On February 9, Chinese Air Force Spokesman Shen Jinke announced the release of a new generation of stealth fighter J-20 developed independently by China's Air Force and started to install Air Force combat troops to fully form its combat capability Take an important step. However, a few days later Hong Kong's South China Morning Post and other media spent a sharp amount of money. Currently, the F-20 fighters currently in service are still using the WS-10B engine and the accompanying WS-15 engines are still not in mass production. However, it helps us to better understand the current status of China's aero-engine from multiple angles. Let's take a look at what the Hong Kong media say.

Hong Kong media said that the F-20 fighter aircraft equipped with the PLAAF will further enhance the overall combat capability of the Air Force and help the Air Force better shoulder the sacred mission of safeguarding national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity so as to face the increasingly serious problem in the Asia-Pacific region Security challenge. However, they also noticed that the first F-20 put into operation in China last year was a temporary engine.

But this means that the combat capability of the F-20 will be severely restricted, especially its maneuverability, fuel consumption and stealth supersonic, after all, how to design the Audi Alto engine design, but also reach the performance of Audi.

Hong Kong media also broke the news that this is because the F-20 with the WS-15 engine part of the "key issue" has not yet been resolved and in 2015 the accident was revealed.

A source broke the news to Hong Kong, saying: "In 2015, the WS-15 engine designed for the F-20 exploded on the ground during a test run." But he added no one was injured in the accident. "But the explosion shows that there is still a problem with the reliability of the WS-15 engine so far and that there is no fundamental solution to the problem ... which is why the F-20 is still using the WS-10B engine "

WS-10B is a modified version of the WS-10 Taihang engine, designed for China's fourth-generation J-10 and F-11 fighters.

Hong Kong media said the bombing was confirmed by another source close to the military who said the accident was complicated by one of the reasons for the quality control of its monocrystalline turbine blades, The key components of the engine.

The new generation of single crystal turbine blades designed for the WS-15 address high mechanical loads and pre-turbine temperatures due to increased engine performance. Lin Zuo-ming, former chairman of AVIC, said to the media that China's third-generation single-crystal turbine blades have been used in WS-10 engines and can withstand temperatures as high as 2000 degrees Celsius, It has also been extended, extending from 800 hours to 1500 hours.

"The second generation of single crystal superalloy DD6 and its aero-engine turbine blades development and application of" won the second prize of national technology invention

However, the original WS-10 engine had a push-to-weight ratio of only 7.5, while the modified WS-10B had a push-to-weight ratio of about 9. The omni-directional vector turbofan engine WS-15 "Emei" engine thrust weight ratio is more than 10, so the high thrust-weight ratio will make F-20 with "supersonic cruise" capability.

The supersonic cruise capability will allow stealth fighters such as the U.S. F-22 Raptor to fly at supersonic speeds without the use of afterburners, saving fuel and making them hard to spot under supersonic flight. F-22 fighter currently using the United States Pratt & Whitney F119 engine.

However, the "supersonic cruise" capability also requires the WS-15 engine's single crystal turbine blades to be able to handle the more extreme temperatures of the WS-10 engine.

Another source told Hong Kong Media: "Chinese technicians are able to develop cutting-edge, single-crystal turbine blades while focusing on a single specific sample, but often they can not turn these advanced technologies into mass-produced Standard Industrial Products This is a technical bottleneck that, based on Western experience, requires more time and countless test tests to overcome. "

The first source said: "Using the WS-10B engine is just a temporary, expedient phase of the F-20 development process ... In the future, the aircraft may use another new engine, one The WS-10 engine version with improved performance was named WS-10 IPE (improved performance engine) until the successful development of the WS-15 engine. "

It's awkward to make multiple changes to an engine for such an important fighter project, but it has to be cheaper because the WS-15 engine is unreliable. The reliability issue is the long-standing core issue of China's domestic aeroengine.

This is also the third time that the F-20 has changed its core power engine. The first flight of the aircraft was powered by two Russian AL-31 engines, which outperformed the WS-10B engines in China.

Russia has consistently refused to export the most advanced engines to China because they are the core technology of the aviation industry. This has also prompted China to independently develop the advanced aero-engine WS-15 as part of its production of the world's most advanced fighter aircraft.

According to Hong Kong media, China will speed up the development of a more mature aeroengine in the future and invest at least 150 billion yuan (23.7 billion U.S. dollars) between 2010 and 2015. In August 2016, it set up the China Aviation Engine Group through the merger of 24 AVIC subsidiaries to lead the development and production of China's aero-engines and gas turbines.

