DTN News - CHINA DEFENSE NEWS: China’s Widening Defense Commitments Risk Straining Military

DTN News - CHINA DEFENSE NEWS: China’s Widening Defense Commitments Risk Straining Military

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources Bloomberg News
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - December 6, 2013: China’s broadening national-security commitments, including a warning of defensive measures against foreign aircraft in its new East China Sea air zone, risk straining a military still catching up with its rivals.

A reformulated and expanded Chinese Coast Guard is still working out a unified command structure, according to Susan Shirk, a former Clinton administration official who met with representatives of the branch in July. China’s fighter jet pilots get far less training than their regional counterparts, said Ian Easton, a research fellow at the Project 2049 Institute in Arlington, Virginia.

While defense spending has more than doubled since 2006, China is still modernizing its forces even as the U.S. dedicates more military resources to the Asia-Pacific and Japan expands its own navy. The relative gap indicates the capacity of China - - which also is advancing naval deployments in waters it claims in the South China Sea -- to sustain challenges to incursions over East China Sea airspace may be constrained.

“It’s the old line from Top Gun: Their mouth is writing checks that their body can’t cash,” said Richard Bitzinger, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies who analyzes Chinese military modernization, referring to the 1986 Tom Cruise movie. “Really their ability to actually monitor let alone enforce such a huge swath of territory is probably well outside their capabilities.”

Influence Abroad

Advances in stealth technology, missile defense and shipbuilding all point to the rise of a military whose focus has broadened from national defense and recapturing Taiwan to longer-range force projection. A 2013 U.S. Department of Defense report said China’s broader military interests include “advancing territorial claims and building influence abroad.”

At the same time, that military modernization, which has drawn expressions of concern from neighbors as well as the U.S., masks deeper problems such as entrenched corruption within the ranks and insufficient, rigid training for pilots who are constrained by risk-averse political officers, according to the Project 2049 Institute’s Easton.

Corruption in the military, which may include officers who drive luxury cars and pay for vacations with public funds, undermines the army’s effectiveness, retired Major General Luo Yuan wrote in the Chinese version of the state-owned Global Times in February.

Strained Military

Even stepping up patrols around islands in the East China Sea also claimed by Japan -- called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese -- have strained the military, saidShirk, who served under President Bill Clinton as deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific.

“I know from discussions with the new Chinese Coast Guard this summer that just the patrols out to the Diaoyu Islands was definitely stretching their capability,” said Shirk, now chair of the 21st Century China Program at the University of California San Diego. “They took all these ships and painted new Coast Guard signs on them, but the task of integrating them into a unified command will take a long time.”

China’s level of military modernization doesn’t compare with the world’s advanced armed forces, Xu Qiliang, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, wrote in a book explaining reforms outlined in a Communist Party meeting last month. There is a “large gap” between the military and the needs of national security, Xu said.

Biden Criticism

The creation of the defense zone, which covers the islands also claimed by Japan, provoked criticism from leaders including U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, who visited Japan and China this week. He said China’s move, announced Nov. 23, has caused “significant apprehension in the region.” The U.S. operates air defense identification zones including along the east and west coasts, Alaska and Hawaii.

China will bear “increasing responsibility to contribute positively to peace and security,” Biden said in a speech in Beijing yesterday. “That means taking steps to reduce the risks of accidental conflict and miscalculation.”

As China gathers strength in the Asia-Pacific it will have to compete with a much larger U.S. military -- whose Air Force alone has more than 400 surveillance planes compared to China’s 100 in all its armed forces, for example -- as the Obama administration conducts what it calls a rebalance to the region.

Among the U.S. goals was to position about 60 percent of the Pentagon’s naval assets in the region by 2020, from about 50 percent previously, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said last year. Pentagon officials reached an agreement with Australia to shift about 2,500 Marines there from Okinawa, Japan, where their presence has drawn opposition from local residents.

Japan Defense

Japan is bolstering its forces as well. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe increased the defense budgetin 2013 for the first time in 11 years. The Defense Ministry wants another budget increase for next year, a move that would return military spending to its highest level since 2005. Abe’s government is putting the finishing touches on the country’s first postwar national security strategy.

