% of PLAAF pilots were capable of night flight under complex weather condition by the end of the cultural revolution. So at the time of the conflict, PLAAF was sending out unqualified pilots who did not get adequate training and who could not fly during bad weather condition or at night time.

At that time, PLAAF simply could not support the ground troops in the ways that we now envision an air force would do. PLA used a combination of the air force and its SAM/AAA units to prevent VNAF from establishing air dominance. Throughout the entire conflict, PLAAF fighter jets were ordered to stay within China's boundary to stay out of VN SAMs. While some small transports and helicopter were used to move troops/goods into the battlefield, the J-6/7 just stuck with doing patrols along the border. The army never got any kind of close air support from its air force. This conflict pushed PLAAF to re-emphasize training programs that had been neglected for too long. And despite a few successful cooperation projects, the majority of PLAAF modernization did not start until the 90s.

Since 1979, most of the arguments between China and Vietnam have taken place over the Spratlys. There was a minor skirmish between the two navies in 1988. After which, China started its aerial refueling program and developed the H-6U tankers in order to support J-8 to gain air superiority over South China Sea. And over the past 20 years, the balance of air power has really shifted toward PLAAF. Due to modernization during these years, PLAAF can now send 30 aircraft of different types of to South China Sea with the support of aerial refueling and AEWC&C. According to the author, PLAAF can now be used to apply pressure on neighbouring countries like Vietnam to not get out of hand. For example, VNAF decided to order Su-30s from Russia, because its aircraft were repeatedly getting locked on by J-10s during exercises. I don't know if that's completely true, but there has been a lot of rumours recently flying around Chinese forums that J-10s were locking onto VNAF Su-30s in Vietnam's most recent military exercise.

So as we look back on the performance of PLAAF in the 1979 vs now, it is easy to see how much things have changed. Back then, PLAAF could even provide air denial for PLA, because it was kept within the borders. Now, PLAAF can be quietly used as a tool apart from the army to show hard power. I'm not here to advocate this kind of behaviour or another, but to show the change in philosophy within PLA.

The legacy of Liu Huaqing

2011-08-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've read a couple of books regarding the development of Chinese air force. More than anything else, this one book by a well known poster on Chinese bbs has really changed many perceptions I've had regarding the modernization of PLAAF doctrine and training. I would say that anyone who has frequented top Chinese language forums would know who I'm referring to. Over the next few weeks, I plan to write several entries on different aspects of PLAAF modernization. The first topic that I decided to make is the legacy of Liu Huaqing, since he is forever linked to the Chinese Aircraft Carrier program.

If you do a search of Liu Huaqing, you are most likely going to see articles describing him as the father of modern Chinese navy. His following quote has accompanied him everywhere

“Without an aircraft carrier, I will die with my eyelids open; the Chinese Navy needs to build an aircraft carrier,”

Liu served as the commander of the Chinese Navy from 1982 to 1987. After that, he served as the deputy chairman of the powerful CMC from 1989 to 1997. During his time as the commander of PLAN, Liu advocated acquiring a medium-sized and conventional-power carrier for operations over the Spratlys. At that time, Jiang Zemin's administration supported soft power in dealing with neighbours, so PLAN development concentrated mostly on the Taiwan scenario. More importantly, PLA budget simply could not support the cost of an aircraft carrier and associated air wing. At the same time, PLAN surface ship build up did not start until 2002, so having a carrier group was not possible. However, I think Liu did get PLAN thinking about expanding its reach from just the shores. Up to that point, PLA was stuck in the Mao era mindset of "people's army". The role of the AF was to achieve air denial rather than air dominance. The role of the navy was just to provide coastal defense. Even up to the start of this century, some in the army still thought that no nation can establish continued air dominance. That really is an astonishing thought when one thinks about how much US air dominance had determined Operation Desert Storm and over Kosovo.

What most people don't know is Liu's influence in the modernization of PLAAF after he became the deputy chairman of CMC. Liu was not only pushing for the modernization and increased power projection for PLAN, but he was also doing so for the air force. When Liu first got to his position in 1989, he was probably surrounded by many army generals in the upper echelon of PLA. Even though China's relationship with Soviet Union had warmed since Gorbachev took over, the army was still gripped with the threat of Soviet encirclement. After the dissolution of Soviet Union, the majority of advanced Soviet equipment became available for China. China had previously been offered Su-27 by Gorbachev's regime, but more weapons became available as the Russian military industrial complex faced the threat of collapse. In fact, the Russians brought T-72 MBTs, T-80U MBTs, SPH systems, SAMs, IFVs to display to PLA. PLA was probably 20 years behind Russia in ground weapon technology at that time. Considering these PLA generals spent the past 10 years developing plans against those front line T-80U tanks, it must have been a godsend for them to be able to buy these weapons. However, China had a limited military budget at that time, so they had to be picky about which system to get from the Russians.

Liu showed his foresight at this point. He believed that the gap between China and the leading standards in the world was the smallest in the army. He also got support from China's industrial complex, who did not believe China needed to import whole systems from Russia. Liu received support from Li Peng and Jiang Zemin to go for fighter jets, SAMs and Smerch MLRS instead of tanks and IFVs. Liu and others also realized that China's aerospace industry needed advancement. So instead of just buying Su-27s, he pushed for licensed local production and transfer of technology.

Looking back on it now, Liu was absolutely right in his vision. The Chinese industrial complex managed to advance to the point where it can produce numerous world class weapon systems despite not reaching ToT for T-80U, BMP-3 and numerous other systems. On the other had, the Chinese military aerospace industry has advanced quite far. Not only was PLAAF able to obtain the rights to produce a 4th generation fighter locally, but it has obtained experience in developing heavy fighter jet. I would say that China would not be able to develop a heavy fighter jet like J-20, if it did not first learn how to locally build Su-27s. At the same time, SAC have been able to develop J-15 based on the Su-27 platform. So Liu's push not only produced tremendous benefit for the air force but also naval aviation. Of all of the military leaders of his generation, Liu stands alone in his role in not only the modernization of PLAN, but also PLAAF.

Review of Chinese Aerospace Power: Evolving Maritime Roles

2011-08-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

I recently had a chance to read "Chinese Aerospace Power: Evolving Maritime Roles". This book is the fifth instalment in the series “Studies in Chinese Maritime Development” and can be found here on Amazon

In the past, I have found works by Andrew Erickson, Lyle Goldstein and the good folks at China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) to be of the highest quality and this book was no exception. This book not only includes contributions from professors at CMSI, but also serving/retired commander/officers, military attaché to China, policy makers and numerous China contributors from different think tanks. It does a great job of understanding China's motivations/intentions, while fairly examining PLA's capabilities and training. For those seeking for a greater understanding of China's air force, space development and Second Artillery Command, I think this is a must read. More than anything else, it drew from a wide range of primary research and Chinese sources which have not appeared in any other unclassified Western publications. I believe that this book shows that we can all learn a lot more about PLA and its intentions by going through thousands of Chinese publications and news articles.

I want to point out several sections that really stood out to be me. In part 1, this book took at really good look at the existing Chinese doctrine in gaining air dominance over Taiwan straits through PLAAF and 2nd artillery. In particular, Wayne Ulman's section on PLAAF strategy, training and modernization is extremely well done. I though Kevin Pollpeter and Anthony Mastalir both have very informative sections on PLA's desire to have stronger space presence and limit American space dominance. Garth Hekler's piece on Chinese EW effort was very well researched, because it really looked at all of China's open sources and summarized the parts that Chinese researchers have focused on. It really talked about what Chinese researchers think have contributed to US success and China's own research on those areas. Dennis Belasko's piece on helicopter provided a lot of solid information on PLA helicopter training. It is a very detailed piece on the areas that PLA helicopter force has grown in and also the areas that PLA still need more training/improvement. I also appreciated the extensiveness that Lanzit and Chen talked about the join operational training and exercises between naval aviation and PLAAF with PLAN ships. While we have seen a lot of pictures of such cooperation, the authors do a good job of describing the kind of maritime strike missions conducted in these joint operations. Ron Christman's section of China's Second Artillery Corps is simply excellent. The most interesting part describes SAC's operational doctrine, preparation and training facing an overwhelming opposition (US) in the Taiwan scenario.

On top of that, I was pleasantly surprised by all of the new information/analysis that I found in this book regarding to China's ASBM program. I have read many differently analysis on ASBM (including several by CMSI), but this book really provided a much more comprehensive look than anything else I have read. The discussions on subjects like conflict escalation of ASBM, hard kill vs soft kill and non-carrier targets were very refreshing.

So, for all those who are interested in learning more about China's Air Force, space development and Second Artillery, I think this book would be an excellent read.

What Varyag means

2011-08-11T19:55:00.001-07:00

As I'm sure everyone have heard by now, Varyag began sea trials 2 days ago. We have not seen pictures of its sea trial, but have seen pictures of the empty dock and the no fly/sail zone that China has established (seen below). Before continuing, I do apologize if this piece becomes a little nonsensical, because I wrote this at quite a late hour.

When I look at this moment, I see this as a representation of China's growing affluence and power. Back when WWII just finished, the Nationalists had plans to build aircraft carriers to reflect its new found status as one of the members of the Permanent Five in the United Nations. Due to their corruption and incompetence, they lost out to the far smaller and less well equipped Communist forces. When the Communists took over, China was a country that had been pillaged for over 100 years by outside forces. Back then, China was poor and did not have any modern industry to speak of. In the 50s, Soviets provided technical aid in 156 industries for China. For all of the follies of China's adoption of communism, that was probably the second most significant event in China's modernisation. From that point onward until the death of Mao, the Chinese society was stuck in a constant period of ideological struggle, war and famine. By the time Deng Xiaoping came to power, China was completely broke. And despite the Soviet encirclement of China at that time and its desire to "teach Vietnam a lesson", Deng cut back on military expenditure year after year. Deng had been a member of PLA since 1927. And despite been exiled twice by Mao, PLA's support for Deng allowed him to grab power ahead of Mao's appointed successor Hua Guofeng. The war against Vietnam in 1979 showed the inadequacies in PLA. Even so, Deng recognized that economical development and modernization through engaging the leading world economies were the only way out. Years of putting communist ideology and militarism on top did not make China a stronger country. Deng's method of humble/pragmatic foreign policy, reduced diplomatic footprint and emphasis in joining the world economy have resulted in over 30 years of uninterrupted economic growth and national power.

And now that we get to 2011, China has the money, the will, the shipbuilding prowess and naval technology to not only refit Varyag, but also build a few aircraft carriers. I think when one looks at China, it can support a large enough military budget to have a couple of aircraft carriers groups without been a burden to the economy. It can build such a fleet relatively cheaply, because it has a very competitive shipbuilding industry and can procure most of the subsystem locally.

Militarily speaking, it already has enough modern ships to form the escorts of a carrier group. It will also have domestic naval fighter, trainers and helicopters that it can operate on a carrier. Everything is in place for PLAN to start the formation of its first carrier group.

And contrary to some claims, China does have many reasons to have aircraft carriers. It is the second largest economy in the world and will probably become the largest in the next 25 years. It has soft power to influence near every country, but does not have the hard power to get to most of those countries. It is humiliating for some Chinese people that China still does not have a carrier when even a small country like Thailand has one. It has learnt from USN that aircraft carrier could be a sign of soft power. PLAN has already been parading the new Type 920 hospital ship and the Type 071 LPD around the countries in Indian Ocean. Aircraft carrier will be the ultimate display of power that China can deploy in humanitarian crisis. And obviously, I have also talked the military hard power needs like protecting its sea lanes and overseas investments.

I do have certain caution for China as it moves forward into carrier age. Deng Xiaoping's policies have paved ways for years of development, but China is still a poor country when one looks at its average income level. As the world's economy is teetering on entering another economic downturn, China's overly investment dependent economy will suffer. China should develop a blue water fleet with the goal of protect its economic interest and citizens around the world rather than trying to take control from America. It has already seen the strong reactions from ASEAN countries to its more aggressive foreign policy. Although I do think that China will be eventually accepted by these countries as the top dog in this region, it should not fall in the trap of using military power to interfere with other countries' policies.

So as Varyag starts its sea trials, I hope that China will continue Deng's policy of putting its people first. The emergence of the first Chinese carrier is a demonstration of China's growing economic strength and industrial base. While this is a good time for the Chinese leadership and Chinese people to celebrate, China should continue to focus on economical development above all.

Varyag officially acknowledged

2011-07-27T08:18:00.000-07:00

Today, China's Defense Ministry finally admitted to the existence of refitting the Vayarg carrier. Here is the Xinhua link on the subject.

Here is a Reuters Article.

And here are the highlights of the news conference with Defense Ministry. I wish to get a clip of the news conference and watch it over later, but here are the interesting points.

Some anonymous source said 2 more aircraft carriers are being built at JN shipyard in Shanghai. (I'm not 100% on the number or the location, but it sounds quite plausible)
Geng did not give an official sea trial date and said that it is not related to South China Sea drama.
Geng said the task of training carrier-borne aircraft pilots is under the way. He also said that China is relying on its own effort to train naval pilots. (This is interesting, because I've read that the first Chinese pilots already got to Brazil.)
Varyag is used for research, experiment and training. (I think it will have be eventually used for more than that, but we will see)

Here are some of the Varyag pictures taken in the past couple of days. Looking at the work on the deck, it looks like the refitting is close to being done.

Upcoming weeks

2011-07-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

Hi guys,

I'm currently going through some books on PLA and will be working on something pretty comprehensive. So, you might not see something out here for a couple of weeks. The goal is to have several instalment of material on the evolution of PLAAF in the next few months. I think it will be worth the wait once I do have everything completed.

Feng

PLAN activity outside of Varyag

2011-07-03T23:48:00.000-07:00

It looks like the recent report that Varyag was going to start sea trial in July 1st did not turn out to be true. There was a report from Jamestown that the sea trial was pushed back to sometimes in August. I will just go with the approach of wait and see when it will first sail off. From the pictures I saw a couple of days ago, there is still a bunch of stuff lying on the deck.

While the entire attention was on Varyag, there has also been quite a bit of activity around different shipyards.

From the two photos below, we see the first submarine launched in the new JN shipyard. The old JN shipyard had been producing Song submarines during its production run. I had speculated that the production variants of Yuan submarines (aka Type 039B) are also getting produced in JN. Now, we have confirmation that is the case. We can also see that the 4th 052C is about to be launched.

At HD shipyard, we can see continued works on its 5th 054A and 2nd Type 071. I have previously posted the modules of the 3rd Type 071. I've recently read that the 4th Type 071 is also quickly taking shape in the shipyard. It shows that Type 071 is really becoming a big part of PLAN's future plans.

At the same time, China is about to send its 9th flotilla to Gulf of Aden. It will be sending 169 (052B), 569 (054A) and 885 (replenishment ship) from the south sea fleet.

Interestingly enough, 885 has been fitted with a new 30 mm naval gun in the front and the back of this ship (as you can see from the 1st and 3rd 885 photos).

Another development that has received a lot of my attention recently has been the refitting program on the Type 052 Luhu class destroyers. This was the first class of PLAN ships that attempted to incorporate Western design ideas and subsystems. In fact, 112 was the first ship that was fitted with gas turbine engines. It received two LM-2500 engines before the arms embargo came into place. As a result of this, 113 had to be fitted with GT-25000, which has since become the gas turbine of choice for the 052 series of destroyers. These two ships were last updated in 2003/4 when the original YJ-81 missiles were replaced by the YJ-83 missiles and PJ-33A was replaced by a design with reduced RCS features. These two ships entered into shipyards again more than a year ago to undergo further modernization.

By the summer of 2009, we saw 112 parked outside of HuDong shipyard (113 was undergoing a similar change in another shipyard). By the end of that year, we saw it completely ripped apart. In fact, several people even speculated that 112 was about to be scrapped. The rest of us wondered what kind of major changes they were planning for 112. Some work was done while parked outside, but majority of the refitting work were done after being moved into the dry dock in April of this year. The diagram below shows the modernized 052.

The pictures below shows 113 before the refitting

Afterward

The pictures below show which parts of 112 was changed.
Hard to see with it covered and the main gun taking up most of this picture, but the ASW rocket was changed from 12-tubed RBU-1200 to the 6-tubed Type 87 (commonly found on recent PLAN ships)

The Type 726 multi-purpose decoy launcher has been installed on the side of the bridge. The Type 76A guns and Type 347G targeting radar have been removed and replaced by a EO tracker.

SR-64 has been installed on the aftmast. The Type 518 long range surveillance radar has been replaced by the Type 517 radar.

Two Type 730 CIWS has replaced the two Type 76A guns and the Type 347G targeting radar. We also see what appears to be two new satcom bulb installations.

Another part that was changed was the variable depth sonar installed on this ship. We used to be able to see the towed variable depth sonar through openings at the back, but it has now been sealed up and replaced with a similar TAS to the one on 054A.

Through the two years that it has parked outside of HD shipyard. A number of us have wondered why such changes are needed when the more capable 054A were mass produced very cheaply. As we have seen this with all of their refitting works on Type 051 and Type 053 ships, PLAN does not like to just decommission outdated ships. Even as a generation of blue water ships come into service, the older ships are kept around to play smaller roles in coastal defense. With 052's modernization, it will probably be kept around for another 15 years. We can also see that HH-7 and PJ-33A will most likely be kept around for a while. China produced a lot of missiles and rounds for these systems and is in no rush to replace them on the older ships.

Is J-15 a game changer?

2011-06-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

I often see articles on the web warning of the impending Chinese naval power and the impact on American's naval dominance. I find most of them to be badly written and low on facts. However, there are some authors how have followed PLAN for a long time and write some really good stuff. Andrew Erickson is one of the few PLA followers that I truly respect. His latest article with Gabe Collins on the J-15 program is another quality piece of work. I would recommend all PLAN followers to read it.

The authors did a good job of going over all of the potential problems associated with operating J-15 on a STOBAR carrier like Varyag. They brought up the reduced maximum take-off weight of J-15 vs land based flankers. They brought up how US carrier groups can make use of USAF tankers from forward base points to extend the range of USN air wing, but this option is not available to PLAN in the foreseeable future. Another limitation to Chinese air wing is the lack of fixed-wing ISR assets and ASW assets like E-2, S-2 and S-3. I think the following lines sums up the entire article perfectly.

The J-15’s emergence offers potential capabilities that are noteworthy because China is starting from such a low baseline in naval aviation that virtually any progress could make a big difference.

For these reasons, Chinese ski jump carriers simply cannot be used in any of the combat roles that U.S. Navy carriers have performed.

I think most of us would agree with the assessment that J-15 on Varyag does not represent any kind of game changing capability, but rather the most obvious option for PLAN to start off. Varyag was not designed for the same kind of missions that PLAN has in mind for future carrier groups. From much of what I read on Chinese sources, it’s seems that PLAN wants to follow USN’s direction in carrier operation. However, it clearly does not have the same aircraft, carrier producing capability and general weapon system available to achieve that in the near future. As a result, it would have to develop carrier operation doctrine based on what it has at disposal. I do think that Varyag will see more time in service than just as a training carrier based on all of the new sensors and CIWS they have installed on it, but the first domestic carriers will give us much better idea of the direction of PLAN. It’s with this that I disagree with some of the points made in the article.

The article completely dismissed most of the missions that J-15 could have based on the assumption that it will always be flying off a STOBAR carrier. Based on what I have seen (including the recent photos of fixed wing AEW), I would say that the first domestic carrier will probably be a CATOBAR carrier. In fact, I’ve read that PLAN picked the J-11 platform over J-10 platform for naval aviation due to its potentials in performing different types of missions. China does not have the same fleet of SSGNs or cruisers that Soviet Union had to launch long range supersonic missiles. The shipwreck missile launch module has also been removed from Varyag. China’s current helo fleet is also likely to be restricted to AEW and ASW missions. So, I don’t think China will be relying on helicopters or deck-launched ASCMs (as mentioned in this article) to attack opposing naval forces. Maritime strike and anti-ship missions will be carried out by J-15 regardless of whether it is operating off a STOBAR carrier or a CATOBAR carrier.

I also think the authors really missed the point when they speculated that China would need longer ranged AAM and AShM to compensate for the shortened range of J-15. Russian missiles like R-37 and Brahmos are extremely bulky and would significantly cut down the range of a naval aircraft. J-15 would be able to carry at most one AShM of Brahmos size or two missiles of R-37 size. The original Su-33 could not perform any mission outside of Combat Air Patrol, because Su-27 was purely an air superiority fighter at the time. Even if Su-27 had multi-role capability, the limited takeoff weight from STOBAR carrier would’ve drastically reduced the usefulness of most of the current Russian anti-ship missiles and ground attack weaponry. Most of the recent Chinese weapons development has aimed at creating smaller weapons (PGMs, ground attack missiles, AAM and AShMs) that can be carried by smaller fighters (like J-10 and JF-17) and UCAVs. J-15 could possibly take off with a couple of YJ-83s (about 700 kg each) or a couple of KD-88s (also about 700 kg each) and still have useful combat range. It would also be able to carry a number of PGMs similar to JDAM and SDB and attack land based targets. If China does build a CATOBAR carrier, J-15 will theoretically be able to carry as much weapon as F-18E/F, while having comparable range and CAP time. So, I think the combat potential of J-15 should not be limited to the so called “missile-centric” approach.

In conclusion, I think this article did a very good job at pointing out the problems facing PLAN as it is about to launch its first carrier and operate its first naval aircraft. The appearance of J-15 is not a game-changer in anyway, but it will be a tremendous learning process for PLAN. They have a long way to go before becoming competent at carrier operations. At the same time, I think it is also worthy to explore the potential of J-15 on CATOBAR carriers, because I believe PLAN is moving in that direction. J-15 really has the potential to perform all of the roles that F-18 E/F performs for USN. It’d be interesting to see whether or not they will develop EW version of J-15 like Growler or buddy-to-buddy refueling version of J-15. They have already done this with the JH-7 platform, so it should not be too difficult to also do this on J-15. It will also be interesting to see what else they plan to join J-15 in the air wing. We’ve already seen a naval trainer in JT-9 and naval AEW helicopter in Ka-31 and Z-8. I would think that other variants of Z-8 and possibly Z-15 will also become part of the air wing. And with all of the resources that China has put into UAVs and UCAVs, I think we will see them on there too. The possibilities increase even more if China does build CATOBAR carriers. The naval AEW project currently in development (and possibly other projects) would be able to take-off. As with everything else in PLAN, I’m just waiting patiently for all those developments.