Last year, China Central Television claimed that the performance of the WS-15 engine was comparable to that of the U.S. F119 engine. In a documentary broadcast in May 2017, it was claimed that the WS-15 engine will be widely deployed in the F-20 in 2020.

CCTV announced the WS-15 engine

This will make China the third country to have a fifth generation fighter plane, second only to the United States and Russia. Justin Bronk, a full-time Air Force researcher with the Royal Institute of Joint Service, said that the F-20 has "a greater operational radius and a larger interior than the" American counterparts "F-22 and F-35 fighters Fuel capacity and more internal weapon capacity, "which means it poses a real threat to the U.S. Pacific fleet.

However, some military analysts said it is still too early to predict such a move because the WS-15 engine is still not as mature as the F119 engine, just over 4,000 hours for the F119.

Russia's first prototype of the fifth-generation fighter "Su-57" debuted in January 2010, but the latest flight with its new "Izdelie 30" engine is the latest. The new engine also enables the Su-57 to achieve supersonic cruise at 1242 mph (2,000 km / h), but Russia also admits that the new engine is still undergoing many tests and is not expected to be formalized until 2019 or 2020 Column mounted to Su-57.

China's WS-15 engine project started in the 1990s and the first prototype was delivered in 2004 and the first ground-based test run was successfully completed in 2015.

Antony Wong Dong, a military observer in Macau, said: "It took quite a while for China to test the WS-15 engine for 11 years and take another 3-8 years to develop it. For China, developing the WS-10B as a J-20 Is still a major industrial success.China's advanced aviation engine technology is very weak, and R & D work in this area started decades later than its western counterparts. "

A new military aircraft can have a development cycle of up to 30 years

In the 1980s, Pratt & Whitney and General Electric took 12 years to complete the prototype of the F119 engine. After a first flight of the engine in September 1997, the 14-year flight test was completed Stereotypes.

90s of last century, the United States began to develop single-seat all-weather single-seat stealth multi-purpose fighter F-35, the fighter is not equipped with a new engine engine, but F119 Engine retrofit F135 engine (and did not modify the core machine) , And in the beginning of 2016 outfit the United States Air Force.

At present, the United States has already begun to deploy F-35 fighters to military bases in the Asia-Pacific region. When it arrived at Kadena Air Base in Japan in December last year, South Korea also said it plans to receive 40 F-35 fighters this year.

Earlier it was reported that Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force is also considering the purchase of F-35B carrier-based fighters for its two new 25,000-ton helicopter aircraft carriers. Hong Kong media think that this is to promote Beijing as soon as possible J-20 one of the reasons.

Andrei Chang, editor of Canadian Han and Defense Commentary, said the F-20 could take at least eight years to improve engine performance, but it remains the most capable fighter for the PLAAF. He said: "The F-20 is more advanced than the fourth-generation fighter in China because of its invisibility and the ability to carry more and more advanced air-to-air missiles."

Chang said he was surprised that China actually put the F-20 into production before the WS-15 engine was finalized, and training for the F-20 pilots had been going on for some time. He said that the PLA Air Force has deployed J-20 to Dingxin Air Force Base in Jiuquan, Gansu, so that they and other fighters have been used to study countermeasures against the F-22s and F-35s.

US Terraserver website announced the shooting of Dingquan, Gansu tripod Air Force Base satellite image, the picture shows two J-20 on the apron

Hong Kong military commentator Liang Guoliang said that as the security environment in the Asia Pacific region is becoming even more challenging, China needs to develop its F-20-based stealth fighter aircraft. He said: "The F-35B in the United States is much more powerful than the current F-15 carrier-based fighter aircraft in China. Each F-35B fighter is equivalent to the combat power of 10 F-15 fighters. If each helicopter carrier in Japan is carrying 5 to 6 F-35B fighters, according to China's aircraft carriers have the same combat capability. "

However, he warned that it would take at least a decade to land-based aircraft such as the F-20 as a carrier-based aircraft due to the large number of modifications needed, adding that the history of US research and development of carrier-based aircraft dates back to In the 1930s, China has just begun this century.

China's carrier-based F-15 is based on Russia's Su -33 developed from the fourth-generation fighter Su-27 variants. "China should hurry up and the central leadership must make a decision as soon as possible," he added.

Finally, our netizens celebrated the fine posters made by the F-20 servicemen and would like our air force to become more and more powerful. China's military aviation engine manufacturing industry is getting more and more abundant.

(Edit: odd positive)