Among the items included in the Japanese ministry’s latest budget request were 1.5 billion yen ($14.7 million) for amphibious training facilities and 1.6 billion yen to build a military facility on the tiny island of Yonaguni, close to the area disputed with China.

Training within China’s air force has been a challenge for years, according to Easton. In 2011, the military revamped training for fighter pilots to put new emphasis on aerial combat skills as well as academic training, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

Ten Hours

“Chinese Air Force pilots still typically get less than ten hours of flight time a month, well below regional standards,” Easton said. “The training they do engage in tends to be highly scripted and they generally avoid flying at night or over water because it is dangerous and the political officers in control are inherently risk adverse.”

Nonetheless, the Chinese military hasn’t stood still. Military spending for 2013 was set to set to rise to 740.6 billion yuan ($121.6 billion) from 669.1 billion yuan, a 10.7 percent hike, after a similar jump the year before. That’s about five times less than the U.S. spends.

It’s also looking to close the gap with the U.S. China’s navy has promised more aircraft carriers bigger than its first, commissioned last year. China’s military has deployed missile systems capable of destroying aircraft carriers such as those in operation by the U.S. in Asia.

Monitor Zone

With so much advancement, China will be able to monitor the air defense zone in the East China Sea, though the timing of the announcement and the way the government explained it raises questions about leaders’ strategy, according to Huang Jing, a professor at the National University of Singapore who focuses on Chinese politics.

“I’m very confident that this declaration of an air-defense identification zone is backed up by capability but the timing is very, very bad and the way they explained it is very inept,” Huang said.

Corruption within the military also may not play the undermining role that even Chinese generals fear it will, according to Sameer Patil, associate fellow at Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations.

“Corruption can erode any institution, more particularly so in case of armed forces’ technical capacity,” Patil said. “However, this does not mean that the Chinese do not have a powerful air force or military capacity with which they can assert their territorial claims.”

Multiple Areas

One looming concern is that China’s forces, stretched across multiple areas, may get into accidents that could provoke a crisis. China’s Defense Ministry says it won’t rule out setting up other air defense zones in the future.

“The question is, do you want to spend all that time, and effort and money basically proving a point?” Bitzinger said. “And not exactly proving a very important point. They’re going to have to be selective about everything they do. They don’t have the capabilities to be everywhere and to really prove their point everywhere.”

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Sharon Chen in Singapore atschen462@bloomberg.net; Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo at ireynolds1@bloomberg.net; Shai Oster in Hong Kong at soster@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson atrmathieson3@bloomberg.net 

*Link for This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources Bloomberg News
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DTN News - CHINA DEFENSE NEWS: China Says J-31 Fighter Will Compete With F-35 for Sales

DTN News - CHINA DEFENSE NEWS: China Says J-31 Fighter Will Compete With F-35 for Sales

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources by  Zachary Keck - The Diplomat blogs
(NSI News Source Info) KOTTAKKAL, Kerala, India - November 10, 2013: A PLA Navy official has confirmed to state-run media outlets that China will export the Shenyang J-31 twin-engine fifth generation fighter jet.

According to the Taiwan-based Want China Times, Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong told the People’s Daily this week that the J-31 was never built with China’s military in mind, and it was highly unlikely that the PLA would ever operate J-31s off of its aircraft carriers. Instead, the J-31 was designed for export to China’s strategic partners and allies, particularly those that couldn’t purchase the F-35.

The J-31, often referred to as the Falcon Hawk, Falcon Eagle, F-60 or J-21, is one of China’s two prototype fifth-generation aircraft, the other being the J-20. It is built by Shenyang Aircraft Corporation, and images of the aircraft first began appearing on the internet around this time last year.

Photos of the J-31 allegedly conducting its first test run surfaced last November, followed by a one-quarter scale model of the stealth fighter being showcased the same month at the China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, China’s largest airshow. It was identified only as the Advanced Fighter Concept at the show, although reports in China’s state-run media said that prototype was a J-31. More recently, last month, the Global Times posted a picture of a J-31 doing a test run on its online edition.