More public proclamation of the Carrier program

2011-06-20T18:22:00.000-07:00

About a week and half ago, Chen Bingde finally publicly discussed the ex-Varyag aircraft carrier for the first time. And now that the veil has come off, we are seeing more public proclamation of the carrier program.

As we saw previously, a naval variant of the JL-9 trainer, currently serving in PLAAF, is being developed and tested. Today, CDF blog posted an article on China Military Online, which seems to be an official acknowledgment of this project. Interesting enough, this naval variant is named JT-9, instead of the previously expected designation of JL-9H. It'd be interesting to see what other part of the carrier project is made public next.

Varyag + China's blue water ambitions

2011-06-04T15:05:00.000-07:00

Over the past year, I have seen numerous articles about China's aircraft program coming out as Varyag is getting closer and closer to joining service. Many of those articles are fear mongering and riding this "China is taking over America" sentiment that many Americans are feeling through this economic downturn. So, it was interesting that I read an article completely on the other side this week from wired magazine. Aside from the title, it raises some good points to think about while missing out on other points.

I think that David Axe makes a good point in bringing up all of the navies surrounding PLAN that have carrier(s) or aviation capable flattops. At this point, PLAN is just at the start of its blue water naval strategy. Due to the increasing pressure on PLAN to defend Chinese interests around the world, PLAN is finally getting into the business of building a blue water fleet. Due to its lack of experience in naval aviation and lack of contacts/training with countries that have naval aviation tradition, PLAN will be starting from a very backward position. As stated in the Wired article and by most PLAN observers, Varyag will be a training carrier once it goes into service. One can see the amount of resources that China has placed in its carrier program by the amount of resources spent on Varyag, the carrier simulation facility in Wuhan, the different take-off/landing facilities around the country and the numerous indigenous naval aviation program under way. Just from the latest photos of Varyag alone, we can see several close-in weapon systems that have not appeared in any previous PLAN ships.
We can see the new RAM-like HQ-10 SAM installed in 3 different positions on Varyag

A host of new sensors + 052C MFRs on the oversized island.

The new HQ-10 SAM + 12 barrel ASW rocket launcher + new 10/11 30mm barrel CIWS + 18 barrel multi-purpose rocket launcher

And here is a list of possible ongoing naval aviation programs. First, we have the mysterious fix-winged naval AEW program, which is probably aimed for the first domestic carrier.

And then we have the domestic Z-8 AEW program that is now going through trials with PLAN naval aviation.

Which is mixed in with 9 imported Ka-31 AEW helicopters. It's hard to say how PLAN will use the two platforms at this point, but I would imagine seeing both on Varyag + first couple of domestic carriers. I do see PLAN going toward the USN model in the future and use strictly fix-winged AEW assets.

And finally, they also have the J-15 and JL-9H program going. Due to its range and payload, J-15 could be designed to perform more than just air defense duties of Su-33. Think of Super hornets and all of its different uses in USN.

So, I would say that there are many new weapon systems and technologies developed in China for its naval program. On top of all of the new hardware been developed, the process of training competent carrier operation crew is just as arduous. So far, the only major cooperation agreement they have been able to make is the one with the Brazilian navy. Therefore, China has a lot of stuff to learn over the next 20 years. Varyag will be a training carrier once it goes into service, but it will also be an operational carrier once the sailors accumulate some years of experience. The same will be the case for China's first domestic carriers.

When I look at the entire PLAN modernization, I really think that the carrier program has trailed most of the other programs. Over the past 5 years, one can already see an increasing need for a Chinese blue water fleet with its increasing energy security concerns from Africa/Middle East + its dependence on world commerce + the number of Chinese nationals working in African/Middle Eastern/Pacific Island countries. China currently gets a free ride from US Navy for energy security and safety of its merchant ships, but it really has no trust in USN. A good number of Chinese people in and outside of the military thinks that US is trying to hold China down. And when one looks at the extremely vocal China threat group in Washington, it's easy to see why they would get this view. So, I think that even though China already has a clear need for a carrier, this program has trailed the rest of PLAN modernization for numerous reasons. And I think that as China becomes even more dependent on world commerce in the coming years, the need for a blue water fleet will become more apparent (even if it will make many neighbours uncomfortable). On top of that, China sees East Asia and Southeast Asia as its backyard and wants to become the big dog here that keeps order. It cannot do so with a green water fleet. You are seeing more comments/actions from China in this direction, even though they will not say this openly.

One part I think David Axe was really wrong on was the assertion that Varyag will be defenseless. The PLAN naval modernization/expansion have been going on for the past 15 years. If anything, PLAN already has the necessary escorts for the first carrier and is in the process of building many more advanced escorts as shown in the photos below. And the recent Gulf of Aden missions provided PLAN with an opportunity to try these ships out for long periods in blue waters, so they will be ready by the time Varyag becomes operational.
The first three photos are the 3rd, 4th and 5th 052Cs currently under construction in JN shipyard

This next photo is the 6th 054A currently under construction in the HD shipyard

And here is the 6th 054A from HP shipyard that just got launched.

The other importantly part of China's increased blue water ambitions is the need for oversea "places" that PLAN can dock in the future for supplies. Here is a Jamestown article on the issue of logistical supply places that are emerging from the Gulf of Aden missions. Now, I do think that China will need a couple of oversea naval bases in the future to protect its commerce and such, but it is not at that point yet.

Most recently after the Osama killing, a lot of noises came out of Pakistan asking China to have a naval base in Gwadar. Here is an Asia Times article on the subject of Gwadar naval bases. You can see that China is punting on this issue right now, because it does not make sense for China to have a base there at the moment.

At the same time, I did find this other article regarding recent meeting between China and Burma to be far more interesting.

According to official sources in Naypyidaw, Chinese officials have repeatedly raised the issue of mobilizing its naval forces in Burmese territorial waters in recent months amid the superpower's increasing interests in the country, most notably the Sino-Burmese oil and gas pipelines, and the Chinese navy's activities in the Indian Ocean, particularly patrolling against Somali pirates.

Chinese officials are not suggesting a Chinese navy base in Burma, but having the permission to dock their warships at Burma's ports while they are patrolling the Indian Ocean and Somalia, said a source who spoke on condition of anonymity. The issue is still under discussion.

However, Burmese military sources have said they believe that China is more concerned about protecting the strategic port of Kyaukpyu, a multi-billion project that Beijing financed.

After the pipelines are finished in 2013, they are expected to have the capacity to transfer to Yunnan Province more than 80 percent of China's imported oil from the Middle East and Africa, as well as Chinese-purchased natural gas from Burma's Shwe Gas Field.

Shwe Field is currently Burma's largest gas reserve with an estimated 7.0 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. It was discovered in 2004 and is likely to be operational by 2013. The Burmese regime chose to sell the natural gas from Shwe Offshore Field to China over another energy-hungry neighbor, India, in 2007, a move that consolidated the junta's position as a valued ally of Beijing.

The pipeline project includes upgrading the airport on Ramree Island where Kyaukpyu is located. Residents of Ramree Island said that they have seen not only Chinese workers, but also Chinese military personnel in recent years on the island.

Chinese interests include the protection of oil tankers. Beijing has sent warships to Somali waters in the past two years, a maneuver that marked the superpower's the first ever naval mobilization outside the Pacific Ocean.

Returning from a counter-piracy operation in the Indian Ocean in August 2010, two warships, the Guangzhou and the Chaohu, docked at Thilawa Port, near Rangoon, for a five-day visit. Burmese and Chinese state media reported at the time.

From this article, you can see all of the Chinese energy and economic interest in this region and why China would want to have a blue water navy that can operate in this region. When one look at the narrow Strait of Malacca where much of China's energy and commerce shipping flows through, it becomes clear why China would also want to build an energy pipeline that would bypass that. In that region, China would not only be under the mercy of USN, but also under the mercy or threat of Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. That is quite a scary thought for the supposedly next super-power of the world. In the increasingly bitter confrontations between China and its neighbors over South China Sea, I think China will need to get back to building trusting relations with its southern neighbors while also continue to build an effective blue water navy.

So as Varyag is about to start sea trials, we see the shift of a nation from enclosed and poor to more prosperous and reliant on the world. The need for a blue water navy comes from China's need to protect its oversea interests + its people's desires for a strong nation. China will not become a blue water navy overnight, but would need years to develop competent carrier operations. It stills has a long way to go before it can be mentioned in the same breath to the Seventh Fleet. That's a scary thought for a nation that's more dependent than any other nations for safe and open sea lanes. As we observe the formation of China's blue water ambitions, I hope more people see if from this view point rather than the view point that China is about to take over the world.

An interesting day for PLA followers

2011-05-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was just one of the crazy days for Chinese military bbs. A bunch of new photos came out that indicated different things. So, let's just go through them a little bit.

We already know about the 18 missile version of HQ-10s that are installed on Varyag. We also thought that several Type 730 CIWS are also installed on Varyag. That is until the up-close photos of these CIWS came out yesterday. I have attached two photos below showing the new CIWS + another photo below that of Type 730. The first thing that you can probably notice is that the turret of this new CIWS is much wider and is possibly installed on a larger mount. This new CIWS looks shorter than Type 730, but that maybe due to the fact that it is stubbier. The FCR still looks the same as before, while the EO sensor is covered. At the same time, it appears to have more barrels than Type 730. To me, it looks to have 9 barrels, but I've also heard estimates from 8 to 11. It appears that this new CIWS would have higher rate of fire due to greater number of barrels. I would think that the larger turret/mount is used to handle the higher rate of fire. It is also likely to store more ammos, so that the rounds don't get used up as fast. At this point, it's not clear if this new CIWS will only be installed on carriers or also other PLAN ships.

At the same time, we also got pictures of that new mysterious SSK finally arriving in Shanghai. It looks like it's ready to conduct sea trials here before getting commisioned into the navy. At this point, it's intended use is a point of heated debates on Chinese bbs. A large number of people seem to think that it will be replacing the retired Gulf class (No. 200) SLBM test launch platform (which I disagree with). Regardless of its usage, this new submarine is definitely much larger than Yuan class of submarines. From an earlier photo, the 6th Yuan submarine was also seen traveling to Shanghai for sea trials at the same time this SSK was leaving Wuhan.

Now, we also see some interesting stuff coming out of naval aviation. It appears that we have finally spotted a J-15 in naval aviation colour that is equipped with 2 WS-10A. The earlier prototype J-15s were installed with AL-31F. One can compare the two J-15 photos with that of a naval J-11BS (3rd photo) to see that they are both using WS-10A engines here. This is obviously an important sign, since Russia will not be supplying China with AL-31F for new Chinese flankers (whether J-11B or J-15). So, J-15 would not be able to join service until it finishes testing with WS-10A.

And finally, we also see a new photo of J-10B out of CAC. The surprising part, is that this photo was taken with the nose of the aircraft open. We have never even seen a picture of J-10A with its nose open! The canted shape of the radar and the surface of the radar would indicate that J-10B is fitted with an electronically scanning radar. This would indicate that J-10B will be either using an AESA or PESA radar. I cannot tell one way or the other from this far out, but my personal view is that this is an AESA radar due to the developments in Chinese military radar industry. I think what's more important is that J-10B appears to be ready for mass production to join PLAAF. After 6 batches of J-10A which probably ended at the first of this year, we are now seeing the 1st of J-10B getting produced.

Latest activities from JN shipyard

2011-05-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

First, a thanks to the navy seals that were involved in killing Osama Bin Laden. There were certainly a lot of celebrations in New York last night. A lot of New Yorkers (including my room mate whose father broke his leg and uncle died in 911) received some measure of closure. Secondly, for all of the times where I questioned President Obama's policies, I cannot help but to admire his ability to deliver a speech that summed up the feelings of so many Americans.

Now, back to what I normally talk about: PLAN.

Although I'm not posting it here, the 5th 054A from HD shipyard has been launched and the 6th 054A from HP shipyard looks about to be launched. For those who are counting, 2 054 and 9 054As have entered service and 2 more 054As are launched or about to be launched.

More interestingly, we received a bunch of photos this weekend from JN shipyard of the 4 new 052Cs. I've read that new Yuan submarines and possibly more MCM ships are also under construction in this shipyard, but have not seen their pictures yet.

The first two pictures show the third 052C still getting fitted out. Compared to the start of this year, a good number of the foremast sensors are installed now (including SR-64). I think they still have to install those ECM/ESM bulbs amongst other things. I do not know what kind of work are done in fitting the inside of this ship, but it seems like they are taking a long time to get the ship ready for sea trials.

The next two pictures show the fourth 052C. From these angles, it's hard to make out its progress since the last set of photos. I do think that with the superstructure of this ship is fully in place, so it should take much longer before this ship can be launched.

The next two pictures show the modules of the fifth 052C. As you can see, the hull of the ship is almost ready to be assembled from these modules. We may have to wait until the 4th ship is launched before this unit can enter the dry docks.

The next two pictures show the modules of the sixth 052C. This one is a little further away from dry docks, but my guess is that it will still be launched at sometime in the middle of next year.

Finally, the person who posted these pictures also indicate that the area pointed in this next photo is an aircraft carrier currently under construction. Of course, it's too early to verify this information.

Some props to Shenyang Aircraft Corporation

2011-04-26T20:10:00.001-07:00

As most of you guys know, the two biggest aircraft makers in AVIC-I are Shenyang Aircraft Corporation and Chengdu Aircraft Corporation. Both of these aircraft corporations also have civilian/military aircraft production facilities, military aircraft design institute (601 and 611 for example), aero-engine subsidiaries and other civilian ventures. In the past few years, I have generally been praising CAC a lot for its efforts in the J-10, J-20 and JF-17 projects. I think it’s truly great what they have developed/produced for PLAAF. I also think they have done a pretty good job in the export market with all of the successes of F-7 and JF-17 program. At the same time, I have been partly disappointed of the progress of SAC. However, I think some of the recent work by SAC deserve praise.

Founded in 1951, SAC became known as the "cradle of China’s fighter aircraft" for its efforts in producing aircraft and also help setting up other aircraft companies like CAC. It was the first company tasked with reverse engineering Mig-21 before later handing it off to CAC for most of the J-7 variants. It was also given the task to develop J-8 and J-8II fighter jets. I know that J-8 projects have been ridiculed in many places, but most of its early problems were due to delays in subsystems like radar and missiles. It has often been said the early J-8 radars couldn’t even pick out targets that the eyes could see. Once it lost out the 4th generation fighter jet project to CAC, it was given the task to license produce Su-27s. PLAAF certainly did not have the budget back in the days to license produce Su-27s and finance two domestic fighter projects (even J-10 was almost canned). One could argued that SAC could have took the more market oriented approach of CAC and partnered up with a foreign country to develop a self-financed fighter jet. In some way, it was able to do that with its assistance with Iran’s aircraft programs, but none of its involvements was made too public. By the time J-11B pictures first started appearing in 2007, CAC had already overtaken SAC as the big dog of AVIC-I in my opinion. Over the past 10 years, CAC has definitely done a better job in pushing China to catch up to the West and Russia in military aviation. However, the gap in its capability vs SAC was somewhat exaggerated by things that are out of SAC’s control.

It is true that SAC has not been the most innovative company. J-11B has basically turned out to have almost exactly the airframe as Su-27sk. J-11BS has turned out to be just a trainer like Su-27ubk. However, Sukhoi has often expressed its shock at how fast SAC was able to reverse engineer a heavy fighter like Su-27. It has gotten to the point where Sukhoi is publicly claiming that J-11B and J-15 can never be as good as the original Su-27 and Su-33. That is of course false, since the Chinese flankers have far better avionics, better T/W ratio and better weponry. I do think that China should work out an understanding with Sukhoi to compensate them for additional copies of Chinese flankers over the original agreed target of 200. For the past 3 years, the J-11B/S program have been delayed by troubles in WS-10A project. While some of the problems in J-11B program should be blamed on SAC, the continued inability of Shenyang Liming to reliably mass produce WS-10A put a halt to j-11B production. Early last year, we saw a picture of many J-11B parked outside of SAC without engine. Since that point, we are finally seeing mass production of WS-10A and plenty of good news for SAC.

According to scramble’s plaaf orbat, there are several regiments that have J-11B/S. Among which, the 1st division received the first regiment of J-11B (still using AL-31F). After that, it seemed like the next 2 regiments to receive J-11B are the 30th division of PLAAF and the 8th division of PLANAF. At this point, I do not know if they have fully been converted. From the latest pictures, we have also seen J-11BS joining the 37th division and the 19th division. In the case of the 37th division, it appears that one of the J-7 regiments will be converted into a J-11B/S regiment. In the case of the 19th division, it appears that J-11BS is currently just taking the role of trainers for the J-11s that are currently serving there. Surprisingly, scramble also lists the 17th regiment of the 6th division as another J-11B/S regiment. My guess is that this is probably not the case anymore. We have not received any kind of photographic confirmation on this, so those J-11B/S may have moved to one of the other regiments that are going through conversion. Even excluding that regiment, we are seeing 3 PLAAF and 1 PLANAF regiments that have been converted or is the middle of been converted into using J-11B. We are also seeing J-11BS joining different PLAAF regiments in the trainer role (rather than just in J-11B regiments). And I think once these regiments are filled later this year or by early next year at the latest, there will be at least 100 J-11B/S after about 4 years of production. When considering that J-10’s production is only a little higher than that in the same period, it is quite an accomplishment for SAC. This development would also indicate that PLA is very satisfied with the performance of J-11B/S.

More recently, we have seen the first high quality photos of J-15 coming out in PLANAF colours. In fact, the news of these photos have even reached New York Times. According to Chinese bbs, J-15 made its first flight back in 2009. For the past 2 years, we have seen several photos with J-15 conducting flight tests in SAC and CFTE, but have never seen a close-up shot until now. According to Huitong’s sources, J-15 made its first takeoff from a land based simulated ski-jump in May 2010. At this point, I suspect J-15 have already finished most of its flight tests and have been handed to PLAN naval aviation school for training and tactic development. It would not painted in PLANAF colours until it’s at this point of development. In the past, I read some fairly reliable sources that stated the first J-15 will be assembled by 2008 and make its first flight by 2009. After that, it would spend 2 to 3 years conducting flight tests and another 3 to 4 years going through naval aviation training, take-off/landing and developing tactics. The plan is to be ready when Varyag joins service in 2015. At this point, it looks like the progress of J-15 is really following that schedule. Some would say that J-15 is just cloned from T-10K-3 and represents no real advancements. However, I think it is reasonable to assume that J-15 will be fitted with the latest avionics and weaponry for air defense, anti-shipping missions and ground strike missions. J-15 should be able to perform far more missions and also be better at those missions than the original Su-33s and the upgraded Su-33s that the Russians were offering. The airframe probably incorporates minimal changes, but it is important for China to lower the development risk of its first naval fighter. The most important part is for SAC to develop something that’s reliable and competent that they can produce in good numbers.

The excitement does not just stop here. We have also recently heard numerous other rumours about future SAC projects. The most likely one is the J-16 project. At the time of J-11BS development, many people speculated that this will turn out to be a fighter bomber in the mode of Su-30MKK. However, it turns out that J-11BS has fully assumed the role of trainer like Su-27UBK. That would also explain why they were able to develop it so fast after J-11B. From the noise in Chinese bbs, J-16 will probably make its first flight this year and be ready to join service 2 to 3 years after that. The other projects that have really caused excitement are SAC’s 5th generation fighter jet project and UCAV projects. For the former, I am still waiting to see how it will turn out, because it seems like SAC will have limited resources for this one if PLAAF does not provide funding. For the latter, I think that SAC and CAC probably have both been working on them. The mysterious dark sword UAV is supposedly a rejected design from SAC. Hopefully, we will see pictures of these programs in the next 2 years to verify that they are in fact ongoing. There have been numerous other speculated programs, but I find them to be too unsubstantiated at this point.

At the same time, I have also been really impressed with the civilian arm of SAC. It became a tier-one supplier for the fuselage of the C-Series aircraft and a major supplier for Q-400. It is a supplier for different Boeing and Airbus aircraft. It also got the contract to produce Cessna 162 personal aircraft.

As a whole, this past year has been a really successful one for SAC. The J-11B/S aircraft are really joining service in good numbers. Its other military projects are also making solid progress. On top of that, it is also really assisting CAC with the J-20 project.

HQ-10 (aka Chinese RAM) for close in air defense

2011-04-16T22:45:00.000-07:00

Back in 2008's Zhuhai airshow, a mysterious SAM called FL-3000N was shown and looked a lot like RIM-116 (aka RAM). You can see my commentary on this system at the bottom of my blog entry on Zhuhai 2008.

At the time, I thought it was more of an export project, since Zhuhai airshow tend to display those more prominently. I was also under the impression that PLAN was going the route of using new air defense guns as the next generation CIWS. It turned out with the recent Varyag photos, that they have decided to field both this new SAM (domestic designation is supposedly HQ-10) and what looks to be Type 730 (commonly found on most recent PLAN warships) on Varyag.

You can see them clearly on Varyag now that their tarp (at least 3 identified installations on Varyag) are finally uncovered.

As with many new weapon systems in PLAN, they are tested on the 892 test ship. We can basically identify two variants of HQ-10. The first one is installed in the front of the ship with 24 launch tubes. You can see it clearly with the first 2 pictures. The second is installed on a platform on top of the helipad of the ship with 18 launch tubes. You can see it clearly with the last 2 pictures taken about 3 weeks apart. Now, it seems like the one in the back is the one installed on Varyag if we count up the number of launch tubes. It also seems like there is a storage compartment beneath the platform it was installed on, which would indicate that it is storing missiles for automatic reload. The one in the front is unlikely to require deck penetration, since it is installed directly on the deck of 892. I don't think they would do the extra work of modifying the front section of 892 just for testing this out. So, that would tell me that the version in front is used for installations that do not allow for deck space below and the version at back is used for installations that do allow for one level of penetration. It also would explain why the version in front carries 24 launch tubes instead of 18.

Recent photos from the Chinese shipyards

2011-04-09T20:08:00.000-07:00

I was very surprised a couple of days ago when a friend of my sent me this NY Times Article and asked me if I contributed to it. Varyag has certainly come a long way from the day when it got dragged to Macau to be a floating casino. I've posted many photos of Varyag in the past, but its progress has finally even attracted the attention of major Western newspaper.

Of course, there are also plenty of activities around other Chinese shipyards. First of all, we see some new photos showing three different 052Cs under different stage of construction at JN shipyard. To be frank, the first photo (third 052C) has not seemed to have made too much progress, but JN shipyard certainly has a lot of work going on. It is also apparently building a couple of Yuan class submarines that will be ready soon.

At the same time, we are seeing the modules to the third Type 071 LPD under construction at HD shipyard. Of course, the second Type 071 LPD is still fitting out the different components at the dockside. I think it should be ready for sea trials soon.

Finally, we have some more photos from the WuChang shipyard. We still see the same three submarines (one of the mysterious new type and two of the improved Yuan variant). It seems like one of them is ready to head to Shanghai for acceptance testing. We also, see the final 2 cutters (of this five year plan) getting fitted before been delivered to CMS.

Varyag's island is almost complete

2011-03-27T20:53:00.000-07:00

Having just got back today from an one week vacation, I found that Varyag's island is almost complete. It has been completely painted and the scaffolding have been taken down. The only obvious missing part are the four MFR panels. Although, it does look like some other sensors will be installed before all is said and done.

Submarines + Cutters in Wuhan

2011-03-12T16:00:00.000-08:00

Recently, I just got some new photo of ships that are under construction in WuChang shipyard. If you guys don't already know, many of the new submarines and cutters are produced here.

It looks like most of what WuChang had on order for China Maritime Surveillance (CMS) have already been delivered. Most recently, Haijian-50, which is the largest cutter on order at over 3000 tonnes, was launched. The only other CMS cutter that is this size is Haijian-83. That was delivered as part of the last 5 year plan. In case you are wondering, CMS places orders for cutters at the start of a 5 year plan (the current one of 2011-2015 is the 12th). They will send RFPs to different shipyards in the country, who then respond with their design and pricing. Once the selection is done, you will start to see them getting built in the shipyards. That's why we generally don't see CMS cutters getting built until around the end of the 5 year plan. Here are some of its photos:

There has been some articles like this this week about Pakistan acquiring Chinese conventional submarines. I don't think it's official, but such talks have been going on for the past couple of years. I think that if it does happen, it will be for the Yuan class submarines that are currently under mass production. They won't be as quiet as the Western options, but they do satisfy the AIP requirement. At the same time, they have much improved combat system and sonars compared to previous Chinese submarines. Here are some of the photos of the most recent variant of Yuan:

This picture shows the 6th Yuan next to that new mysterious submarine type at WuChang shipyard

This picture shows the 7th Yuan from WuChang shipyard

This picture shows the 5th Yuan at WuSong naval base

China's military budget for 2011 + Jasmine Revolution

2011-03-05T11:26:00.000-08:00

As you guys probably have heard by now, China is planning to raise its military budget for 2011 by 12.7% (or 12.6% in other reports). You can see CNN's piece on it here. Now, I'm sure that there have been the usual alarming articles about China's rising military expenditures and the much higher real military expenditures, but I think that's often overstated. For example, I often read mention of arms import and other security forces like PAP not been included in the defense budget. However, China currently spends very little on arms import compared to the overall budget. In fact, the largest recent defense purchase are for 18 Ka-28/31 and a number of Mi-171 helicopters. Gone are the days where it spent billions on Kilo submarines and Su-30 fighter jets. On top of that, the budget allocation for PAP can be found on both the federal and provincial budget, so they are not as hidden as claimed by "experts". When one consider that the real inflation is China is running at probably 10%, a 12.7% hike is really not that much. And I think that when people spends too much time on the defense budget, they miss out on more important subjects like the following.

This WSJ piece is a far more interesting story in my opinion.

China projected bigger spending on internal security than on defense in 2011–after spending more last year too–as the government tightens physical and technological controls to quash calls for a “Jasmine Revolution” like the one shaking the Arab world.

On the first day of the annual meeting of China’s legislature, a Finance Ministry budget report showed that actual spending on law and order last year was 548.6 billion yuan ($83.5 billion), slightly more than what was budgeted for the year.

That compared with officially reported military expenditure of 533.5 billion yuan ($81.2 billion) in 2010.

The same report showed that spending this year on police, state security, armed civil militia, courts and jails would total 624.4 billion yuan ($95 billion), an increase of 13.8% over 2010.

China’s 2011 military budget, by comparison, is 601.1 billion ($91.5 billion), representing a rise of 12.7% over last year, a government spokesman announced Friday.

That means that China’s internal security spending is growing faster than its defense spending.

Actual spending on defense is probably far higher as the official budget omits key items such as arms imports, according to foreign analysts, but they say the same is also true of the public security budget, which does not include all covert surveillance for example.

The report did not detail what exactly the internal security budget would be spent on, but Premier Wen Jiabao suggested in his annual work report Saturday that some of it would be channelled towards Internet controls.

“We will strengthen and improve the system of public security,” he said. “We will improve the contingency response system, and enhance society’s capacity to manage crises and withstand risks. We will intensify our information security and secrecy, and improve management of information networks.”

The increase in the headline figure for law and order reflects Chinese leaders’ concerns about the potential for the kind of unrest which has racked the Middle East and North Africa over the last month, analysts say.

It is also likely to reinforce concerns among some Chinese scholars that China’s immense internal security apparatus is diverting funds away from welfare and other public services that might address the root causes of social unrest.

China’s security services are currently engaged in an intense and prolonged crackdown on dissent triggered by anonymous online calls for silent “strolling” protests in dozens of Chinese cities every Sunday. There have been few signs of actual protests since the appeals began circulating two weeks ago on Twitter and other sites which can only be seen in China by wealthier urbanites who use proxy servers or virtual private networks to circumvent web filters.

But China has responded with a massive show of force, detaining or confining to their homes dozens of political activists, and tightening Internet controls, especially on hugely popular Twitter-like micro-blogging sites.

Chinese police have also re-imposed some of the restrictions on foreign journalists that were lifted in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, and warned them that they will have their visas revoked if they violate those restrictions.

Police summoned dozens of foreign reporters last week to video-recorded meetings in which many were told they were no longer permitted to go to the places where the protests were supposed to happen.

The Beijing Daily newspaper, which is the mouthpiece for the Communist Party in the capital, issued one of the loudest public warnings yet on Saturday against people taking part in anti-government protests.

“Everyone knows that stability is a blessing and chaos is a calamity,” it said in a commentary. “Those people intent on concocting and finding Middle East-style news in China will find their plans come to nothing.”

Now, I'm not sure exactly what China's internal spending really include. It could be including PAP or the civilian militia, but a large part of that is use to spy on its own citizens and keeping order around the country. If anything, I find the recent calls for Jasmine revolution to have raised far more anxiety from the Chinese political elite rather than the common folks. Unlike the middle eastern countries, the Chinese economy has done quite well in the past couple of years. People are reasonably satisfied with the government and willing to give up some freedom for stability and continued prosperity. However, with the inflation problem already here and a possible deceleration in the economy coming, we could reach a point where a large portion of the population become dissatisfied. If there is one thing that the Chinese political and the wealthy elite are fearful of, it would be a gathering of all of the people who have lost out of this capitalism movement. So, when we look at China's spending on internal security vs defense, is China's elite more afraid of America or of its own people?

The present and the future direction of J-10

2011-02-21T12:27:00.000-08:00

As readers of this blog probably know, I have been a fan of J-10 for a long time. In many ways, the J-10 project marked a turning point in Chinese military aviation industry. When its development first started in 1986, the Chinese aviation industry was constantly abandoning new development projects due to lack of funding, technology and development experience. China was forced to go the conservative route and continue to develop J-7 and J-8 variants. Many J-7 and J-8 variants were delayed due to delays in avionics, engine and missile projects. With the exception of J-8, China had not successfully developed a fighter jet since the Soviet split. The J-10 projects succeeded in large part because China finally opened up itself to the West. The help that China received from Israel is well documented. However, I would say that another important help to J-10 and all recent aviation projects is the improved manufacturing capability, improved funding, access to advanced civilian technology and improved project management that came through the trade liberalization. For example, how would companies like NRIET be able to develop radar and avionics for PLA if China did not become competitive in the electronics industry? After 18 years of hard work by CAC, J-10 finally achieved operational status in 2004. With the success of the J-10 projects and advancement in civilian industry, we have seen a lot more stories of successes in Chinese military aviation industry in the recent years. I have read some real praises recently toward the aerospace engineers at CAC about their youthfulness and energy. I don't think we would've seen something like J-20 come out this soon, if CAC did not gain so much experience from the J-10 program.

Back when J-10 first came out, there were a lot of skepticism about its capabilities and deployment status. Even though the first J-10 regiment achieved operational status by 2004, many people questioned its status until it was officially declassified in late 2006. At the same time, I read many reports about its successes in exercises against different flanker variants. Most people were rightfully skeptical toward such reports. As time went on, it became more and more obvious that J-10 was taken over the reign as the backbone of PLAAF from flankers. Even now, we still often read reports about J-10s crushing flankers and J-8s in different training exercises. Even with all of its successes, the J-10 program still has experienced some stumbles along the way. I think most people would agree that propulsion is the biggest bottleneck for J-10. Due to lack of available domestic options and the Western arms embargo, China was forced to select AL-31FN as the powerplant. After the initial batch for J-10 prototypes, China has since placed orders for batches of 54, 100 and 122 AL-31FN engines for production variants. Many of us thought WS-10A might be available after the second batch of engines, but its production problems in the past 2 years have been well documented. As a result, China had to make that third purchase in 2009 for 122 AL-31FN costing $500 million. Due to the delays in WS-10A, J-10 production basically came to a standstill for most of 2008 and early part of 2009. Although, it is believed that some of the first product batch of J-10s delivered to 44th division were brought back to CAC to be upgraded to the latest configurations. From the first 154 AL-31FNs, CAC delivered J-10s for FTTC (60x8x), 131st regiment of 44th division (50x5x), 8th regiment of 3rd division (10x4x), 5th regiment of 2nd division (10x3x) and 2nd regiment of 1st division (10x2x). After signing the 3rd AL-31FN contract, CAC produced a 4th batch of J-10s to 70th regiment of 24th division (30x5x) and the special August First flight demonstration squad of 24th division. In this past year of 2010, CAC produced a 5th batch of J-10s of 37 single seaters + a good number of twin-seaters to fully convert the 25th regiment of 9th division (20x0x) and a good portion of the 12th regiment of 4th PLANAF division (83x4x). Since late last year, we have started seeing test trials of a 6th batch of J-10s from CAC. This batch will most likely be delivered to fill the 12th regiment of PLANAF and also convert a new PLAAF regiment. I think this will be the last batch of J-10s that can be produced from the third AL-31FN contract. Here is a breakdown of production J-10s at the moment:

6 PLAAF regiments (28 J-10s each  6 x 28 = 168)
12 J-10s serving in the August First demonstration squad
Around 16 J-10s serving in the FTTC aggressor squad
10 to 20 J-10s serving in the 12th regiment of PLANAF

So, my guess is that there are around 200 to 220 J-10s in service at the moment for different branches of PLAAF and PLANAF.

So, where does the J-10 program go from here? Some fans are already gushing over the first flight of J-20 and about ready to stop J-10 production very soon. Some question whether or not J-10B is needed at all. I definitely think those talks are crazy. China will have many J-7 regiments retiring in the coming years. I think some regiments will not be replaced, but PLAAF also does not want the fleet to shrink that much. I have brought up the talk of using JF-17 to fill a good number of the third tier regiments, but J-10s are still needed to replace more strategically located J-7 regiments. CAC has shown that it can mass produce J-10s at relatively low cost of less than 200 million RMB. Until J-20 joins service, J-10 and J-11 will form the core of PLAAF. Even though J-10 is smaller and cheaper than J-11, it has been the more capable air defense fighter jet. Therefore, even after J-20 becomes available, J-10 should still be continually produced. As we saw with J-7, CAC kept producing newer variants for PLAAF until at least 2007 even though J-10 was already operational with several regiments. So I think different variants of J-10s will be produced for the foreseeable future. In the immediate future, CAC will finish the 6th batch of J-10s to fully convert the 12th regiment of PLANAF and possibly fully convert another PLAAF regiment. I think this should be the end of J-10/A production run (about 240 to 250 using 276 AL-31FNs).

After this point, I think the production should shift to J-10Bs. We’ve seen the Y-8 radar test bed recently testing with what appears to be the nose of J-10B, so all signs are pointing toward J-10B production starting sometimes late this year or early next year. As stated before, J-10B should represent quite an improvement over J-10A when it comes to new avionics architecture, latest range of sensors (AESA radar, IRST and MAWs), new generation of MMI and more integrated EW installations. It should also have better multi-role capability and be able to fire all of the latest generation of AAMs, AGMs and PGMs (many shown in Zhuhai Airshow). The other question with J-10B and future J-10 variants is how it will move into the future world of stealth fighters. Clearly, future J-10 variants can be designed to have reduced signature like hornets to super hornets or eagle to silent eagle, but it cannot be redesigned into a LO aircraft. In fact, we are already seeing some greater consideration for stealth on J-10B when it comes to greater usage of composite material, integrated IRST/ECM, LPI radar and adoption of DSI inlet (although this could be more of a weight/subsonic performance vs supersonic performance tradeoff). There are also plenty of claims on Chinese forums that J-10B has also adopted plasma stealth, but I do not know how I can verify that. The other question is what engine will be used by future J-10s. Will China make a new large order for AL-31FN or will WS-10 series finally reach acceptable performance/reliability level to be installed on J-10B? We will have to keep the wait and see approach to find out. I would say that at least one more order of AL-31FNs is needed before WS-10 can become ready for both J-10 and J-11.

And finally, we should also see more export deals with J-10 in the coming years. As we’ve seen in numerous reports, PAF will be the first export customer for J-10, although we don’t know the exact configuration yet. After Pakistan, J-10 will probably be offered to most countries around the world. It will actually be interesting to see how that will affect JF-17’s export prospects, since most potential export customers would only select one of the two fighters. China will also not be able to export to many countries until WS-10 becomes a viable engine option.

The other side of PLAN

2011-02-11T19:10:00.000-08:00

When people talk about PLAN in the West, the modernization and the naval shipbuilding program are often the focus. There is no question that the current shipbuilding program for both PLAN and the Coastal Guard agencies are impressive. However, China began this streak from a very low starting point. What people often miss is how PLAN keep really old and ineffective ships in service to save cost.

Among the frigates that are still in service, no where is more evident than the 4 Jianghu-I ships that are still in service with East Sea Fleet. The 513 and 514 ship shown below first joined PLAN in the 70s and really have no use other than training and patrols. In fact, 2 Jianghu-I ships have already been converted for the Maritime Police agencies (much to their chagrin I must add).

Another big example of extremely old PLAN ships are the Luda destroyers in service with North Sea Fleet as covered by China-defense blog. The sailors on this 40 years old ship is their newly issued cold weather gears. Some of them are still using silkworm anti-ship missiles, manually controlled AAA guns for air defense and antisubmarine rocket launchers for ASW.

At the same time, the current upgrade program gives us an insight on the extension of the relative old ships still in service with PLAN.

The 052 Luhu class ships (112 & 113) joined PLAN after a full production run of the 3600-ton Luda class. These 4200-ton class ships were the first PLAN surface combatants to use gas turbines. 112, the lead ship of the class, uses LM-2500 (imported before the embargo) and joined service in 1994. 113, the other ship of this class, had to use GT-25000 and joined service in 1996. These two ships were upgraded once in 2003/2004 to use YJ-83 anti-ship missiles and upgraded main guns. However, their current weapon systems are vastly outdated when compared against the similar sized 054A class. They are still using HQ-7 and outdated Type 76A guns for air defense. 112 uses a bunch of imported (and now outdated) sensors and combat system. Due to the arms embargo, 113 was forced to use the downgraded domestic copy of those sensors and combat system. Either way, support for these sensors are unlikely to be too great going forward. At the same time, it's usage of Z-9C helicopters, DUBV-43 VDS and DUBV-23 hull mounted sonar are unlikely to allow it to fully perform its original designed role of ASW destroyer.

As such, it appears that 112 is undergoing a hull scale of changes for the past year at the HuDong shipyard. It is likely that LM-2500 will be replaced by QC-280 after 20 years of service. At the same time, the rest of the ships have been ripped apart. I have not seen this kind of upgrade with any other PLAN ships. When looking at the amount of work they are performing on this ship, it makes me wonder why they do not just use that money to build more 054As. Either way, it looks like 112 will remain in service for another 20 years after this kind of mid-life rebuild.

Also as stated in a recent China-defense blog entry (originally from fyjs forum), the Jianghu-V ships are getting an extensive refitting. These 6 ships were built for the South Sea Fleet from 1992 to 1995. They were the result of an emergency program at that time due to the worsening situation in South China Sea. Today, it is hard to see PLAN needing such a program these days to protect its waters, but China did have tough time against the Vietnamese there in 1988. Compared to other Jianghu ships, these ships had more modern and reliably sensors/weapons and much better living quarters. It's certainly not easy for sailors to stay out for long patrols in South China Sea without air conditioning. Even so, these ships are really archaic in terms of hull design, sensors and weapon systems. From the photos below, we can see that they have installed two quadruple YJ-83 launchers, PJ-33A dual-100mm guns, new air search radar and decoy launchers.

From these recent photos of the inside of the ship, it looks like they have also installed new control terminals and combat systems.

The last two photos were taken from 562 conducting New Year's patrols. It is clear that these ships still play a very important part in patrolling the coastal waters. With the extensive refitting we are seeing, they are likely to be in service for quite sometime. So even with the induction of many 054As, PLAN still consist of a large number of old ships.

Activities around Chinese shipyards

2011-02-04T22:28:00.000-08:00

Happy Chinese New Year to everyone. In case you missed it, Thursday marked the beginning to the year of rabbit.

With the new year celebration just starting this past week, shipyards around the country have probably stopped work. Having said that, we did get a lot of good photos from the shipyards around the country this past week as numerous people posted pictures in celebration of the new year. Since the work in these shipyard are likely to be interrupted for much of February, these probably won't update much until sometimes in March.

First of all, we have a bunch of new pictures from Dalian showing the latest works on Varyag. It's clear that they still have plenty of work before this thing will start sailing off. Just by the look of all the cranes, boxes on the deck, modules on the side and uninstalled sensors, the installation will continue for a few months longer in my opinion.

We also have some updates of 054A around the country. First of all, it looks like the 4th 054A from HD shipyard is finally ready to sail off. It is all painted in PLAN schemes and ready to join ESF. It will have to wait until after New Years before join service though.

We also have what appears to be the 5th 054A from HD shipyard getting ready to be launched. There are also traces of a 6th 054A at HD shipyard, although it is not confirmed yet.

The 5th 054A from HP shipyard is also remarkably far along. I am not sure if it has started sea trials yet, but looks like all of the sensors have been fitted at least.

The 6th 054A from HP shipyard is hidden behind one of the rescue ships from maritime agencies. It looks to be quite far along and will be ready to be launched soon.

Remarkably, the 7th 054A from HP shipyard is also taking shape. As you can see, the ship module next to the 5th 054A looks like the front section of a new 054A.

We also got an updated photo of the recently launched 052C from JN shipyard. I don't think much has changed since the last set of photos.

At the same time, low rate 022 production appears to be continuing in this remote inland shipyard. It is also building cutters for the maritime police and the maritime surveillance agency.

We also have a picture of Haijian-26 here. It is the final cutter of the 4 that is produced by HP shipyard. The third one, Haijian-66, was recently delivered to CMS.

Finally, it appears that the 5th yuan has been delivered and doing sea trials in Shanghai for a while now. The 2 Yuan submarines in Wuchang should be the 6th and 7th. The word on Chinese forums is that Yuan submarines are also being built by JN shipyard. It looks like Yuan production run might be over very soon if they are continuously churned out at the current rate.

Some thoughts about the growing US/China rivalry

2011-01-21T08:43:00.000-08:00

As President Hu Jintao visits USA this week, I have seen a wave of articles about China vs US. They often try to explore the following the following subjects:
1) Has China surpassed USA?
2) China's unfair trade policies and currency manipulation.
3) China may seem impressive on the outside, but the communist system is hiding a lot of brewing problems.
4) What should US do about the growing PLA?
5) Is a crash imminent in China?

I will start by looking at China's current economic situation and social stability. I think that will answer what US should do about the growing Chinese military and has China surpassed US. At the current time, there are often two extremes when people look at China. The first extreme is created by look at China's impressive new infrastructure, clean energy initiatives, trade surplus and foreign exchange reserves. When you just focus of these, it will be easy to think that China has surpassed US in certain areas (especially economical strength). In the sphere of military, one can be easily impressed with PLA with the news about J-20, DF-21D and aircraft carrier programs. The other extreme is created by looking at the some substandard exports (lead paint for example), cheap knockoff products, piracy and "communist" system. In the sphere of military, one can dismiss China when looking at hundreds of J-7 fighter jets, Jianghu frigates and T-59/69 tanks that still form large parts of PLA.