Previous reports in China’s state-run media have been mixed as to whether the J-31 would serve as the PLA’s future carrier-based fighter, or whether it was intended for foreign customers. Sun Cong, the chief designer of both China’s current carrier-based aircraft, the J-15, as well as the J-31, told the People’s Daily earlier this year that future versions of the J-31 might become China next-generation carrier-borne fighter jet. However, representatives from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, a state-owned aerospace company that displayed the prototype at the airshow last November, billed it at the time as intended for export.

An article in the People’s Daily at the end of last month did little to clarify matters. The article referred to the J-31 as a fourth-generation stealth fighter, while also saying that is comparable to the U.S.’ F-35 fighter jets. The report first said that it would be exported abroad as a competitor to the F-35, before discussing the possibility that it will be China’s next carrier-borne fighter.

“Experts predict that the J-31 will make rapid inroads in the international market in the future, and will undoubtedly steal the limelight from the F-35,” the People’s Daily report said, noting also that competition to sell the fighter jets to international customers was “becoming a new variable in the Sino-US strategic game.”

The report added that, “The J-31, with its main target as the export market, represents a serious threat to U.S. arms manufacturers.” Later in the same article, however, People’s Daily noted that the plane’s landing gear was built to sustain the impact of landing on a carrier better than the current J-15s, and therefore might be used as China’s future carrier-based jet.

One possibility is that China is building both a domestic and export version of the aircraft. Some foreign news outlets have indeed said that China may sell a version of the aircraft abroad under the name F-60, while maintaining a fleet of domestic J-31s for the PLA.

With so little known about the J-31, it’s hard to gauge how credible China’s claims are that the J-31 is a low-cost alternative to the F-35. In a report in Defense News last August, shortly after the first few images of the plane surfaced, Project 2049 Institute’s Robert Cliff dismissed the notion that the J-31 would pose a serious threat to the F-35 in terms of overseas sales.

““India won’t buy it. Russia won’t buy it,” Cliff noted, adding: “That pretty much leaves countries like Pakistan, Brazil, some Middle East countries, none of whom [the U.S. is] likely to sell the F-35 to anytime this decade or next.”

He also said that he did not believe Saudi Arabia was interested in the plane.

Pakistan is perhaps the most likely foreign purchaser of the fighter. Pakistan and China previously jointly developed the JF-17 Thunder advanced fighter, although only Islamabad has ended up purchasing the jet thus far. This week Pakistani officials called on China to increase cooperation in the area of defense production. Beijing has long helped Islamabad acquire the necessary knowledge and expertise to develop a more advanced domestic defense industry.

*Related Shenyang J-31 (F60) Stealth Multirole Fighter Images;

*Link for This article compiled by K. V. Seth from reliable sources by  Zachary Keck - The Diplomat blogs
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*Photograph: IPF (International Pool of Friends) + DTN News / otherwise source stated
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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DTN News - CHINA DEFENSE NEWS: Two Models of Chinese 5th-Gen Fighter In Works (PHOTOS)

DTN News - CHINA DEFENSE NEWS: Two Models of Chinese 5th-Gen Fighter In Works (PHOTOS)

Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources RT
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - September 19, 2012: The Chinese military has leaked first photos of a brand new lightweight fighter with external characteristics that allow the jet fifth-generation attribution. Some pictures suggest it could be used on future Chinese aircraft carriers.

Shenyang Aircraft Industry Group (SAC), one of the leading aircraft design and manufacturing corporations of China’s aviation industry, has rolled out a prototype that might eventually become Chinese analogue to America’s F-35.

The aircraft bears a certain resemblance to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II, and even reportedly has the codename F-60. Though absolutely no characteristics of the prototype have been unveiled, one major difference is obvious: unlike its American relative, China’s F-60 has two engines.

The pictures of the Chinese technology demonstrator suggest that the engines the aircraft is currently equipped with do not have thrust vectoring nozzles which might suggest the prototype is at too early a stage of testing to get more sophisticated and powerful propulsion package.

Inclined twin vertical tail and wide-spaced ram air inlets are reminiscent of Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor Joint Strike Fighter.

A blurred photo from China Military Report website is the only proof that SAC’s F 60 aircraft has successfully been airborne.

The suspected photo of China's SAC F 60 fighter test flight. (Image from http://wuxinghongqi.blogspot.com)

Now it has become obvious that in the race for possession of fifth generation aircraft the Chinese military placed its bets on two horses: Chengdu Aircraft Corporation, which is heavily testing its J-20 “Mighty Dragon” fifth generation heavy fighter-bomber, and Shenyang Aircraft Industry Group with its F-60 lightweight fighter.

The F-60 prototype jet bears the side number 31001, which may be a reference to Chengdu’s J-20 heavy fighter jet. The first two J-20 prototypes have “2001” and “2002” side numbers respectively.

Yet, the F-60 and J-20 are not likely to be regarded as competitors because it appears the aircraft will have different specializations.

China’s future sea-based fighter jet

China’s first aircraft carrier, dubbed Shi Lang, laid down by the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and almost finished now by Chinese engineers, is expected to be put into service by the end of 2012. Still, Beijing has informed the warship will be not ready for action till 2017.

A vessel reported to be the Ukrainian-made aircraft carrier "Varyag", which China bought in the 1990s, is seen at a port in Dalian, Liaoning province. (Reuters/Jacky Chen )

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) already has fighter jets to form the aircraft wing for Shi Lang. China produces J-15, a copycat of the Soviet-made Su-33. The J-15 copycat has been made by Shenyang Aircraft Industry Group. But the Su-33 was designed in the 1980s and cannot be regarded a proper sea-based aircraft in the 2010s. Probably since SAC already proved it can make a sea-based aircraft, Beijing commissioned a great challenge of creating a fifth generation fighter jet for naval use to this corporation.

Chinese Military Review website has published computer-generated images of the F-60 fifth generation fighter jet in action with a whole range of various air to air missiles. On at least two pictures the aircraft is depicted with an extended arrest hook that the sea-based aircraft use to stop after landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

Computer-generated imagery (CGI) of the J-31/ F-60 fifth generation fighter jet in action with beyond visual range (BVR) air to air missiles and fifth generation short range infrared homing air-to-air missiles. (Image from http://chinesemilitaryreview.blogspot.com)

The two-wheeled front rack chassis of the real F-60 prototype also suggests the aircraft is being engineered for naval use, like sea-based versions of Dassault’s Rafale in France, Lockheed Martin’s F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet and the Soviet-made Su-33. At the same time there are no signs the prototype is capable of short take off and vertical landing, which the F-35B STOVL version has.

A brief look at the computer-generated images also exposes another feature the F-60 has in common with Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II: an extremely limited space in the internal weapon bays. A stealth aircraft must have all of its weapons hidden inside the hull to decrease the aircraft’s visibility to enemy radars. The Chinese F-60, just like the American F-35, can only carry small-sized short range missiles in true stealth mode.

To get seriously armed the F-60 would have to carry long-range missiles externally, which would nullify its stealth capabilities. If so, the F-60 will have limited capabilities.

Probably the biggest problem of the modern Chinese aviation industry is the deadlock with military jet engines it currently finds itself in. For both Chengdu’s J-20 and Shenyang’s F-60 there are no reliable Chinese-made jet engines with technical characteristics appropriate for a fifth generation fighter. Still, Chinese engineers are known not only for copycat efforts, but for outstanding persistence in achieving their objectives. 

It cannot be altogether excluded that by 2017, when the Shi Lang aircraft carrier will be commissioned and more warships of the kind be under construction, Chinese engineers will probably decrease or eliminate the dependence on Russian jet engines and spare parts and put the F-60 on a proper flight.

Computer-generated imagery (CGI) of the J-31/ F-60 fifth generation fighter jet in action with beyond visual range (BVR) air to air missiles and fifth generation short range infrared homing air-to-air missiles. (Image from http://chinesemilitaryreview.blogspot.com)

*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources RT
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
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