We've read for the past few years that China is not playing by the rules in its current trade relationship with US and that it is doing so by keeping its currency artificially low. I do agree that China is manipulating its currency right now, but I also don't know if it's really that undervalued. When China first fixed its currency to 8.28 against USD, it was doing so achieve currency stability at a time when all major Asian currencies were dropping in value against USD in the midst of a major economic crisis in 1997-1998. It kept its currency fixed against USD until 2006 to achieve this currency stability while USD was dropping like a rock. China has since then moved between semi-floating and fixing RMB. But is RMB really kept below it's value? If we go by the amount of credit that BOC has injected in the economy and the resulting inflation rate in the past 3 years, it would be hard to argue it is. If we compare pricing of comparable items like gas, non-processed food, household items and such, they are about the same price in China after the conversion. For luxury items like high end cars, brand name beauty products and high quality alcoholic beverages, they are actually more expensive in China even after conversion. In fact, RMB has been loosing so much purchasing power recently that people having started speculate on commodity prices by buying precious metals and copper. The argument has always been that if RMB goes up, Chinese people would have money to buy more stuff from the west and that the credit injection is caused by China's desire to keep RMB low. I think even the Chinese gov't cannot manipulate the market forces in the long run. If inflation goes up, then factory workers' wages will be forced to move up even more, which would eliminate currency fixing effects. On the other hand, Chinese workers would still be making significantly lower wages than American workers even after a 20 to 30% move up. In the industries where China is competing against other low cost nations, it is unlikely that increasing conversion rate would move those jobs back to America. In the most high tech industries, Chinese products would still be quite a bit cheaper than Western ones even after increasing conversion rate. Basically, as long as Chinese companies can reach the quality/safety standard for that product class, they will most likely be the cheapest even after a 20% to 30% move up for RMB. So I think even if China did loose its capital controls and let its currency float, the effect probably will not work out the way that the politicians think they would.

However, I do think there are measures that China can take which would help balance trade between the 2 countries. First of all, China would need to take intellectual property right more seriously in the software industry (primarily in terms of software piracy). This measure would not only help American companies like Microsoft, but also help China's aspiring domestic software firms. Secondly, US and China should work on a more stringent quality control framework for exports into America. This measure would prevent substandard product like toys with lead paint from coming into America and also improve the reputation of Chinese products. Thirdly, China needs to allow greater access for American companies bidding for hi-tech projects in China. Western countries have also had this problem with Japan and South Korea, where market access are not equal on the two sides of trade. There really is no reason that Western companies that have part of their production in China should not have equal access to those projects. Fourth, I think many of the complaints from GE and other hi-tech exporters would be soothed if a framework can be worked out to prevent local Chinese companies from blatantly copying designs and claim them as their own. Part of the framework should also prevent Chinese government from enforcing caps like 70% of wind power must be produced locally. Having such an accord would reduce trade tension and possibility of trade war, which would help nobody. Fifth, I think China should provide greater access of its domestic food market to American farmers. China has shielded its farmers from international competition due to its fear over domestic unrest from this group. However, such measures have only stoked a lot of inflation in food prices for ordinary Chinese citizens. So, allowing more competitively priced international farming produce in the country would reduce inflation and public outcry over rising food prices.

The topic of inflation and public outcry bring us to the question of whether or not crash is imminent in China. The topic of China sometimes refer to the potential problems in the Chinese economy, while other times refer to social problems facing China. They are some what related to each other. It's often been said that the Chinese government has made an implicit pact with Chinese people where they get to control government the way they would like as long as they can continue to deliver increased prosperity. In particular, Chinese government caters to the demands of big business, banks, the wealthy and the growing middle class. This broad group has gained the most from China's existing social system and would generally be the most opposed to changes in governance (become a democracy for example) that would create instability and give more voice to the rest of the population. To get an idea of the social problems that simmers under the surface in China, one would only have to go to the city hall of any municipality. You would see a bunch of policemen standing outside the city with no apparent task to do. They are there to stop demonstrations by people that lost out as part of China's move from socialism to capitalism. Back in the socialist days, city dwellers can keep their job regardless of how productive their enterprise may be and receive welfare for life. As part of the move to capitalism, a lot of state owned enterprises were allowed to collapse in the face of competition from far more efficient private companies in the late 90s. As part of this shift toward private enterprises, there was a huge migration of jobs from the less efficient central part of the country to the export driven coastal provinces. With less job around, some people were able to adjust to this new working environment, but a lot of people were forced into early retirement while others were laid off. So now, all of the local government have the headache of dealing with angry people from loosing their jobs, health care and cheap housing. In order to alleviate all of these angry and unemployed people, they launch infrastructure projects (many wasteful) and created a lot of low tax business zone to attract investment. Sometimes these things work out, while other times they are stuck with a lot of debts, but they always end up taking land away from some unfortunate souls. China gets over 50,000 protests every year for reasons like unfair compensation for seizure of land, job loss and environmental damage. Even among most of population whose living standards have really improved in the past 30 years, there are growing resentment toward the wealthy and the connected.

Another source of growing discontentment is the shifting dynamics of the young people. I have read many articles talking about labour shortage problems in China. I don't believe there is a labour shortage problem, but rather a shortage in cheap labour. A large portion of the young people coming into the work force nowadays are the only child of their family and carry the hopes of doing better than their parents. Unlike their parents' generation, they are not willing to sweat out low paying blue collar jobs after getting college degree. As a result, a large portion of new college graduates are having trouble finding jobs while sweatshops and factories are having to constantly raise salaries due to the decline in migrant workers. As we move forward, these factories would have to raise compensation and improve work condition to attract the college grad and keep the migrant workers from going home. We are already seeing this happening in the past couple of years in big companies like FoxConn and Toyota and also in most of the low cost export factories in Guangdong. At the same time, Chinese companies have been retiring people from work force in the early 40s due to the influx of cheap young labour. As the number of young labours entering work force decline, these factories would also be forced to retire the better compensated older workers at later age. These are all factors that I think will prevent labour shortage, but will also drive up the cost of labour. Such natural economic forces will increase the cost of Chinese products in ways that no forced currency revaluation could. They will also force China to move up the value chain and face off against higher valued export nations like Japan, South Korea, Germany and Singapore.

So in short, I do believe there are a lot of social problems simmering under the surface in China. With all these potential social problems, is China also facing huge economic problems? I think the answer is yes and no. On the negative side, there is a huge real estate bubble in big Chinese cities across the country as a result of huge expansion in credit in the past 2 years. In order to stave off a short term economic decline in 2008, China ended up inflating larger bubbles across the country. A lot of speculative money went into new building in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Chongqing. Even less developed inland cities were affected, although to a smaller degree. It's often said that a large portion of new homes are bought but vacant, because the buyer is waiting for the housing prices to go up. The housing prices are at such high level now that ordinary families simply cannot afford to buy homes. This housing bubble is no different than the ones that already burst in Ireland, Spain and Portugal or the ones that are forming in Australia and Canada. Another problem that I see is the excessive infrastructure projects by local governments funded by banks' cheap lending. As an example of wasteful spending, my hometown in China has built a city wall and a moat to try to transform itself into an historical tourist city (I'm not kidding here). Since a large number of these infrastructure projects are wasteful, the Chinese banks, who are implicitly backed by the gov't, will have to absorb the losses. These problems are similar to what has already surfaced in Iceland and Ireland and about to surface I think that once the housing bubble burst and debts problems from infrastructure projects surface, it will cause for some hard times for the Chinese economy. Unlike the PIIGS countries in Europe, the fundamentals in the Chinese economy is still very good. Even if the real estate sector and infrastructure suffer a slowdown, they still have enough productive industries around the country to keep lower level of growth. At the same time, the Chinese private sector also have very high level of savings, which creates enough capital for small businesses and new start-ups. While the public debts situation will become a problem when the government has to bail out banks, they do have enough currency reserves to deal with these losses. Most importantly, China does not have the same level of unfunded liability of public sector workers that Western countries have to deal with. For example, the current unfunded liabilities in America is greater than the total asset values of everything that America owns. This situation is well reflected in the 2 countries' fiscal deficit. While the American federal gov't has hovered around 10% in the past 2 years and many state gov't are swimming in debts, Chinese deficit has been 2.8% and 1.6% in the past 2 years after budget surplus in 2008. So when we factor in the public and private sector saving/debts, I think China is one of the few major economies that can survive the sovereign debts crisis. It will experience some pain once the credit bubble burst as part of the boom/bust cycle, but it will get out of this global economic downturn better than most countries. After all, America became the largest and most wealthy nation despite going through many downturns in the past 2 centuries.

As a whole, I think the Chinese economy is not as rosy as some economists think. I share the prognosis of economist like Andy Xie, Marc Faber and Jim Roger, that China will go through some pain once the many bubbles in the country burst. At the same time, I also disagree with doomsday scenario of noted bears like Jim Chanos and the always anti-China Gordon Chang (who predicted that Chinese gov't would collapse by 2006). The Chinese economy will recover after some pain and some more protests. I think that although the current social tensions in China are bad, most people are thankful toward government for their improved quality of life and freedom. Most of the protests would be aimed at local governments rather than the central government, because people generally regard local governments to be far more corrupt and incompetent. As long as we do not see a complete economic collapse, we should see a stable central government that moves toward more openness and accountable. For an accurate depiction of the current Chinese social/political structure, I would recommend everyone to watch youtube clips of Orville Schell.

Building upon the past few paragraphs on China's current state, I can answer question 1) and 4). There are some areas that China has surpassed USA, but much more areas that it is still far behind USA. At the current time, China is in a lot of better financial position than America. As the largest creditor nation in the world, can go around the world bailing out bankrupt states, fund infrastructure projects and buy rights to natural resources. America on the other hand is the largest debtor nation and can only bail out other nations through secretive lending by Fed reserves. China still has a lot of poor people, so it will have a lot of room for growth and increasing productivity than America does. It also has a far more competitive manufacturing sector than America due to advantages such as lower wages, lower taxes, less regulations and lower financing cost. Despite being communist in name, China today has one of the world's most pro-business and capitalistic government. And finally, it is in a much better position in terms of public and private sector debts. China has huge private sector savings + low public sector debts, whereas America has huge private and public sector debts. And if state and federal government in America continue to try to pass on the debt problem by increasing taxes rather than fighting the powerful labour unions, the debt situation will simply get worse. So most of China's advantages are in the area of economy and finance, whereas USA is ahead pretty much in everything else. Despite the large number of engineers and scientists graduating from Chinese universities, they still lag far behind the high level education of top American universities. Simply put, China does not have any Harvard, Yale or Columbia. The top research labs in America are still the envy of the world. Along that line, America has an advantage in innovation due to more advanced research facilities and greater respect for IP. As a result of its advantages in innovation and research, America is likely going to stay ahead of China in technology for a while. America also is a more powerful voice around the world. Even though China has gained much influence and America has lot much respect in the past 10 years, most countries in the world still look at America for moral leadership. Most Western countries need China for its money and large market, but does not really have much respect for how the country is run. America has also been spreading its values to the world for the past century through film, music and other form of culture. Even though China has a much longer history, it is unlikely for China to ever spread its values the same way. When there are political problems and regional conflicts in different parts of the world, they look for America to come in as the mediator rather than China. And finally, America has a very large lead in its military prowess. Even though PLA has improved a lot in the past 10 years, it is still a generation or more behind America in most areas of military technology. I have read a lot of alarmist articles about J-20, Varyag and DF-21D recently, but they are nowhere near enough to tilt the balance of power in Pacific Ocean. In the best case scenario, China will have enough military prowess to deter America from entering a possibly costly Taiwan conflict in 10 years. China does not have the desire nor the ability to provide any kind of threat to America. Even if China builds 5 aircraft carriers, it would not be able to challenge US Navy in international waters. All of the political/economical objectives that China want to achieve can much easily be achieved through its financial prowess. So, when I read articles about how America needs to spend more on the military to deter a rising China, I'm often left to hang my head down and accept the higher taxes and inflation that I will be facing. USSR did not collapse because its military could no longer pose danger to USA. It collapsed because it was totally broke from spending too much money on its military and foreign adventure in Afghanistan. The British Empire did not loose its dominant place in the world because of the decline in its military. It lost its place in the world to US, because US had much stronger manufacturing and financial strength. So if US wants to maintain its leadership in the world, it needs to get its financial situation in order.

In conclusion, Hu Jintao's visit to America provides a good test for us to think about how the relationship between the 2 countries can develop and be beneficial to both side. I think that it is too simple to blame all of America's problems on China's currency. As I mentioned, China can make some other changes that will be far more helpful in balancing the trades between the two countries. In the long run, America will continue to be on the wrong side of the trade unless it can address its financial issues by having less tax burdens on everyone and save more money. China also has a lot of social and financial problems to address, but it will continue to grow in influence as its economy continues to grow. As a Chinese Canadian living in New York, I hope that people in both countries can realize the challenges facing both countries and learn to grow together in this increasingly interconnected world economy.

J-20 had its first flight, what now?

2011-01-15T12:21:00.001-08:00

This past week, all of the Chinese forums and aviation forums online were left buzzing with pictures and videos of the first flight of J-20. At the same time, news of Hu Jintao being surprised by Gates asking him about the first flight of J-20 were also circulated around the web. Either way, the recent news of J-20's appearance has caused a lot of headlines around the world. The question is what now? What does this mean for the Chinese aviation industry and PLAAF?

When we read the news online reporting J-20, we see a lot of different opinion. There are some that are immediately dismissive toward the plane, toward China's ability to field a 5th generation fighter jet and to weed of reliance on Russian support. I find much of these articles to be extremely misinformed on the current situation in PLAAF and Chinese aviation industry. For example, one common misconception is that China is still relying on AL-31F on J-10 and J-11 at the moment. While it is true J-10s are still using AL-31FN, it is also quite evident that J-11Bs are entering service in two different regiments (one in PLAAF and one in PLANAF) with FWS-10 as the power plant. I will get back to the issue of engine later. At the same time, there are also a lot of excited PLAAF fans online who are looking at this as the F-22 competitor and the F-35 killer. Some are even wondering about the need to continue produce more J-10 variants with the apparent arrival of J-20. While it is easy for a PLA follower like myself to get excited about J-20, it is also apparent that China has a long way to go.

I have always said that I expected the 5th generation fighter jet to first achieve operational status around 2018 (meaning having at least one full regiment converted to this plane and completed basic training on it). At this point, I still expect it to be so if everything works out. The first and the biggest question is engine. I was extremely surprised to find out a particular upgraded variant of WS-10 was used for the first flight instead of AL-31F. I believe that J-11BS's first prototype was also using WS-10, but did not think it had enough thrust for J-20. I think that J-20 made its first takeoff without the need to turn on its afterburners and took off at much shorter distance than J-10S. I don't think a fighter jet with two severely underpowered engines would be able to do that, so its engines should have more power than that of standard WS-10. Right now, there are basically two plausible theories right now regarding to the engines:

1) They are a specially modified version of WS-10G (an upgraded variant of WS-10) that generates comparable thrust to 117S. This variant has been in development for a while and has already finished long endurance testing. However, due to the continued struggle of Shenyang Liming (factory 606) in mass production of the basic variant of WS-10, this variant also could not move forward in its deployment. Due to the immaturity of the design, it would have much shorter service life and MTBO than more mature engines like AL-31F or even WS-10.
2) They are a specially modified version of WS-10's basic variant. These two engines are carefully prepared with more advanced materials and are switched to operate at higher thrust level than a normal production copy. Again, the MTBO time of these engines are much shorter than the normal WS-10s, because they have to handle the wear and tear of continuously generating more thrust.

Of the two, I think the first one is more likely. What does this say about WS-10? I think that while there are problems with the design, it can be successfully deployed in service if it is produced and maintained properly. PLA would not allow one of their biggest projects to make first flight with an engine that they have no faith in. I guess that is the main problem. Shenyang Liming has become the joke of Chinese aviation industry with its recent failures. After several years of fanfare, the WP-14 (Kunlun) project was recently abandoned. I would think much of that is due to Liming's problems with project management and quality control. At the same time, WS-10 and J-11B program have been delayed by at least 2 years due to continued troubles with the quality of WS-10 produced by Liming. WS-10 has only recently been fielded on J-11B after a lot of changes. You can only discover all the little problems with an engine after it has been installed on many aircraft and flown many hours. And I hope in the coming couple of years, Shenyang AeroEngine Research Institute (SAERI, not to be mistaken with Shenyang Liming) will be able to really increase the reliability of the design and use that in its other projects like QC-280, WS-10G and WS-10-118. However, even a really well designed engine can have a lot of problems if the manufacturer does not have good production or quality control processes. I hope that Shenyang Liming can fix its current problems. Otherwise, all of the production responsibility should be shifted to Xi'an AeroEngine PLC (factory 410). XAE has been mass producing WS-9 for JH-7A without any major reported problems and is also responsible for one third of the parts on WS-10. I believe that it is also responsible for producing WS-15 and large bypass turbofan engines for Y-20 once those engines are ready for mass production. It is obviously a long way from reaching the manufacturing quality of GE, PW and RR, but it is the golden standard of Chinese AeroEngine companies. It also scored major boast recently when it formed join venture with Nexcelle to produce and assemble jet engine nacelle components of the C919 project. These things will only help the project management and quality control of XAE. At this point, you may wonder why China does not just give up on Liming and pass everything on to XAE or even any of the other AeroEngine manufacturer. I think that China is trying to keep several factories around to foster competition. It remains to be seen whether or not XAE or GuiZhou Liyang or Chengfa group (factory 420) or any other factories will get in on WS-10. So, while J-20's first flight with WS-10 is a good sign, we still need to wait a couple of years to see if Liming or XAE or anyone else can finally reliably mass produce WS-10 engines for J-10 and J-11.

Questions have also been raised about whether other parts of a 5th generation program like missiles, avionics, aerodynamics, materials and stealth can reach that level. I think what we have seen recently in Zhuhai airshow with regards to PGMs and AShM + reports of different 5th generation AAMs in advanced development show that this is not an area of concern. In fact, aviation week reported that most of the next generation missiles were all designed with the weapon bay of J-20 in mind. I also find radar and avionics to not be an area of concern. The J-10B platform will be used to test out a lot of avionics that will eventually deployed on J-20 (albeit improved in performance). From the recent CIDEX 2010, it is apparent that the Chinese electronics industry has come a long way in a short time and is more than capable of developing and producing top notch of avionics for fighter jets and other military hardware. I think aerodynamics is another area that should be quite well developed. I certainly expect J-20 to be far more maneuverable than F-35 and at least on the same level as T-50 and F-22 in flight performance. The areas that I do question are material and stealth. Does China have the ability to produce the high quality composite carbon polymer, titanium and other material needed for a 5th generation fighter jet. I think they do due to all of the work they have with airliners, which are at the cutting of material technology. For example, Harbin aviation industry group is cooperating with Airbus as a supplier for composite material on A350. At the same time, AVIC-1 is also cooperating with Hexcel and Boeing to produce composite materials for Boeing jets. SAC is in charge of the entire aluminum-lithium fuselage for Bombardier's C-Series jets. That leaves us with the biggest question of stealth. I've already heard plenty of complaints about the effect that the canards and the variable DSI-like intake would have on stealth. I think when CAC was developing J-20, they had to make compromises between its weight, aerodynamics and stealth. They definitely developed it with the intention of creating a LO-platform as we can see from internal weapon bay, the general shaping of the aircraft, the jagged edges of all the compartments and panels and the "stealthy nozzles" on the engine. However, what kind of affect would the canards or the intakes or anything else would have all the signature of the aircraft. Did they develop J-20 with full aspect stealth in mind? And what kind of results have they achieved in plasma stealth and application of radar absorption material? These are the things I don't know and we will have to wait to be answered. One of the most significant part of J-20's development is that these areas of development can be applied on J-10 and J-11 to improve their capabilities.

What does J-20 mean for the aircraft makers of AVIC-1? It appears to all of us that CAC/611 Institute has overtaken SAC/601 Institute as the top dog of AVIC-1. After all, CAC beat SAC in the competition for the 5th generation jet and the 4th generation jet (J-10). It also scored many export contract with J-7s and JF17s, while SAC has not done anything. From this, SAC has taken a lot of heat for its inability to produce anything new, while continuing to develop new variants of J-8. I do think that a lot of it is unwarranted. It probably does not have the ability to innovate like CAC, but it has done a lot of good things with flankers. China made the decision to locally produce Su-27s, because it could not at that time develop a comparable fighter jet. While CAC was given resources to develop J-10 (and it did a great job), SAC was forced to learn something as complex as Su-27 and produce it. Sukhoi has been very surprised to find out that SAC was able to learn enough about su-27s so shortly to be able to develop (or copy as the Russians call it) and completely locally produce J-11B and J-11BS. With its experience in developing J-11B/S and studying T-10K prototype, it was able to fast track and quickly develop J-15 fighter jet. Even though CAC is the main contractor for the J-20 project, SAC's experience in heavy fighter and high quality titanium and aluminum alloy with J-11 project has been extremely important in J-20's development. So as we move forward, CAC and SAC are both very important in the future of Chinese military aviation. As SAC has shown in its ability to land major supplier contracts with Boeing, Cessna and Bombardier. I also hope that Xi'an AC and Shaanxi AC will continue to advance in RnD and production through future transport and bomber projects. It is important to continue to foster competition within AVIC-1 and compete in international aerospace industry.

The other big question is what J-20 will mean for PLAAF. In the current time, J-10 and J-11 form a good light-heavy fighter jet combination with JH-7A as the main strike bomber and H-6 as strategic bomber. PLAAF still has a large number of J-7 and J-8 regiments that will need to be replaced in the coming years. In spite of what some may think, PLAAF does not have endless amount of cash that it can spend on new weapons procurement. It is important to spend an increasingly amount of budget on recruiting the best pilots and putting them through the best training programs. Even if PLAAF is somehow handed the entire F-22 inventory of USAF today, it would not have enough budget to operate and maintain them while also maintaining all of its other aircraft divisions. Even in 10 years when J-20 first enters PLAAF in meaningful number, PLAAF will not have enough budget to field it in large number. You may ask at this point why they do not just shrink the size of its air force like what most other air forces are doing. They have actually shrunk their air force quite a bit already when J-6s were put out of commission and will probably shrink a little more when J-7s retire. However, China has a very large airspace and cannot shrink past a certain point. As a result, PLAAF will likely be made up of a combination of the very hi (J-20), the middle (J-10s, J-11B+), the lo (early flankers variants, J-7/8s) and non-fighter jets (JH-7A, AWACs, K-8, L-15, Y-8/9...) by 2020-2025. Over the next 10 years, J-7 and J-8 regiments will slowly retire out of service. At the moment, J-7s are replaced by J-10s while J-8s are replaced by flankers and newer variants of J-8s. Flankers are likely to remain in service with PLAAF for a long time, because they will be very useful in the roles of fighter-bomber and strike aircraft even after the proliferation of stealth aircraft. If XAC does not develop a replacement for JH-7, then J-11BS could eventually be used to replace JH-7 regiments. Some people have wondered about the role of J-10 in PLAAF after J-20's induction. Some have even questioned the need for J-10B or future variants of J-10s. I think that J-10B or a future variant of J-10 will form a hi-lo combination with J-20 as the backbone of PLAAF's air superiority fighter jets. Some of the technologies tested on J-10B can then also be used on J-10A to improve its performance. Either way, I think J-10s will continue to replace J-7 regiments around the country and become the work horse of PLAAF. It is important to watch out the engine situation of J-10s. I'm hoping that WS-10 series will soon become reliable enough to be used on J-10s. Aside from J-10s and J-11s, it seems that PLAAF also wants to use a cheaper 4th generation option to replace some of the remote J-7 regiments. After all, you don't really need J-10s to protect the airspace against Kazakhstan or Mongolia.

That seems to be where JF-17s come into play. From what I'm gathering on Chinese bbs, it seems that PLAAF wants an ultra cheap option under $15 million to replace some of the J-7 regiments. You may think it is crazy that PLAAF regards the $25-30 million price tag of a J-10 to be too expensive, but that is the case. If PLAAF does pick JF-17 (or a new cheap 4th generation) design, it will not be as fancy as the one prepared for PAF. It would have to be using a domestic engine like WS-13 to lower the cost. It would probably not be required to have more than 7 hard points or have any significant multi-role capability. Its radar will probably be similar to KLJ-7 and not required to have greater concurrent engagement capability. Basically, you can think of it as a low cost, bare bone JF-17 that can fire BVR weapons and have reasonable range. At this point, we will have to wait for pictures from CFTE to see when or if this cheap 4th generation fighter jet theory will come to fruition. Either way, I think PLAAF will continue to stay within its budget and not go after too many expensive options and retain quantity to counter all of its perceived threats.

J-20's first flight is a significant turning point in the history of PLAAF and Chinese aviation industry. It shows the progress that Chinese military aviation industry has made in the past 15 years. It really shows that CAC has turned out a young and energized generation of engineers capable of designing advanced military aircraft. We will likely see continued progress of J-20, J-10, JF-17 and different UAVs from CAC in the coming years. We should also not overlook the many challenges, like engine and stealth technology, that China faces in its development. J-20's unveiling does not mean China has caught up with the west, but rather it has learnt a lot from everyone and has gained a lot from cooperating with everyone. And the Chinese aviation industry can only grow from continuing to cooperate with Western companies in C919 and other aircraft programs.

China's conventional submarine fleet

2011-01-07T20:34:00.000-08:00

In the past few months, we have seen renewed activity around WuChang shipyard with the launching of numerous new conventional submarines. That got me interested in spending more time looking at China's diesel submarine fleet and how they are deployed. This blog entry will devote most of its energy on the 039 series, since that is currently the main work horse of PLAN. At this point, I really cannot answer questions like how quiet these submarines are, since I do not have that kind of classified data or have experience in signal management to give good estimates.

As you guys know, PLA Navy contains three fleet: North Sea Fleet, East Sea Fleet and South Sea Fleet. There seems to be 2 flotilla of submarines in each fleet. At the moment, we have some 033s, 035s, 039s, 039As and kilos serving at these flotilla.

The Type 033 class submarines are basically the domestic productions of Romeo Class submarines from USSR. The production of 033s went on through the 60s and 70s before finally stopping in 1984. It is obviously an extremely old submarine class and have mostly retired from service. Currently, they are still serving at some flotilla in training roles.

The Type 035 Ming class submarines were the first domestically designed submarine. They were developed based on Romeo class and had a lot of problems early on. The original variant of 035s were error-prone and retired from the service by the 80s. Following that, a 035G variant was developed. This variant started production in 1987, a full 18 years after the first 035 started production, because Chinese military development basically paused in those years. The 035G and the subsequent 035G1 variant continued production until 1996. This class is currently in service in much of the NSF flotilla with the 2nd and 12th submarine flotilla. A following class 035B (also known as 035G2 in some circles) were produced between 1997 and 2001. About 8 of these boats were produced for the SSF and they are currently serving in the 72nd submarine flotilla. These boats were built after the first 039, so they adopted a lot of technologies from Song class like Anechoic tiles, more advanced fire control systems and the ability to fire more advanced weaponry. In fact, a recent article has shown that 035B submarines are capable of OTH strikes (through YJ-82 I assume). Ming class also has the dubious honour as the submarine that caused the deaths of its entire crew. So even though it is still serviceable for coastal patrols, this class is not fit for front line duty.

In the early 90s, PLA took advantage of the low Russian defense funding to import large quantity of highly capable former Soviet weapon systems. One of the most recent imports is the Kilo class. As early as 1995, China received two units of project 877EKM (kilo class) from the Russians. These two were followed by two units of the improved kilos (project 636) in the late 90s. These were highly capable systems that were more than one generation ahead of anything in service with PLAN. They were also capable of firing heavy Russian torpedoes that were a generation ahead of what was available at that time for 035 class. In response to possible Taiwanese import of submarines from US, PLAN ordered 8 more improved kilo class (project 636M) in 2002. These boats had new fire control system, French Sonar and the ability to launch the supersonic Klub-S AShM. Eight of the Kilo submarines were assigned to the 42nd Submarine flotilla of East Sea Fleet (No. 364 to 371) and the other four were assigned to the 32nd Submarine flotilla of the South Sea Fleet (No. 372 to 375). In the recent years, the Kilo class have lost some luster with PLAN. We hear about several early failures with launching Klub-S missiles and only see pictures of Kilo submarines at the dockside or in shipyards for repairs). I don't know if it has become paper tiger, but PLAN does not seem to be using its capabilities fully.

As China imported Kilo submarines in the 90s, they also started the construction of a new generation of submarine (aka the Type 039 Song class). The first boat had a lot of problems after its launching in 1995 and did not join service until 1998. Even then, it seemed to be quite outdated design compared to the Kilo class. Major redesign was done during that time and an improved variant, the 039G variant, came out between 2001 and 2003. The easiest way to tell from the original 039 boat (No. 320) and remaining 039 variants is the removal of the stepped sail structure. PLAN only ordered 3 039G submarines (No. 321 to 323) before making further changes and starting mass production of 039G1 variant. Here are some of the changes courtesy of Crobato:

The G1 has only a single line of sink holes near the front bow. The G has three lines.
The G has a continuous sink hole line behind the sail. In the G1 it is staggered.
The back of the G model where the sail meets the hull is webbed and shaped with a curve. The back of the G1 model where the sail meets the hull is just plain straight.

About 12 boat of 039G1 variant (No. 314 to 319 and 324 to 329) were produced at JiangNan shipyard and Wuchang shipyard from 2004 to 2006. Please note that I am guessing with some of the number of these submarines, because the number of the boats are almost never on the released photos. At the moment, the 22nd Submarine Flotilla of the East Sea Fleet is made entirely of Song class. I believe they have No. 320-323, 314, 317-319. Here is a photo of that flotilla:

Four of the 039G1 variant joined with 4 636M in the 32nd Submarine Flotilla of the South Sea Fleet. Please note that 324 and 325 were originally in the 22nd Flotilla, so some sources still have them listed in that flotilla. Here is an image of 2 039G1 and 4 636M from this year.

And finally, 4 039G1 boats (No. 315, 316, 327, 328) joined 4 035G boats in the 2nd Submarine Flotilla of the North Sea Fleet. Here are some pictures of those boats together. Fortunately, we can actually see the number on these submarines, but I've had no such luck with other Song class photos.

At this point, Song submarine have become the work horse of PLAN. We constantly see pictures of one or more Song submarine out in the sea. The famous incident a few years ago involved a Song class submarine surfacing next to Kitty Hawk. That incident shows that Song submarines are venturing further and further away from the home base. This storyline forms an interesting contrast to the pictures of Kilo submarines sitting by the dockside. It also probably explains why China has not been interested in purchasing more Russian submarines.

In 2004, the lead boat of the 039A Yuan class (No. 330) was launched in WuChang shipyard while Song class was in the middle of mass production. This boat showed some Kilo influence with the hump, but also retained much of the features of 039 class. It is apparently also the first PLAN class using AIP system. It took a couple of years for this new class of submarine to sort out all of the problems. Similar to 039 class, a new variant of 039A came out a few years later with some changes from the first boat. Please see the photo below for the differences between the lead boat and the second boat:

I think that the trial period for 039A class was shorter and changes from first boat to second boat were fewer, because the leap from 039 to 039A was much less than the leap from 035 to 039 class. A total of 3 new 039A boats were produced from 2007 to 2008 to join the original 039A in a new flotilla. The picture below shows a flotilla with 3 Yuan class and 1 Song class.

I believe this was taken before the 4th Yuan was delivered to PLAN. I do not know where this flotilla is located, although I suspect it is a new flotilla established for East Sea Fleet. The Yuan class seemed to have followed Song class of one lead ship, 3 following variant and then more mass production. After a gap of 2 years, we recently have seen 2 new Yuan submarines launched in WuChang shipyard as shown in the photos below.

I cannot easily tell the difference between these boats and the previous 3 due to lack of more quality photos, but I did read that the interior had changed a lot in the new boats. As we move forward, I would expect that many new Yuan submarines will come out of WuChang and JiangNan shipyard in the coming 2 years. The production of this final variant of Yuan will probably be either 8 or 12 units based on the production path of the Song class. They will probably be assigned to the East Sea Fleet and the South Sea Fleet. At which point, the 035B submarines could be transferred to North Sea Fleet to replace the older 035G boats. By that time, 039/G and 039A class submarines will form most of the conventional submarine fleet.

And finally, a new class of submarine was launched in WuChang shipyard near the end of last year. There have been some discussions on this blog regarding to this new class when the lead boat first came out. Here is probably the most up close and detailed photo of this submarine.

Based on this photo and side by side comparisons with Yuan submarine, we can see that this is quite a large submarine (near the displacement of Soryu class). It seems to be designed to operate further offshore than Song and Yuan class. I guess this is part of PLAN's move to operate further and longer away from the shore. In the next couple of years, we will find out more about this class and its purpose. I would think that if this is a successful design, it will follow the production path of Song and Yuan class. By sometimes late this decade, it is possible that PLAN submarine force will have moved on completely from 60s Soviet era designs. That would make submarine the first type of large weaponry in PLA to do so. I think this truly shows the emphasis that PLAN has placed on conventional submarine fleet.

J-20

2011-01-02T10:30:00.000-08:00

The last week has really been an exciting time for PLAAF fans, because real photos of J-20 started appearing on various Chinese military forums online. I think it is also time for me to butt in with some little thoughts I have on anything J-20 related.

First of all, I would not characterize myself as knowledgeable in stealth technology or aerodynamics. When I look at J-20, I certainly see something designed to compete against other 5th generation aircraft out there. But if you were to ask me whether I think this is more stealthy than PAK-FA or more maneuverable than F-22, I simply would not be able to give you an answer on that.

However, I do find this to be an extremely interesting development. Here are some things that I find really interesting:

Transparency - It is really shocking to me that the photos for J-20 came out this early. Looking back, the first real photos of J-10 came out 3 or 4 years after the first flight. Even after the first photos came out, most photos that we saw were PS'd photos or CGs. The much less hyped J-10B's first photo came out 3 months after the first flight. Now, we see J-20's first photos coming out before the first flight even happened. I think it is a combination of modern technology and increased transparency from PLA. We see many people lining up with their cameras outside of CAC taking photos with no sighting of security around them. At the same time, we see the Chinese military forums allowing these photos to be published as soon as they are available. I think this shows PLA is more willing to allow high profile projects to be unveiled earlier on. The mysterious new conventional submarine in WuChang shipyard was unveiled as soon as it got launched. Maybe PLA will become as transparent as US military in the future. But until then, they seem to just be comfortable releasing details of their new projects through internet forums and camera phones.

Size - I think one thing that really shocked a lot of people is how large J-20 is or at least how large it appears to be. The original photos lead certain people like Bill Sweetman to conclude that J-20 has "overall length of 75 ft. and a wingspan of 45 ft. or more, which would suggest a takeoff weight in the 75,000-80,000-lb. class with no external load". With those assumptions, many concluded this to be designed in the role of fighter-bomber as F-111. However, recent analysis on Chinese bbs of the size of J-20 vs truck beside it compared to the size of J-10 vs the same truck yielded the conclusion that J-20 is more likely around 19 to 20 m long, which would make it shorter than flankers. Even when we factor in what appears to be greater fuel load and internal weapon bay, it should still be about the same size as flankers. Personally, I kind of see J-20 as replacing the role of flankers in PLAAF in the future. It would have to be capable of handling more long range strike missions than flankers, but it would most likely serve as the heavy fighter jet in hi-lo combination.

Prototype or technology demonstrator - Another question that some have raised is whether this is a prototype or a technology demonstrator. Back in 2009 on a CCTV interview, He Weirong, deputy commander of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, said that J-20 would be flown in 2010-11 and be operational in 2017-19. I would say from that interview that this is the first couple of prototypes. However, I would also say that the final production version could have a lot of changes from this original prototype. After all, this is China's first attempt at developing a 5th generation fighter jet. They will have a lot to figure out and make fixes to initial design issues before the production version is settled down. More than anything, the first flight will clearly be conducted with something other than WS-15. If WS-15 is intended to be the engine for J-20, then some more changes + test flights will need to be done with WS-15 fitted J-20 before that version achieves operational status.

Engine - This is probably one of the biggest mysteries surrounding J-20. What is the engine that it is using right now? We know that WS-15 is still years away from being ready. We know that AL-31F and FWS-10 would be vastly underpowered options for J-20. So, I would think the most obvious solution in the early stages of testing would either be 117S or some upgraded variants of FWS-10. Since upgraded variants of FWS-10 are not ready yet, 117S is most likely the engine on the first prototype. There has been a lot of talks about worsening China/Russia military relationships due to cloning issues, but I do think turbofan engine is one area where the cooperation is still quite beneficial for both sides. As we move forward, I think it will be interesting to see how the engine situation will change over time. Will 117S be the engine for J-20 until WS-15 becomes available? Will the initial production J-20s use upgraded variants of FWS-10? When will WS-15 be ready and how long will it take to do so? These are all important things to look forward to.

Industrial impact - A lot of people have called J-10 program the "Apollo program" of China's aviation industry. I have a feeling that the J-20 program will become that way too. In order to have a successful 5th generation design, J-20 will have to yield advances in stealth technology, aerodynamics, materialogy, avionics, missiles and propulsion. The J-10 program brought about an entire new generation of aerospace engineers for Chengdu Aircraft Corp (CAC) that are the driving forces behind all of the recent CAC projects. Many of the engineers are in their 30s and already have worked on many high priority programs. They should have the best years of development ahead of them. At the same time, producers of J-10's subsystems across the country also became more capable. The RnD for J-20 project should do the same thing for CAC and other suppliers.

Help from civilian programs? - In many ways, China's current civilian programs will help J-20 and vice versa. In the area of electronics, the most recent CIDEX 2010 exhibition clearly showed that the advances in civilian electronics in manufacturing and design have carried over to the military side. We have also seen similar improvements in avionics/radar for recent Chinese aircraft projects. At the same time, I think the C919 will also be very helpful toward J-20 program. As part of C919 program's involvement with Western suppliers, they will learn modern project management methods, purchase/develop more advanced production tooling and manufacturing process. These are all knowledge that can be transferred to J-20. Just as importantly, the suppliers for C919 will also work with local Chinese manufacturers to produce subsystems. This will produce a whole new network of suppliers that would be able to produce high quality subsystems for J-20. And of course, the advances in J-20 program will also be able to make these suppliers more competitive in civilian programs. Problems for the FWS-10 program have often been attributed to not enough testing in the development phase and production line problems. I would think that experience working with MTU and GE in producing propulsion units for C919 could also be transferred to allow the development and production of more reliable WS-15 engines. I can go on and on here, but there are plenty of examples where civilian programs could help out J-20 and vice versa. We have seen in recent year that successes in civilian shipbuilding have really been instrumental in the mass production of naval ships. I believe that successes in civilian aviation program can do the same for J-20 and WS-15 programs.

Smoke coming out of the furnace of Varyag?

2010-12-23T21:28:00.000-08:00

It looks like there are smoke coming out of the furnace of Varyag. I think we are finally seeing the steam turbines getting turned on. I will let you guys be the judge.

China's newest cutter

2010-12-22T21:36:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of new constructions in the Chinese shipyards recently of new maritime patrol/law enforcement vessel. Here is a quick look at China's newest and biggest cutter design.

According to earlier articles, this cutter will be built and delivered in May of 2012 by the WuChang shipyard. This vessel will cost 350 million RMB (about $50 million). It will be 128.6 m long, 5418 ton in displacement with a maximum speed of 20.4 knots. It can sustain 16 knots from 10,000 nm. It will also have a hangar for a medium size helicopter and be able to land a large size helicopter. Please note that while this is a big step up compared to China's existing fleet, it is still inferior to the size/performance of PLH31 (the largest patrol vessel of Japanese Coast Guard)

This cutter will serve in Maritime Safety Administration (MSA). Most of the recent constructions we've seen are for the Chinese maritime surveillance(CMS). Please refer to my earlier post on Chinese maritime law enforcement to see the difference.

Latest on Z-10 and J-10

2010-12-18T12:45:00.000-08:00

A couple of things before I get into this post. Things at work have really picked up recently and will stay that way in the foreseeable future. As the result of that, I will not be able to post as much during this time. You guys probably have noticed that by my absence this month. Also, I have concentrated far more on the navy the past couple of years and that is part of my move to spend less time speculating and more time just providing photographic evidences. Clearly, the naval shipbuilding program is a lot more visible at the moment than the military aircraft industry. Having said, we have seen some good news recently with regard to two of PLA's most important aerospace project: Z-10 and J-10.

Here is a couple of photos of thew new Z-10 (Z-10A???). The first three are up close shots of Z-10 carrying different weapon systems (including the really nice shot of PL-90) and the last photo shows Z-10's whole view with rocket launchers, 30 mm gun and ATGM/AAM launchers. We can also see a completely new designed nose turret compared to what it had before.

We know that they came out with Z-10 a while ago, but had to go back to the drawing board for some changes after the original engine PT6C-67C was no longer allowed to be used for it. I believe these new Z-10s are using the domestic WZ-9 engine, which has much less power than PT6C-67C. The new Z-10s appear to be much slender and slightly stealthier than the original design. I think the reduced profile has a lot to do with the less powerful engine.

The most interesting part are the photos below. They show that the new Z-10 has entered service in the 5th Army Aviation Regiment (LH-951xx) of Nanjing Military Region. From the numbering below, it appears that at least 8 units of this new Z-10 has joined service. On top of the original Z-10s that were delivered to army aviation in 2007, they probably have > 10 Z-10s in service by now. I'm not clear on how many helicopters are in each attack helo regiment of PLA, but there are 30-40 helicopters per regiment for smaller training utility helicopters like HC-120.

We have also seen some new and encouraging photos of J-10s. I got a photo in January of this year showing the first 4 J-10s delivered to the 26th regiment of PLAAF. This is the first picture we have of a J-10 with numbering from that regiment. I would say that this regiment should be fully equipped by now.

We also saw the first J-10 regiment in PLANAF. We can see the twin seater 83148 and the single seater 83143 in the next 2 photos. The number 8 indicates that this is part of PLANAF. The number 4 indicates that this is part of the 4th division of PLANAF and the number 3 indicates that this is the 3rd regiment of the 4th division. The other two numbers indicate that they are the number 13 and 18 of the regiment. This would indicate that the new regiment is located in Luqiao, which is under the East Sea Fleet and within striking distance of Taiwan. I do not believe that this batch of J-10s have any differences than the PLAAF J-10s. It is good to see that PLANAF is finally getting some 4th generation fighters jets outside of that Su-30MK2 regiments. A while ago, we also saw a bunch of J-11BS fighter jets in PLANAF colours outside of SAC. The other thing that we do not know is the size of the regiment. We know that PLAAF J-10 regiments generally have 28 aircraft (24 single and 4 twin seaters), but PLANAF regiments seem to be smaller in size than PLAAF ones.

The question is often how many J-10s are going into service and whether we will see new J-10 regiments formed for PLAAF. It appears from the photos below (from May) that there were at least 37 single seaters and a few twin seaters produced in the 5th batch of J-10s. The numbers on the J-10s are based on CAC designation. I believe the first digit indicates the batch # of the J-10 and the next 2 indicates the number of this aircraft in that batch. The lone twin-seated J-10 photo seems to indicate that twin-seaters have a different numbering mechanism. These J-10s were produced in the first half of this year imo and were delivered to the 26th PLAAF regiment and 12th PLANAF regiment.

The photos below show the 6th batch of J-10s going through the testing phase outside of CAC. I'm not sure how large this batch of J-10s will be, but it could be limited by the number of AL-31FNs that China has. There appears to be enough J-10s in this 6th batch to at least start forming a new regiment. I think they will need to place a new order for AL-31FNs soon, if WS-10A is still not ready for J-10 next year.

Updates around Chinese shipyards

2010-11-20T07:16:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of news from the Zhuhai airshow regarding Chinese UAVs, anti-ship missiles and PGMs with regard to attacking US carrier group. I'm hoping to get to that once the show is over, but there has been a lot of movement from Chinese shipyard recently. I'm just going to give a short look at those movements.

First of all, the minehunter that was shown in a previous entry has now been launched from JiangNan shipyard.

Secondly, the second ship in the Type 071 class has also been launched in the past 2 days. I find the progress for this ship to be quite remarkable, because it was still in large blocks as recent as 3 months ago. Overall, the sensors and weapons fit do not appear to have changed, but there are a couple of minor changes to the hull (if you compare the bridge, you can see the difference). The question now is whether or not they are planning to launch more ships of this class. I would say that this class has started mass production, so we are likely to see more Type 071s come out in the next couple of years from HuDong shipyard.

And finally, we have some really nice updated photos out of Dalian shipyard. We see more work on the island and on the deck. I finally see smoke coming out. I don't know if that's exhaust from the stack or just some testing of auxiliary diesel generators. Either way, there are some serious work going on inside the island.

The other thing we can see is wide installations of Type 730 CIWS and HQ-10 (Chinese version of SeaRAM) on Varyag. They are installed in the 4 locations that Kashtan and AK-630 used to be installed on Admiral K class. In each of those locations, the 2 Kashtan + 1 AK-630 (maybe 2 AK-630 in a couple of spots) are now replaced by 1 Type 730, 1 HQ-10 and 1 mysterious installation (appears to be some kind multi-purpose rocket launcher for decoy purpose). I'm waiting to see if any VLS installations will appear in these locations, because Admiral K also had 6 VLS of SA-N-9 SAM beside each pair of Kashtan CIWS.

This is a shot of the Sea Eagle radar on top of Varyag. It seems to be a different variant compared to what we see on 054A.

2010 is the start of PLAN's second building boom

2010-11-07T18:30:00.000-08:00

Over the past few months, we have really started seeing new warships appearing in different naval shipyards in China. We saw the appearance of the 5th 054A in HP shipyard and then the 5th 054A in HD shipyard. We also saw 2 submarines (including a mysterious new type) appearing in WC shipyard. Over the past week, we have seen a flurry of new photos coming out of different shipyards that really showed the extent of the current buildup. On top of these photos, we also have plenty of rumours surrounding which ships might show up in the coming few months.

First, to show the ships that we have photographic confirmation for.
This is the 5th 054A from HP shipyard. It still does not have the number painted, but looks to be ready for sea trials soon. At the same time, the 4th 054A from HD shipyard will be commissioned soon and the 5th one has yet to be launched.

In the same shipyard, we are seeing continuous progress in the second of the class of Type 071 LPD. From just looking at the previous pictures of the front of the new unit and this photo of the back, it seems to not have changed much from the first of the class.

Of course, we also have our favourite floating casino still undergoing construction in Dalian shipyard. I personally believe that it would've been much further along if the refitting work was done in Shanghai or GuangZhou, but Dalian was chosen right from the start. We have seen the Sea Eagle (similar to top plate) volume search radar installed on top of the island and a mysterious launcher (circled in the second photo) installed where one of the eight kashtan used to be installed. We think that this new launcher is going to look a lot like SeaRAM. A couple of years ago, we saw something like SeaRAM called FL-3000N in the Zhuhai airshow. It looks like this will be installed on Varyag for close in defense and could also be installed on 998, 999 and other ships. The rumoured designation of this CIWS is HQ-10.

Finally, JiangNan shipyard is also back in business now that the new location in ChangXing has become fully operational First of all, we see that a new DDG is under construction in this shipyard that looks to be not too far from getting launched. From what I can see, the outer structural appearance looks very much like that of 052C. It will just be a little while longer before we can see what the entire ship looks like. The rumour is that it will be launched later this month.

We also received the photo of a second DDG under construction in JN shipyard. From the look of this picture and pictures of other modules of this ship, it does not look that far behind the progress of the first DDG.

In the same shipyard, we have also seen a new MCM ship (said to be a minehunter like 804) getting close to been launched. I can only see the back of the ship, so I can't really verify that is the case yet.

At the same time, I have read a lot of about ongoing activities in different shipyards that have not appeared in photographs yet:

In JN shipyard, a total of 4 DDGs are said to be under construction. That is not too surprising if you consider that the 4 052B/Cs were built in a relatively short time span by JN. On top of the MCM ship that has already appeared, at least one more is under construction. And finally, two conventional submarines (most likely Yuan class) are all been worked on in JN.

In GuangZhou shipyard, work has started on 3 or 4 new large replenishment ships. PLAN has really seen the need for new replenishment ships since the start of the missions to Gulf of Aden. The ships 886 and 887 have been really overworked in the past 2 years.

In HuDong shipyard, there are supposedly a couple of new LPDs that are also on the order books. We could also see more 054As to appear out of no where, but this wave seemed to have stopped after the 5th pair.

In Huangpu shipyard, they are concentrated on completing the 5th 054As and the 4 cutters for China Marine Surveillance. A new class of ship (speculated to be type 056) will also be appearing before the end of the year. This ship is supposed to fill the gap between 022 and 054A and play the role of offshore patrol vessel. Similar to 022, PLAN has awarded contract for this ship to numerous shipyards across the country (including smaller ones).

So as you can see, this shipbuilding boom is quite extensive. Many of the prototypes from recent years have gone into mass production. There were a couple of years of lull in 2008 and 2009, but 2010 brings back the memories of 2004 to 2006.

Interesting little tidbit on PLAN

2010-10-29T22:12:00.000-07:00

The 7th 054A was commissioned today with PLAN ESF as No. 548. According to this article, it was named after the city Yiyang from Province Hunan. There is also a news report here.

We found out some interesting stats on 054A like that its standard displacement is 3600 tons (we previous found out that full displacement is 4053 tons), length is 134 m, width is 16 m and maximum speed is 27 knots.

However, the more interesting is the procurement cycle for PLAN. It reported that this unit was first ordered to be built by HuangPu shipyard in 2006. It was chosen to be named after Yiyang in April of 2009. It was launched in Nov of 2009, started sea trials in May of 2010 and got commissioned in Oct of 2010. So, it takes less than a year to go from launching to commissioning. At the same time, it takes 3 years to go from getting the order to being launched. I'm not sure if the earlier ships of this batch 571 was placed at the same time, so the construction time to launching + preparation work could be much shorter than 3 years.

PLAN MCM

2010-10-14T20:41:00.000-07:00

There is a new minesweeper class coming into service with China recently. I thought it would be a good time to go through the history of PLAN mine warfare development.

MCM operation has long been a huge weakness in PLAN. If ASW is widely viewed as the Achilles Heel of PLAN, then MCM is not that far behind. As numerous navies started to develop a new generation of MCM ships in the 70s and 80s built with glass-reinforced plastic material, equipped with remotely operated vehicle mine neutralization system and advanced minehunting and classification sonar, China was stuck with Soviet 50s era T-43/Type 6610 minesweepers.

China bought the licensed production to Project 254K and 254M minesweepers in the 50s. The first 4 vessels that were built with Soviet supplied kits were Type 6605. After that, China started to build Type 6610 based on Soviet documentations to Type 254M minesweepers. As time went on, China eventually indigenized everything after the Soviet-China split and made more modifications to turn Type 6610 into more of a patrol boat.

A total of 33 Type 6610 vessels were built all the way up to 1987 and several of which were even involved in real combat against Vietnamese Navy. Even now, PLAN still operates about 15 of these Type 6610 minesweepers including the frequently photographed No. 830 to 834 of East Sea Fleet.

By the late 1970s, China started development of a new type of coastal minesweeper. This class, known as the Type 082 Wosao class, first joined service in 1988. They are 44.8 m long, 6.2 m wide and have a draft of 3.7 m. They were the first sign of a post T-43 + modernized minesweeping design by China. They were equipped with Type 316 mini contact sweep, type 317 magnetic sweep, type 318 acoustic sweep and type 319 infrasonic sweep. These vessels can also be used to control the Type 312 remote minesweeping drones. This ship class basically consists of the original Type I variant ships (No. 801 to 803) and the improved Type II variant (No. 806、807、816、817, 820 to 827). You can recognize the difference just by looking at the bridge. Here are some of the ships from this class.

As we arrived at the current wave of PLAN modernization, MCM was clearly a huge weakness in PLAN. The Type 082 class is modern compared to T-43, but they are only suitable for coastal operations and are not modern by international standard. PLAN needed MCM vessels that would push it to the modern level of MCM ships that came into service with different NATO navies in the 80/90s like the Avenger class, Tripartite class, Sandown class and Type 343 Hameln class. PLAN has kind of moved into this new era of MCM operation with 2 new classes in the past few years. The first one is the Type 081 minesweeper. They are built more for seagoing mine warfare operations than Type 082. They are larger, probably close to the size of T-43s, equipped with more modern sweeping systems, mine detection sonar and modern command system (like GPS, radar, display console, combat system). At the current time, we know of at least 4 units of this class (805, 810, 839 and 840). Each of these ships cost around $37 million in 2008. The second MCM class is the Type 082II (or another designation) minehunter. So far, there is only one unit of this ship built. As you can see with the photos below, it is very similar in size to Type 081. I would say they are both around 550 to 600 ton in displacement.

I think it has taken a while for the next ship of this class to come out, because it represented too much of an advancement in PLAN. Similar to other ship series, this first unit is testing out a lot of new equipments and concepts before further units are built. This is probably the first MCM ship in PLAN system that does not use any kind of mechanical sweep and probably the first one to be built with Glass reinforced plastic. As shown below, it is also the first MCM ship to be equipped with mine disposing ROV (+crane to lower ROV) and advanced sonar management system. The sonar system is reported to be able to track and identify everything with several hundreds meters. In fact, one of the pictures showed a scale of up to 200 m, but I'm not sure if they have a longer tracking mode.

As it happened, we saw a new class of remote controlled minesweeping drones recently. This development is kind of interesting, because China has been studying different navies around the world for ideas in improvement. In most cases, PLAN follows the path of USN (like 052C + combat system, 071/LCAC, Type 920 hospital ship). In this case, it seems like PLAN found German navy's Ensdorf class to be the one that would be the best for its given requirements. The dimensions of 804 is very similar to Ensdorf class and the dimensions of this new Type 8041 drone is very similar to Seehund drones. It looks like 804 will be operating with 3 or 4 of these drones + ROVs in disposing mines.

China Maritime Surveillance

2010-10-07T18:43:00.000-07:00

In the recent time, the Fisheries Law Enforcement Command made a lot of noise with the deployment of YuZheng-310 to South China Sea. Even so, China Maritime Surveillance has slowly become the biggest fish of the five Chinese coast guard agencies as mentioned in the last post on this project. The force is responsible for enforcing laws and order within China’s territorial waters, exclusive economic zones. Since China is having so many disputes with USA and neighbouring countries recently on the issue of territorial waters and EEZ, CMS has clearly jumped to prominence over time.

It is taking over some of the roles previously assigned to the navy, so it's not surprising to see that the naval expansion also led to CMS expansion. In fact, it has received some 037 ships as part of this recent movement in retiring PLAN ships into the Coast Guard force. As PLAN rise in stature, CMS is also continuing to rise in stature. Unlike its military counterpart, I see a balanced growth of each of the fleet of the North, East and South Sea Headquarter of CMS. This trend clearly differs from that of PLAN, which favours the growth of blue water assets for SSF and anti-access assets for ESF (while leaving NSF to rot).

This is a recent summary of the major cutters of each of the three HQs of CMS.

North Sea
Haijian-28	4435 ton
Haijian-22	1200 ton
Haijian-27	1200 ton
Haijian-18	997 ton
Haijian-17	1150 ton
Haijian-11	800 ton

East Sea
Haijian-52	3167 ton
Haijian-51	1730 ton
Haijian-46	1324 ton
Haijian-53	1324 ton
Haijian-49	997 ton
Haijian-47	800 ton
Haijian-62	800 ton

South Sea
Haijian-81	4435 ton
Haijian-83	3980 ton
Haijian-71	1324 ton
Haijian-72	890 ton
Haijian-73	1117 ton
Haijian-74	997 ton

This expansion of CMS was made into part of the 10th 5 year plan in 2000. The first phase of the buildup happened from 2004 to 2005. A 3000-ton class Haijian-83 was built by JiangNan shipyard. A 1500-ton class Haijian-51 was built by WuChang shipyard. Three 1000-ton class Type 1 Haijian-46, 17 and 71 were built by WuChang shipyard. A final 1000-ton class Type 2 Haijian-27 was built by HuangPu shipyard.

We have now reached the second phase of the CMS buildup. There are numerous cutters being built at multiple naval shipyards for CMS. In the Huangpu shipyard, there have been two cutters Haijian-23 and Haijian-75 that have been launched recently.

They are two of the four 1000 ton Type-II class cutters that are on order for HP. They are 75.8 m long and 10.2 wide. It's actually quite amazing to see how fast these 2 ships got launched. They only began earlier this year and will be delivered before the end of the year.

In the WuChang shipyard, Haijian-15 and Haijian-84 are currently launched and fitting out the electronics.

They are the 2 1500 ton class cutter that are on order for WuChang. Each cutter is 88 m long, 12 m wide and has 5.6 m draft. The actual displacement of the ship is 1740 ton. They were launched earlier this year and may be delivered before the end of the year. Although, WuChang does not build ship as fast as HP, so it probably won't make that time frame.

Finally, a 3000-ton class Haijian-50 started construction in WuChang in April of this year and is scheduled to be delivered to East Sea in May of Next Year. It will be similar to the Haijian-83 built for South Sea.

On top of that, WuChang is also contracted to build numerous 600-ton cutters for CMS. So, WuChang clearly has a large part in this 2nd phase of CMS build up. I would say that HP shipyard is making much better progress on its orders from the recent photos. Although, I'm sure 054As and Yuan submarines are still getting higher priority in these shipyard than the CMS ships.

The third phase of the buildup is probably going to happen at the end of the 12th 5 year plan if we go by the time line of the first 2 phases of the buildup. One of the projections is that they will be going for 3 5000-ton class, 3 4500-ton class, 4 3000-ton class, 6 2000-ton class, 16 1500-ton class and 14 1000-ton class. I doubt that they will go for that many, but the next phase will probably be larger, because PLAN will be expected to operate further away from the shore. With PLAN (especially SSF) becoming more blue water, CMS will only be given more tasks to protect China's shoreline. So, I think WuChang and HuangPu shipyard will be really busy cranking new cutters out in 3 or 4 years.

New wave of Chinese naval ship construction + closer look in its SSK program

2010-10-03T17:57:00.000-07:00

I think that the period of late 2002 to 2007 was probably China's first naval shipbuilding boom. During that period, we saw a lot of new platforms introduced like the new DDGs(051C,052B/C), new FFGs (054, 054A) and even larger ships (like replenishment ships and Type 071 LPD). After that, we had a couple of years in 2008 and 2009 where we had a lull and only saw the end of the 022 production run, numerous 054As and some Yuan coming out. The only new ship we saw were the large hospital ship and the new submarine tender.

Part of the reason for this slow down was the move of JiangNan shipyard to ChangXin and changes in other major shipyards. A larger reason for this is the raw number of new hardware coming into service that was simply overwhelming PLAN's ability to absorb them. A final reason is the PLAN philosophy in introducing new platforms. They typically make a huge leap in the first prototype while continuing to building ships of existing variant. Once they sort out all of the problems in the first prototype, they start to mass produce this new class. As they mass produce, they continue to make smaller tweaks until the end of the production run. A typical example of this is the 054 series. They commissioned a pair of 054s in 2004, but they built 2 more older Jiangwei class frigates after that. By 2006, they started to mass produce the improved variant 054A. They have made a couple of small changes after the first 4 054As, but the production run have generally remained constant throughout the past 4 years. We have seen 10 054As appearing by now. In some cases like 022, they built the first 4 units and it did not take very long before they really started cranking them out.

And finally, there are the destroyers and the amphibious ships. 052C was a huge technology leap from what China had before. The jump was so huge that PLAN did not order another 052 series DDG until the current DDGs under construction in JiangNan (a span of 5 years). Type 071 LPD is another example where the leap was huge. The first ship 998 was commissioned by late 2007, but we only started seeing the second unit under construction in the past few months. They took a long time to learn how to operate a much larger amphibious ship with support for multiple helicopters and LCACs. I believe that we have really entered a second shipbuilding boom for PLAN, because mass production has started for some of those prototype units they built in the first period of boom.

The most interesting case study is probably PLAN's conventional submarine program. They built the first song submarine 039 in 1994. Even though it was not very advanced, China was so technologically backward back then that it didn't enter service until 5 years later. They made several changes and commissioned 3 of these modified Song (039G class) submarine from 2001 to 2003. They made some more smaller changes and really mass produced 9 to 12 of these improved Song (039G1 class) submarine from 2004 to 2006. These are currently the workhorse of PLAN. At the same time, they launched the lead unit in the Yuan (039A class) submarine in 2004, which probably commissioned in 2006. I would say that the technological leap from 039G1 to 039A was not all that great, but it still took them 3 years before we saw the next Yuan submarine coming out. The next 3 Yuan submarine launched in 2007 and 2008 were slightly modified from the first Yuan, so we could call that 039A1. The interesting part is that we did not see any more photos after the early part of 2008 of new unit (at least none that we were sure about). There was possibly one as shown below, but I'm not 100% sure.

While this was happening, I heard a lot of rumours that there were a bunch of new submarines under construction at WuChang shipyard. This was obviously verified in the past month when we saw that mysterious new diesel submarine showing up. I've been calling it 039B, but PLAN probably has a different designation for it. It probably represents a much larger evolution in technology over Yuan compared against Yuan's evolution from Song. So, I would say that this submarine is in the same position that Yuan was in 2004 to 2005. Another similarity is that Yuan submarines are still getting pumped out. These are a couple of pictures that shows the new submarine with a Yuan class submarine in the background. I do find the submarine in the background to be slightly different from the previous Yuan submarines (as shown in the first photo). The front top edge of the sail seems to be curved and it's also hard to see any torpedo tube launchers. If we look at the second photo (which gives a better prospective of the sizes), I would say that the new submarine has much longer sail and is probably a little larger too. Since Yuan is already quite a large conventional submarine, the new one seems to be designed to be quite an ocean going submarine. It's quite possible that we've had a couple of other units of this slightly modified Yuan submarine built in the past 2 years, but the pictures from WuChang shipyard don't come out as often. We know that JiangNan shipyard has started to crank out naval vessels again, so both WC and JN are probably building Yuan submarine at this point. It's the same scenario that we had in 2004/2005 with Song and Yuan. At that point, we were seeing 3 or 4 submarines coming out each year for a 3 years production run. That probably would not happen this time around, but we will probably see mass production of the latest variant of Yuan until the new submarine is ready for mass production.

More detailed look at Chinese "LCAC"

2010-10-02T15:05:00.000-07:00

Before, we starting looking at the Chinese version of LCAC, I have a couple of pictures showing the new amphibious ship under construction in HuDong shipyard. They have finally assembled all the modules together so that we can see the hull of the ship as a whole sitting in the dry dock. It broadly takes the hull shape of Type 071's lead ship 998. A bunch of fanboys have tried to point out minor differences here and there, but I don't want to really conclude anything before it really takes shape. For LPD, China seemed to have taken the typical path of building one lead ship, learn how to use it, sort out the problems and then mass producing later. We seemed to have moved onto the mass production phase now with this second unit.

Speaking of mass production, the 5th 054A of HD shipyard has been uncovered and is shown below. For those counting, we have basically 6 054A in service. We have 2 054A launched at HP shipyard. One of which already had number painted, but returned for some reason. We also have another 054A launched at HD shipyard that's getting the electronics installed right now. At this point, I don't know if they will build any more pairs of 054As after this 5th pair.

And finally, a more close look at the Chinese LCAC. Once in a while, we actually get a detailed description of a new PLAN asset. Although I can't be sure this is 100% accurate, it's still a good source to look at.
In the first picture, we see a nice diagram with description of each part. We can see that the steering cabin (or bridge? Not sure what I should be calling it) is on the right side of the picture and the left side if we are on the craft looking forward. On the American LCAC, it's on the other side. Following that, we see 1 large engine cabin on each side with a smokestack pointing out. After that, we see 2 lift fans on both side. And finally, we see the large propellers. The deck of the Chinese LCAC is 28.8m long, 50% longer than American counterpart and can carry 2 light armored combat vehicles.

This one really does a nice comparison. It states that the Chinese LCAC has much inferior maneuverability compared to the American LCAC. Then, it describes in what ways the American LCAC can move and shift that the Chinese one just can't. I think the author is attributing this to American one having 2-shrouded reversible pitch airscrews.

The specs themselves are more interesting. According to the table, the Chinese one is 33 m in length vs 26.8. It is 16.8 m wide vs 13.3 m. The deck is 28.8 m vs 20.4 m in length but 7.2 m vs 8.24 m in width. It makes sense since the Chinese propeller and engine cabin take more space. Front ramp is 7.5 m vs 8.65 m and the rear ramp is 4.9 m vs 4.5 m. The Chinese LCAC has a payload of 60 ton and displacement of 170 ton vs 68 ton and 165 ton for the American one. They both have maximum speed of about 40 knots and range of 200 nm. Chinese one is powered by 2 QC-70 engines (7000 kw each) and American one is powered by 4 TF-40B (3400 kw each).

Some recent developments in Chinese Shipyards

2010-09-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

We've had some new photos coming out recently showing new ships under construction. Probably the biggest development is what we saw in Wuchang shipyard in Wuhan. The photos below shows a new variant of the 039 series of ships that is noticeably different from 039A (aka Yuan class). I haven't posted the photos until now, because the earlier ones all looked like pictures of models or seriously photo-shopped pictures. Remarkably, they decided to make this new variant look a lot like a kilo submarine. Here are the photos and I will let you guys decide.

Right beside the new submarine, they are also in the midst of building a new cutter Haijian-15 for CMS.

At JiangNan shipyard, we've seen several really unclear pictures that we think are new DDGs for PLAN. It's really hard to tell much right now. Just have to play the usual wait and see approach with PLAN.

We've also seen a couple of new photos of the new amphibious ship currently under construction in HuDong shipyard. It looks like this ship could be ready to be launched before Chinese New Year.

And finally, the Type 920 hospital ship sailed for Gulf of Aden around the end of last month. It has finally reached Gulf of Aden and we got several pictures of its rendezvous with replenishment ship 887 and destroyer 170.

A more indepth look at Chinese maritime law enforcement

2010-08-21T07:35:00.000-07:00

I've spent sometime the last couple of days preparing for a more informative post on cutters from different Chinese coast guard/maritime surveillance agencies. This is my attempt at a comprehensive look at Chinese maritime enforcement.

I would say that a good place to start is by looking at the Law Enforcement Cutters section of the Sinodefence Naval Vessel Page. Generally speaking, there are five agencies with a large hand in China's maritime law enforcement. The picture below shows the agencies and what is the prefix for their ship names.

The first one listed in there is the China Maritime Surveillance (CMS) of the State Oceanic Administration (SOA). The CMS has the primary mission of patrolling China’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). A 2008 report in China Daily revealed that CMS had a total of nine aircraft and more than 200 patrol vessels. The largest CMS ship right now is Haijian-83. It is in 3000 ton class and here is an article on it

That is followed by the 1500-ton Haijian-51. This ship has gotten into numerous confrontations with the Japanese over at East China Sea.

The 1200-ton Haijian-27 (aka 1000t-class Type II) cutter.

The 1150-ton Haijian-17/46 (aka 1000t-class Type I) cutter

A new 600-ton design

There are more ships in CMS, but these are just an example of the ships. It also recently received two ships that used to be Type-037 patrol boats for PLAN.

In October 2008, CMS Deputy Director Sun Shuxian declared that, “The [CMS] force will be upgraded to a reserve unit under the navy, a move which will make it better armed during patrols … the current defensive strength of CMS is inadequate”. CMS has stepped up patrol in both South and East China Sea. The build-up in South China Sea is really significant because it comes on the heel of large PLAN SSF build-up and China's recent elevation of South China Sea to Tibet/Taiwan in terms of Sovereignty discussions. We all know about the numerous confrontations between China and USN in this area recently. We have also read about numerous issues with Vietnamese in the same area. It looks like CMS' desires to take over many of the duties currently conducted by SSF as that fleet is moving further blue sea. The diagram below is the organization of the South Sea branch of CMS.

Probably the more significant part is the tremendous expansion that is currently under way for CMS's South Sea branch. According to a June 2009 article, they are planning more cutters of 4000t, 1500t and 1000t class. In fact, we've already seen the first 1000t-class Type II launched in HP shipyard as Haijian-75. At the same time, a 1500t-class cutter is under construction next to the 5th 054A in the dry dock of HP. Rumour is that HP will build a total of 4 1000t-class, 2 1500t-class and 1 4000t-class. Either way, we are seeing a huge expansion of CMS.

The second listed ministry is the Fisheries Law Enforcement Command (FLEC) and its ships begin with the prefix YuZheng. FLEC is given the task of preventing illegal fishing activities in China’s coastal fisheries. The largest FLEC vessel to this date is YuZheng-88. It is actually converted from replenishment ship 888 that had just entered PLAN SSF a few years ago, so this is a 15,000t-class ship.

There are also several other large cutters in service like the 2500t-class Yuzheng-310 and 4000t-class Yuzheng-311

There are several other larger cutters like Yuzheng301 and Yuzheng303

The third listed ministry is the Maritime Safety Administration (MSA) of the Ministry of Transport. Its ships begin with the prefix Haixun or Haibiao. In terms of manpower, MSA exceeds any of the other maritime enforcement agencies with over 20,000 personnel, reflecting both the power of China’s commercial maritime interests generally, and the range of missions—from certifying seafarers to maintaining aids to navigation—that MSA oversees. MSA is headlined by the two largest ship in their inventory Haixun-11 and Haixun-31. They are both 3000t cutters.
Haixun-11 is built for Shandong branch of MSA

Haixun-31 is built for Guangdong branch of MSA.

There is also the 1500t-class Haixun-21 built for the Shanghai branch.

And here are a couple of other smaller MSA ships.

Despite having the most personnel, MSA does not have the most impressive fleet of cutters. The expansion of MSA is more even than CMS, with Shandong (next to yellow sea), Shanghai (next to East China Sea) and Guangdong (next to South China Sea) all getting their largest cutters. MSA cutters come together in South China Sea or East China Sea for patrolling exercises a couple of times a year. MSA will also be getting a 5000t-class cutter soon, which will be the largest and most modern cutter in service (if we don't include YuZheng-88).

The fourth listed ministry is the anti-smuggling force of the General Administration of Customs. Its ships begin with the prefix Haiguan. It is probably the ministry that has seen the least new ships. I guess that indicates the general lower rank of the customs. It just have a few smaller ships like below.

The fifth listed ministry is the Coast Guard (aka Maritime Police in Chinese), which is under the control of PAP. Despite its name, it is neither the largest or the most influential of the ministries. Its ships begin with the prefix Haijing.
The most modern vessel in its fleet is Haijing-1001.

It has received 2 ex-Jianghu class frigates which were given the numbers 1002 and 1003. I believe as more Jianghu ships get decommissioned, the coast guard maybe getting more of them.

I have also posted several other vessels below, but they are really not that modern compared to what we are seeing for some of the other ministries.

In summary, it looks like CMS and MSA are undergoing the largest expansions among the ministries. I believe much of those ships will be delivered to the branches serving the East and South China Sea. These are part of China's effort to have more control in the disputed waters. As with PLAN, civilian maritime fleet were seriously neglected until recent times. So even with the recent expansion effort, it is much smaller and less potent than US and Japanese Coast Guard. The different agencies are procuring more aircraft recently to help with maritime patrol, but they are still tiny compared to that of US and Japan. At the same time, I'm also wary about how so many agencies would be able to work together in offshore patrol. Even so, the maritime agencies (especially CMS and MSA) have indeed expanded and improved a lot in the recent year. And with all of the major recent incidents, they have only expanded the pace of their expansions. I am also interested in seeing how these civilian agencies interact with the navy in patrolling duties. For example, would PLAN delegate patrolling activities to these agencies and not bother with having an OPV class?

Regardless, I think this is one significant development in Chinese maritime aspirations that is not really covered that well by PLA-watchers like myself or foreign government agencies.

054A photos from HP shipyard + Varyag photos

2010-08-20T20:59:00.000-07:00

I've come across some really good photos of new 054A from HP shipyard and recent photos of Varyag. First, for the 5th 054A and also the 4th 054A from HP:
More detailed photos of the 5th 054A, looks like most of the sensors are already installed. I'm still a little shocked by how it just appeared.

The 4th 054A from HP, No 548, resting in the dock with Haijian-75, one of the new cutters.

Now, recent photos of Varyag from Dalian. It looks like a lot of work has been done since the last set of photos we've seen. The island is now all painted, although the sensors are still yet to be installed. There are still many boxes, containers, cables and generators sitting on its deck. I will let you guys make judgment on how it's progressing.

New 054A + MSA ships

2010-08-18T17:33:00.000-07:00

First of all, I was hit with a huge surprise yesterday morning when I saw pictures of the 5th 054A from HP shipyard. Normally, we see a nice progression of photos of the ship being built, but this one was almost ready to be launched by the time we got the first photos. On top of that, I had expected PLAN to stop producing 054 ships for a while after the 2nd batch of 4 were completed. After more extended look and checking my sources, it does appear to be authentically the 5th 054A from HP shipyard. They did a really good job of hiding this ship behind a civilian ship, so we did not know it was being built all along. By the time this ship was in plain sight, it was already fitted with sensors. This ship appears to be a little different from the previous 4 from far out, so I'm eagerly waiting for more close up photos before it is launched. As we know, 054 ships normally get built in pairs with one in HP shipyard and one is HD shipyard. With the appearance of this one, we can assume a 5th one will also be built in HD. That indicates we would have at least 2 054s and 10 054As. A while ago, Richard Fisher did an interview with one of the diesel engine makers that said they expected PLAN to produce about 12 054/As based on the diesel engines they purchased. After that, they expected PLAN to move on to a design that also used gas turbines. From that, I would expect that they stop producing 054A designs after this pair and start producing a modified design that is a little larger after 2 to 3 years. A separate possibility is that they will produce a few more 054As to rotate to Gulf of Aden. Anyhow, here is the new ship. You can see that the 4th 054A from HP (No 548) has come back.

Another interesting part is seeing a new MSA ship beside No 548. From following Chinese Maritime patrol ships, it appears that they are all either Haixun or Haijian. I could be totally off here, but Haixun ships seemed to be for the Chinese Ministry of Transportation and Haijian ships are for the State Oceanographic Administration.

According to the State Oceanic Administration website, that MSA ship should be Haijian-75. It was launched on July 29th and will be delivered to south sea branch in the end of October. It is one of the 4 such 1000-ton class ships that HP shipyard is building for the south sea branch. They are also building 2 1500-ton class ships (Haijian-15 is the first one) and 1 3000-ton class ship (Haijian-50). This is all part of China's effort to increase patrols in the South China Sea (or as other countries see it, an effort to dominate South China Sea).

Some of the ships currently in service:
Haijian-20

Haijian-83

Haijian-27

Usage of PLAN Aircraft Carrier

2010-08-11T17:44:00.001-07:00

We see many articles in the West about PLAN's rapid growth and the possibilities of the future Aircraft Carriers. There have been a lot of questions in the west about how China might use the new hardware. If this recent OpEd on Global Times is any indication, the discussion on this has not finished in China either.

In this piece, he started off by saying that China currently does not have a battling US for sea control, nor will it have it in the future. And if US keeps regarding China as its enemy in the Pacific Ocean, then that will bring calamity to the world.

He says that overt usage of Chinese navy in solving regional territorial issues or teaching US a small lesson may bring a stronger sense of national strength in the short run, but would result in anti-Chinese sentiment across the world. It will only end up scaring the neighbors. So, the usage of aircraft carrier must be careful. He also mentions that China should use carriers to strengthen the nation's soft power through indirectly diffusing crisis around the world. China cannot achieve sea supremacy over US in the near future, not should it. It should increase national strength through all avenues. There is no reason for China not to have an aircraft carrier given its position as the only UN P5 nation to not have one. The question is how China can make the world feel more at ease about having carriers.

I think the most important part to note is that I really see no desire in Chinese public or even in the military for worldwide domination. Over the past few years, it is sensing a rapid growth in its national stature, so it is acting more boldly on international issues rather than being withdrawn. China has always claimed South China Sea as part of its sovereignty. It is only voicing these claims more loudly now that it is the world's second largest economy.

Latest F-22P news

2010-08-07T06:10:00.001-07:00

I will first start off by posting some recent pictures of F-22P. The first two are pictures of 253 (the 3rd unit of F-22P) in sea trials. And the last picture is of the 4th unit of F-22P that is currently under construction in Karachi.

And I also have seen a recent article that interviewed Captain Mirza Foad Amin Baig, who is the Commanding Officer of PNS Zulfiqar. Since I'm not sure about whether I'm allowed to post the article on here, I will just give a detailed summary in points:

The First F-22P (PNS Zulfiqar No. 251) was commissioned on 30th July 2009. It arrived in Karachi on 13 September and was inducted into the PN fleet on 19 September.
They tested the sensors + weapons of 251, including successful firing of C-802
F-22P is 3,144 tonnes and 123.4 m long -> larger than what we thought and larger than Jiangwei class
ASuW uses 8 C-802 missiles, Z-9EC for OTH targeting and Chinese version of AK-176M main gun
ASW consists of ET-52C 324mm torpedo tubes, RDC-32 rocket launchers and Echo Type 5 hull mounted sonar
Close in air defense with FM-90N SAM, AK-176M + 2 export version of Type 730 CIWS
Combat system is based on Chinese ZKJ-3C
EW suite uses Chinese RWD-8 intercept system and a NJ8I-3 jammer
Non-FCR Sensors include a SUR-17 air-surveillence radar, an SR-60 air/surface search radar and a Kelvin-Hughes 2007 navigation radar
Uses CODAD propulsion with two Tognum MTU 12V 1163 TB 83 diesel engines
Top speed of 28+ knots + range of 6000+ nm at 18 knots
Core crew is 188 with capacity for 212

From all report, it looks like PN is quite satisfied with the F-22Ps thus far. I have not kept up with PN current effort in buying an OHP. Last I heard, they were in the process of getting one. I do believe there have already been much talk regarding to PN buying 4 more frigates of China. The only question is what will be on that ship.

Peace Mission 2010

2010-07-25T13:08:00.000-07:00

Looks like the military exercise between Shanghai Cooperation Organization is becoming an annual occurrence instead of bi-annual.

According to rian, the next one will be this September. Previously, Peace Mission had taken place in 2005, 2007 and 2009. The article is as follows:

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will conduct a series of anti-terror drills from September 9 - 25 in Kazakhstan, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

The exercise, codenamed Peace Mission 2010, will be held at the Matybulak base near the town of Gvardeisky with each of the SCO member states (China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) contributing at least one operational-tactical group.

Iran, India, Mongolia and Pakistan have observer status in the organization.

The drills will test the interoperability of the SCO armed forces in rendering assistance to a member state involved in an internal armed conflict or subjected to a mass terrorist attack.

In many ways, these exercises have come full circle. In 2005, it involved 10,000 soldiers and was widely reported by different media circles. At that time, Russians were using the exercise as an opportunity to show off new hardware to export to China. Russians also showed themselves to be much better than PLA in all of the different missions. As time went on, PLA have improved a lot in the past 2 exercises, but there is a still a large gap between the operational capability of the two forces. Much of that is due to the less intensive and realistic training method of PLA. The Russians have had recent ground combats, so they have used those live combat experience to develop training procedure and ROE that is much more effective than that of PLA. Even as late as 2009, PLA commanders commented that they were impressed with Russian troops strictness in cleaning and maintaining equipments and their ability to fly and enter battle zones in their helicopter at much lower altitude.

J-15 finally appearing?

2010-07-10T07:38:00.001-07:00

We've received the first good clear picture of what appears to be J-15, the naval fighter jet to be used on future aircraft carriers.

On a side note, it looks like PLAN's aviation arm is going to be taking some J-10s, although I doubt those will actually be naval fighters.

071 deploying to Aden officially

2010-07-01T20:13:00.000-07:00

According to this Xinhua article, China will be deploying 998, 170 and 887 to Gulf of Aden. It also reports that the flotilla will have more than 1,000 personnel, including Navy special forces troops. We also find out that 998's displacement is 18,500 tonnes in its mission configuration. It should be not a surprise that 998 is going on this mission. China has been sending all of its new naval toys out there. They waited until the LCAC is in service before sending 998 on this mission. The more interesting part are the photos that came out.

First, we have a really nice detailed diagram of 998. It looks like the well deck can only hold one LCAC, but it will also hold a couple of high speed patrol boat. I presume that these will all be used against the pirates. It also looks like the hangar is large enough to hold 4 Z-8s (assuming they do 2 side by side on top of 2 front and back). The Z-8s accompanying 998 were specially fitted with gun pods to assist in attacking pirates.

Here are some photos of the LCAC from the same magazine. Looks like the one traveling to Aden will be 3320. There is also a nice photo of LCAC going at high speed.

A picture of the well deck with patrol boat.

Finally, more pictures of 998 going on this mission.

Anyway, good to see we are finally getting more details on this ship.

071 deploying to Aden + More photos

2010-05-29T07:41:00.000-07:00

I've noticed on CDF that they posted a blog entry on 071 possibly going down to Gulf of Aden. There are some photos here showing a PLAN Z-8 helicopter pilot leaving his 1-year old son to "train for a long range" mission. At present time, Z-8s are pretty much only operating on the large ships like 071 and the new hospital ship. It also makes sense that they would want to send 071 down there to test it out a little bit in a long range deployment. They have already sent all of their other new toys down there. We have seen recent photos of gun pod armed Z-8s flying around. This is similar to the modifications they made on Z-9s that were part of the Gulf of Aden expedition. Here are some of those photos:

As a sign of confidence to the 071 platform, they are building a new ship that looks like another unit or a successor of 071 in HuDong shipyard. Here are some of the pictures of its modules. We should have a better idea of its configurations in a few months.

Now, we have a bunch of photos from different shipyards recently. Most of these are coming from HuDong shipyard in Shanghai.
Here is the photos of the recently launched 054A. It is the 4th unit launched from HD shipyard. I don't think there are any new units currently under construction, so this is probably the last 054 series ship we see for a while (like a year). They normally build in bunches of 4s. The next 4 might just have minor improvement on this 4 or might have major changes to become 054B. We will see.
I do find the development for this ship kind of amazing because it was actually launched last week. Meaning, we went from the last set of pictures (which was still unpainted and without many sensors) to launched in 10 days.

Here is the final one of the 3 F-22Ps being built for the Pakistani Navy. It's given the number 253. And it should be sailing off to PN sometimes this year.

Also, we have elint ship 853 getting all of the sensors added and scaffolding removed. This is an improvement upon the current elint ship 851. This ship should be going on sea trials any day now.

And finally, we have some updated photos of Varyag. The sensors still have not been installed on the island yet. And there are still plenty of sheds on the deck indicating the amount of work left to be done.

Latest pictures from Shanghai

2010-05-11T19:44:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted anything recently, because I've been extremely busy at work and there is not many new extraordinary things coming out. But when I got home today, there was a host of new pictures coming out that I thought was worth sharing. Most of them come from Shanghai.
The first one is showing 092 SSBN after the major refitting that it underwent recently. It's not a new ship by any stretch of imagination, but we don't normally get to see PLAN SSBNs.

Now, we also got a bunch of pictures from Shanghai.
The first two shows the 4th 054A (or 8th overall) under construction from HD shipyard. Now, this one has actually seemed to have taken a lot longer than expected. The 4th one from HP shipyard launched a while ago and this one probably has another month to go before launching. And from that latest pictures coming out of HP shipyard, there won't be another 054A coming out anytime soon. Looks like they are continuing the policy of building ships in batch of 4s.

This ship is 112 (of 052A class). It was built in the early 90s and is powered by LM2500, which was purchased prior to the embargo. It looks like they are doing are major works on this ship by pretty much taking it apart. It has been sitting next to HD for the past 6 months. It'd be interesting to see if they will actually do anything to it.

This is PLAN's new ELINT ship. It was launched a while ago, but it looks like all of the sensors have been installed now and the scaffolding are all removed. Looks like this might be ready for sea trial soon. Unlike with frigates and destroyers, the big ships like this only get built one at a time. Or maybe they are just experimental unit until mass production. Although, PLAN doesn't really need to have the kind of numbers that would require mass production.

The pictures below are probably the most important development recently. The first one shows a module of a new LPD under construction. It looks like after all of the testings they did with the experiment class of 071, they are finally ready to mass produce it with whatever modifications they put in.

The two pictures below show the "Chinese LCAC" being delivered to PLAN. Now this is kind of interesting. We actually saw pictures of this starting in 2007. However, it took a good 3 years for it to complete all the work and testing needed to actually join service with PLAN. And with follow-ups coming in the 071 class, more of these units should join in.

And finally, more pictures of the first 071, 998 sailing around in Shanghai. 071 really represents the first major step that PLAN took in becoming a blue water fleet. So, it's quite significant that we are seeing its mass production starting and LCACs finally accompanying it.

New pictures of Varyag

2010-04-25T07:26:00.000-07:00

Just saw some new photos of Varyag. Looks like they are close to finish painting the island. Not only that, I would saw that the structure of the island has now been modified to it's final form. I am just waiting for the sensors to be installed on the island. I have attached a photo of the mock up in Wuhan for comparison. I think that they should eventually look the same

Picture of the full scale mock up in Wuhan for reference:

Reflection on watching numerous recent documentaries on China

2010-04-20T11:21:00.001-07:00

Last week, I officially quit from my job. I am currently in the middle of an one-week hiatus before starting my new job. As such, I've had some time to watch Ted Koppel's piece on China (People's republic of capitalism) and part of Paul Merton's trip to China. I think Ted Koppel's 4 part mini-series on China was simply brilliant. For anyone who is trying to learn about future US-China relationship, that series would be a good place to start off. As I watch the series, I really begun to think about several major questions. How did China change so quickly? Were the policies of economic liberation really as great as people think they are? Why are Chinese businesses so competitive now and can they be this competitive in the future? Why is the politburo so paranoid about social stability and order? Can democracy and more importantly human rights be delivered in the country without stopping the economic progress? And most importantly, what would happen if the current economic growth in China stop? Ted Koppel brought up the point that it should not be too surprising if there will be another huge revolution/revolt that uproots the system when that happens. Considering the current rein on power that the communist party has on the China, that really seems to be a far-fetched idea. I watched some documentary from Mao's time (China - Mao Bloody Revolution Revealed) and also on Deng in the past 24 hours and have a slightly different prospective.

There have often been a lot of criticisms in the Western media regarding human rights in China. A lot of that is well deserved. As shown in Koppel's documentary (and also could be confirmed by anyone that lived in China for more than a month), the amount of corruption and the driven for greed is astounding; and has caused so much injustice in the country (many in the form of human right violations like forcible eviction). Koppel's interview with billionaire Vincent Lo really revealed some interesting points. Mr. Lo basically made several major points
- while he is not happy about China's human rights record, but they have to start somewhere.
- the autocratic gov't has gone from socialism to become the world's most business friendly government with a constitution of economic development.
- this current autocratic system has delivered 300 million people out of poverty in 30 years and democracy could not have done that
- assurance of stable gov't + policies allow investors like himself get involved in the Chinese economy and deliver more wealth to the country
So, does that mean we should accept or tolerate such human right abuses and lack of democracy in the country.

For this, I watched a documentary on Mao by Phillip Short of BBC and reflected also on past documentaries I watched + what I know from growing up in China. There have been several documentaries made about Mao in the past 15 years as foreigners became allowed to interview people close to Mao at that time. None of which are flattering to Mao. Simply put, there have been 4 major man-caused disasters since the founding of CCP in the 1920s. The first two were the Japanese invasion in 1937-1945 and the civil war in 1946-1949. The next two were both caused by Mao himself in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. I knew that things were really bad during the years of great leap forward, but didn't really know how bad they were until seeing that 20+ million people died of starvation from 1958-1962. It was especially disconcerting to read that cannibalism was quite common during that period (mostly of dead people, but also of living in some cases). Even through all of this mass starvation, the gov't continued the insane policies of exporting grains to other countries to pay off Soviet debts and to look self sufficient in front of outside nations. I guess my family was not as affected by those years because we lived in the cities. However, the urban dwellers had their turn in front of the gun when Cultural Revolution came. All through China, urban youths were sent to the countryside to help the motherland. The intellectuals and the slightly wealthy urban dwellers and supporters of sacked leaders were all publicly humiliated and beaten. There were many stories of deans of universities and principals of schools getting beaten to death or committing suicide after being tortured. Worst of all, some of the most precious art, literature and historical places were destroyed by the brainwashed youth also known as the Red Guards. Personally speaking, my mother's parents were both severely persecuted because of their educational background. The Mao era had none of the war and foreign occupation that plagued the country for the 100 years before that. However, it was replaced by a psychotic leader that managed to brainwash much of the population and destroyed all possible political opponents through radical ideological movements (Cultural Revolution and other major purges). Other than Zhou Enlai and Zhu De, all of the other major revolutionaries like Peng Dehuai, Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and many other generals were purged, humiliated and tortured. The administration was infected by leftist radicals like the Gang of Four, Mao himself and Lin Biao to a lesser degree. The succession of Deng Xiaoping over Hua GuoFeng in late 1970s was the first time in the recent Chinese history where a succession happened over a unified China without blood spilling or purges. And thankfully, they have finally put in a system that would allow for peaceful transition of power and that would prevent future emergence of charismatic leader (like Mao himself). If this series of events sound crazy, one has to realize that this was nothing new in the Chinese history. Unfortunately, Chinese history is marred by continuous cycles of internal war, mass starvation, political purges by emperors and village rebellions that led to new deification of rebellion leader as an emperor God.

In Koppel's documentary, he interviewed a bunch of villager who insisted that life is better now than it has ever been. Their explanation was that "the army no longer forces people to join. And we are no longer forced to move off our land." And the oldest women in the village said that right now is the best time to live because they have enough food to eat and enough clothes to wear. Some may think these are extraordinary statements or that the Chinese population has set their standards way too low. However, one only has to look at the past to see how much things have moved. When my parents were in their early 20s, they were working at textile factories and villages in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. All form of higher education were stopped (even most lower level of education were stopped), so their dreams of going to university were sitting in vain. When my grandparents were in their early 20s, China was involved in the two major wars of this century. A lot of their friends were killed by Japanese brutality and then by the civil war. When my great grandparents were in their early 20s, China had just became a republic and was in the midst of constant infighting between local warlords. It should not be hard to see why the Chinese gov't fears change and instability so much. Deng Xiaoping what happened to China in the 60s and 70s when the country went into policies without pragmatism and caution. His philosophy of control, pragmatism and caution has been passed onto all of the current leaders. Outside of the TianAnMen Square crackdown, one can hardly argue against this period of peace, political stability and economical growth in China. A lot of people on the top are fearful that if their current hold on power is taken away, the country will go back into chaos like prior to 1978.

It is very easy to credit Deng Xiaoping and recent administrations for China's success in the past 30 years, but are they really that responsible? Looking back at the period right after Mao's death, the Chinese population was ready to open itself up to the rest of the world and embrace capitalism. I think that opening up the country to Western investment and technology was the smartest thing that the gov't did once the relations were normalized with the Western countries. From his past experiences at the top, Deng Xiaoping saw the need for pragmatic engagement with the West over extreme ideological warfare. According to this well written article by Hoover Institution, the Chinese people were hungry by then for political reform. They were even acting out illegally in many cases to make money for their families. During the late 70s and early 80s, the younger generation were kids when the great leap forward happened and teenagers when the cultural revolution happened. I think they became disillusioned of class struggle and socialism after being starved and later sent to the farms. The older generation still had enough memory of the period of society prior to 1949. I think both generations had suffered enough by then and really wanted to work hard to make lives better for their kids. Even today, the older generation in China are the younger generation of the late 70s, so they still remembered the chaos, starvation, poverty and hard times. They don't really mind to work super hard to ensure better future for their kids. And I think Ted Koppel's documentary was a perfect illustration of what every poor Chinese family are willing to do for their kids. He made a perfect point later in an extra interview that "Chinese people probably deserve to go to the hall of fame for enduring hardship and suffering". When you look at Ted Koppel's interview with the owner of Lifan, you can see the prototypical hardened Chinese entrepreneur that is willing to do whatever it takes to make it in the capitalistic world. You also hear about this with many of the other successful business men in China. They have succeeded because of their hardened experience during the great leap forward and the cultural revolution. They know that the only way forward is to beat out your competition in any possible way. So, I think that China is thriving in the world economy now, because the people that are driving the economic growth are the same people who were hardened through the Mao-caused disasters. It is beating out competitions around the world like Japan did in the 50s/60s because it has a very driven group of people willing to endure hardship. I think that the recent regime's main role through all of this time is to continue a stable environment to allow Chinese people to better their own lives. Deng and the following leaders were smart enough to not stop a good thing when it has already started. The only thing that prevented this from happening for the 100 years prior to that were continued chaos, utter lunacy in power and the numerous wars. And maybe Deng's policy of maintaining stability and not stopping good things is the best anyone can ever hope a government to do. The question as we move forward is whether or not China can continue to strive in the world market when the future generation that came in after the start of the single child policy become the drivers of the economy. Can the Chinese population still work hard and endure suffering when most of the people grew up being spoiled and pampered by their parents.

So in the past 30 years, we have gone from a society of total chaos and starvation to a society of vibrant growth with large degree of personal freedom. It is hard to imagine that China will ever go back to the Mao days. In fact, I read a recent article where Chinese tourists started to complain about lack of freedom after a day of visit in North Korea. Today's North Korea is probably where China was at the time of Cultural Revolution. In fact, the evolution of North Korea from a state that was wealthier and more industrialized than South Korea in the 60s to the pariah state that it is today is a very good parallel to what happened to China in the 60s and 70s. Knowing all of this, the question is what holds in the future for China in terms of democracy and human rights. I think it was very interesting that Ted Koppel mentioned in several places that what he saw or many of the interviews that he was happening could not have happened 15 years ago or even 5 years ago. This shows a gradual change in the personal freedom that we are seeing in the ordinary citizens. For example, I don't think the administration would be able to survive the internal backlash from a crackdown like the one in TianAnMen Square. Actually ever since the death of Deng Xiaoping, no civilian leader will ever have the same power to control the military. That is a good thing, because the politburo members have to retire after 2 terms of power. And we are certainly seeing a lot of checks and balances within the PSC to prevent a God-like leader ever appearing again. As the power at the top have slowly faded from Mao to Deng to Jiang to Hu and to Xi Jinping in the future, the question is whether or not we can have a peaceful transition to some form of electoral based system. I think that a transition to elecoral based system will happen in the next 20 years, but I hope it does not come as a result of a violent national uprising by the disenfranchised over the wealth gap between the haves and the have-nots. Even though today's system is causing a lot of corruption, injustice and wealth gap, it has vastly improved the lives of most Chinese people. I think that a complete repudiation of this system would cause chaos and economic disaster in the short term.

Even so, I do hope for some kind of repudiation in the future. I think that the mistakes that Mao made in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution will never be properly revealed to the Chinese public unless this system is shaken. Deng continued the legacy of Mao and the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party by maintaining that Mao's contribution to history was 70% good and 30% bad. I cannot see CCP go any further in repudiating Mao because 1) that would take away their legitimacy in power; 2) the population just doesn't care anymore. And I think my second point is probably the sadest of all. Even from my parent's generation, they have grown up with the view that Mao was this great leader that unified China but made some mistakes along the way. Leaders like Liu Shaoqi and Peng Dehuai have been rehabilitated, but they have never received the credit they deserved for bringing China out of the Great Leap Forward and trying to run the country. Most of the blames for the Cultural Revolution should rest upon Mao rather than the Gang of Four or Lin Biao. Even though he unified the country and kicked out the foreigners, he also set the nation back to stone ages with his insane economic policies and political movements. In the future, 95% of the new generation of Chinese would grow up never know about how bad things were between the early 1950s and 1978. And I think that is a mistake, because they need to learn about the past to not repeat it again in the future. So, I hope that as people demand for better rule of law and more freedom in the future, the government will incrementally become more open about its past. More transparency from the gov't on these matters is certainly better than having its own citizens watching documentaries of Mao on youtube (some of which are quite biased). There is a major bubble forming in the Chinese economy. Once that bubble bursts, the gov't needs to be prepared for millions of unemployed college students hanging around the country. It would need to also continuously change to prevent another million people from protesting in front of TianAnMen Square. Because the next time it happens, I doubt the army would be listening to the civilian commands.

In conclusion, I think that even though China is going through a really healthy period of peace and growth, there are some looming signs of danger up ahead. Having looked back through its recent history, I understand the politburo's obsession with stability and caution, but also think that they need to continue to change to maintain this stability. Nobody really knows what would happen if the Chinese economy bubble bursts. I hope that the country does not go back to chaos, because that would set the country back many years. I would recommend all of the links that I have mentioned in this blog entry. They are great places to start in understanding Modern China.

Most recent PLA news

2010-04-13T20:46:00.000-07:00

I guess the two big news today are the unveiling of J-10 to 51 countries and Japan getting alarmed about PLAN moving past Okinawa.

Although it made some errors like the F-16 price tag, this Times Online Article pretty much contains all of the contents mentioned in all similar articles. Important points that we know from the past few days:

From 24th division, 70th regiment
More pilots than plane (1.2 pilot per plane)
Flyaway cost of J-10 is 190 million RMB, around $27 million at current exchange rate
Maximum load is 9G
Take-off/landing distance is 350 to 650 m
Has 11 hard points

The pictures below show J-10s from the 70th regiment of the 24th division flying during the day and night. It also shows foreign military attachés getting up-close look at the cockpit of J-10 and a photo of J-10's radar.

As for the incident with Japan, it was significant because the North Sea Fleet actually send a fleet consisting of a 051C, several 053s and tugboat to Malacca Straits after 6000 nm. This really just represents a continuing shift toward more blue water activities for PLAN. Japan better get used to it, because China is not violating any international laws in trying to gain more blue water experience in international waters.

Recent article about Anti-ship Missile joining PLAN

2010-04-08T19:10:00.000-07:00

Recently, an article came out that talked about a YJ series missile that appeared in the 60th anniversary parade last October. From the text, it appears to be talking about the latest version of YJ-83. Here is the article in Chinese:

2009年10月1日，国庆60周年阅兵式上，我国新型“鹰击”系列反舰导弹顺利经过天安门广场，光荣地接受了祖国和人民的检阅。

“此型导弹是我军第一型大射程、命中精度高、抗干扰能力强、全数字化导弹……”解说员清晰的声音随电波传遍世界各地。这一刻，无数中华儿女的心在沸腾。

作为我军现役的新型主力反舰导弹，它们具有什么性能？研制背后发生了哪些故事？记者专门采访了国庆60周年受阅新装备监造者、海军驻某导弹总装工厂军事代表室总代表李耀国大校。

零故障参加国庆首都阅兵

记者：作为国庆装备的直接监造者，你们军代表的内心肯定充满了无比的自豪和荣耀，能不能谈谈当时的情况？

李耀国：这是一项光荣的任务啊！2009年6月，当上级机关把作为阅兵装备的新型反舰导弹监造任务下达给我们军代表室时，我们全室同志无比兴奋。但是，交付周期比正常的生产周期大大缩短，困难可想而知。

在装备生产过程中，军代表室指派专业组长周传忠、业务骨干李锋两名同志倒班工作，吃住在工厂，确保阅兵装备得到全过程质量监督。有一天，大家晚上加班到9点多，在弹翼接头材料分析时，突然发现：有几件产品强度性能指标虽然在合格范围内，但已经接近下限。

厂家的现场指挥人员准备安排第二天上班再排故，周传忠急忙劝阻，建议把设计人员接到现场排故。在等待的过程中，他耐心地对现场工人说：“今晚故障不排除，整个进度就会受到影响，交装的时间就可能延误，部队训练的时间就会相应减少，部队完成阅兵任务的压力就会加大。今晚不管干到几点，故障不清除决不能休息。”

随即，他又找来相关生产记录和资料认真研究，直到凌晨3点多故障才顺利排除。

记者：都说细节决定成败。在航空航天高科技领域，是不是尤为明显？

李耀国：是的。干航天，就要有这样过细的作风。记得该型导弹首次助推弹试验那天，随着一声令下，导弹呼啸着冲了出去，现场的人群欢呼起来。这是此型导弹首次试验，发射出去即意味着成功。

回到住处，现场的人员都互相祝贺，还燃放起了鞭炮。我们军代表却没有被表面的成功迷惑，而是像往常一样，回到房间后打开了现场录取的数据，认真地分析起来。通过对导弹推力数据和弹道数据进行研究分析，与发射的现场录像进行比对，我们发现导弹的初始弹道数据有些下降，数值不大，单从发射场面上是根本看不出来的。

于是，我们立刻找来总师和相关技术员，提出了自己的看法。这个问题在现试验阶段看起来可能不是问题，但是若带入到下一个试验阶段，可能是一个致命的问题。因为弹道下沉，说明推力不足，导致速度不足，从而直接影响后续的舵面控制，后果将是灾难性的。

听完这一席话，刚才还兴高采烈的同志们马上就变得鸦雀无声。于是，大家连夜召开了分析会，对助推器进行改进，增大初始燃烧面积。通过后续试验验证，问题得到圆满解决。

记者：类似这样的情况肯定有很多，能不能谈谈在研制这型导弹的过程中发生的难忘故事？

李耀国：的确是这样，每一型武器研制的背后，都充满了艰辛，也留下了许多难忘的记忆。

记得导弹对海攻击试验时正值冬季，室外的气温是零下20多摄氏度。研制人员和军代表们每天都在寒风凛冽的机场露天办公。当时导弹在挂上战机出发后，突然出现高度测量误差。这对于掠海攻击的导弹来说，是非常致命的。大家分析半天，一直没有找到原因。后来，在检测导弹时，无意中发现高度表内有一小滴冷凝水！原来高度表在生产过程中密封性不强，混入了水蒸气。经过高空环境后结成冰霜，下来后终于现了原形。故障很快被排除
性能六大方面新突破

记者：作为国庆60周年首都阅兵，我国最先进反舰导弹，新型“鹰击”系列导弹都有哪些突破？与国外先进导弹相比有哪些优势？

李耀国：国产新型反舰导弹在前一型导弹的基础上作了重大改进，主要有六大方面突破：

一是由模拟体制改成了数字体制，由中控计算机实施整体控制，缩小了体积，操控性、稳定性更好；二是射程大大增加，是原型弹的一倍，并具有了航路规划能力；三是弹头性能提升，捕捉目标的能力提高，抗干扰能力大增；四是使用性能大大改善，导弹的准备时间压缩，操作程序简化；五是具有广泛适装性，能在多型飞机、多型舰艇上使用；六是使用寿命提高，又大大方便了部队官兵使用。

至于说与国外的先进导弹相比，因为没有直接的比试，不能轻易下结论。但我可以说，和国外的先进导弹相比，它应该处于国际先进水平，有些方面甚至是领先的。

比如，我们这型导弹高可靠性，无论是试验阶段还是部队实际使用，几乎没有失败过。再比如，可维护性、保存性、操作性等方面，我们也有优势。当然还有一点，我们造价也肯定比国外便宜，这是毋庸置疑的。

记者：很多军事爱好者都注意到，现役很多反舰导弹都有掠海飞行能力，那么导弹飞行高度是不是越低越好呢？导弹末端机动能力是不是一个方向？

李耀国：掠海飞行是反舰导弹的一大特点。主要是因为舰艇预警雷达受地球曲率的影响有盲区，掠海飞行可以躲过雷达的探测，达到突然袭击的效果。现在反舰导弹的平飞高度一般在20米左右，到末端后能达到5－7米，这对于躲避雷达来讲，已经足够了。如果高度再下降，很容易就被卷进大海里，国外在试验时就曾发生过类似的悲剧。

末端的机动能力,是导弹增强突防能力一个重要手段，也是一个发展方向。

具备高亚音速飞行能力

记者：大家知道，俄罗斯“现代”级导弹驱逐舰上的“马斯基特”反舰导弹具有超音速飞行的能力，而欧美的一些知名导弹却都采用了高亚音速。这是为什么呢？

李耀国：超音速和亚音速是两个并行的方向，谈不上哪个一定好。虽然超音速导弹速度快，但在技术上存在着一些根本性问题。

首先是射程不足。为了“跑得快”，燃料消耗大，射程就受到影响。导弹要多装燃料，弹头就要减轻，杀伤力也会受到影响。

其次是容易暴露。为保证足够射程，超音速反舰导弹通常要进行中高空飞行，这就把自己置于敌防御雷达的水平视线以上，在理论上给了对方更多预警时间。而且，在飞行过程中，超音速导弹正面的红外特征要比亚音速导弹高20～50倍，装备了新型红外信号转换系统的军舰很容易发现。

再次是应变能力不强。超音速反舰导弹同样依靠雷达搜索追踪目标。处理同样的目标数据，超音速导弹比亚音速导弹的时间少60％。一旦遇到干扰，导弹很可能还没来得及分辨清楚，就一下子飞过去了。而且因为速度太快，超音速导弹如果在第一回合里错过目标，就没有第二次机会了。

最后是费用昂贵。因为超音速反舰导弹对导弹的机动性要求极高，需要用一些特殊材料。计算结果表明，超音速反舰导弹的耗费要比亚音速反舰导弹高1．5倍。

我国下一代反舰导弹，会朝着更高的目标迈进。我相信，经过我国科技人员的努力，中国“鹰击”系列反舰导弹一定能保持自己的优势，在激烈的国际竞争中力求保持先进水平。（记者　钱晓虎　特约记者　姜毅照片由记者张雷提供）

The relevant parts translate to something like this:
In the 60th anniversary national parade, China's new YJ series AShM shined. It was announced as China's first long range, high accuracy, fully digital missile with high resistance to ECM.

An interview with admiral Li from a naval missile assembly factory.
Started off by mentioning some of the things that happened as they were producing/preparing the missiles for the parade. The typical propoganda in these kind of articles that try to drum up the situation.
Talks about the importance of making sure every little details are right in aerospace industry. When this missile did its first flight testing, everything looked good from the ground. But when they went back and looked at the missile thrust figures and missile trajectory figures, they found that some of the testing figures were less than expected. These are the things you can find by first look. It then talked about another case where the missile misjudged the height in an extremely cold testing environment when it was launched off aircraft. It took a long time before they found out it was due to bad production quality which threw off the instrument measuring the height.

The next part talks about the 6 areas that this missile improved on previous designs:

Going from Analog to fully digital with a central computer providing overall control.
The range increased 100% and also has ability to plan the flight path.
Seeker technology has increased, can find target better and improved anti-jamming capability.
Has improved usability, preparation time decreased and procedure is simplified
Can be used on many platforms (multiple types of aircraft and ships.
Has longer service life.

Admiral says that he believes YJ missile is comparable to the most advanced missiles in the world and even exceed them in certain areas. It is very reliable and has rarely failed in tests and live firing.

He says that most missiles fly at 20 m height toward the target and then dips to 5 to 7 m in the terminal phase. There is really no need to fly any lower, which could cause it to be swallowed by water. Improving terminal maneuvering is an important part of missile development.

He then talks about the cons of supersonic missiles. btw, nothing he mentioned is new if you have ever followed one of those supersonic vs subsonic discussion threads. He says that the missile would have to either sacrifice range or warhead size due to the higher speed of supersonic missiles. He says that they have to fly higher which causes them to be picked earlier by ship radars. They also have 20 to 50 times larger infrared signature, which would allow latest IRST to pick them up easily. The also have much less time to search for target due to the faster speed. They probably have 60% less time to process information. When facing ECM, they might not have a second chance to find the target if something goes wrong the first time it's trying to target. Supersonic missiles also cost more to use than subsonic missiles (1.5 times as much). I'm a little confused here because I think the supersonic missiles cost more than that much more. So, he might have just been talking about maintenance and usage cost.

China Air and Naval Power

Update from PLAN land

I will be posting less often in the coming months

The year that was and the year that is coming for PLAAF

Reflecting PLAN in 2011

What would happen if European embargo is lifted

New Chinese ASW aircraft

Gap between China and Russia

Rebuke against Kanwa

My thoughts on economics and politics

Update from PLAN land

Latest activity at HD shipyard

Chinese 500 ton FAC for Pakistan

The different procurement practics of China and India

Evolution of PLAAF doctrine/training

China/Russia military cooperation

China and Vietnam

The legacy of Liu Huaqing

Review of Chinese Aerospace Power: Evolving Maritime Roles

What Varyag means

Varyag officially acknowledged

Upcoming weeks

PLAN activity outside of Varyag

Is J-15 a game changer?

More public proclamation of the Carrier program

Varyag + China's blue water ambitions

An interesting day for PLA followers

Latest activities from JN shipyard

Some props to Shenyang Aircraft Corporation

HQ-10 (aka Chinese RAM) for close in air defense

Recent photos from the Chinese shipyards

Varyag's island is almost complete

Submarines + Cutters in Wuhan

China's military budget for 2011 + Jasmine Revolution

The present and the future direction of J-10

The other side of PLAN

Activities around Chinese shipyards

Some thoughts about the growing US/China rivalry

J-20 had its first flight, what now?

China's conventional submarine fleet

J-20

Top stories of 2010 for PLAN

Smoke coming out of the furnace of Varyag?

China's newest cutter

Latest on Z-10 and J-10

Updates around Chinese shipyards

2010 is the start of PLAN's second building boom

Interesting little tidbit on PLAN

PLAN MCM

China Maritime Surveillance

New wave of Chinese naval ship construction + closer look in its SSK program

More detailed look at Chinese "LCAC"

Some recent developments in Chinese Shipyards

A more indepth look at Chinese maritime law enforcement

054A photos from HP shipyard + Varyag photos

New 054A + MSA ships

Usage of PLAN Aircraft Carrier

Latest F-22P news

Peace Mission 2010

J-15 finally appearing?

071 deploying to Aden officially

071 deploying to Aden + More photos

Latest pictures from Shanghai

New pictures of Varyag

Reflection on watching numerous recent documentaries on China

Most recent PLA news

Recent article about Anti-ship Missile joining PLAN