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I doubt images alone are enough. China has had access to Russian jet engines for half a century and still struggles to produce their own.
by tw04 3y ago
I doubt images alone are enough. China has had access to Russian jet engines for half a century and still struggles to produce their own.
- geodel 3y agoSeems they are skimping on 3-D printers from AliExpress. :-)
- skhr0680 3y agoIf you give professional chef an elaborate dish and the recipe for it, will they be able to make exactly the same thing?
- numbsafari 3y agoProbably not, in isolation. But can the original chef that wrote the recipe produce the same thing several million or billion times a year?
- iancmceachern 3y agoWe can't even replicate the F1 engine, or make new nukes anymore, and we have the recipe book and the chefs.
- rbanffy 3y agoWe can’t make F1s because the supply chains that made the materials and the parts no longer exist. We could try to approximate one with new materials and techniques, but it would not be an F1 - it’d be a design derived from it. That’s the thing with the chefs - you can’t make a mammoth dish because there are no more mammoth to cook.
- iancmceachern 3y agoYes they do, the supply chains still exist, we still use many of those alloys, etc. We still make rocket engines. In the F1's case we were just going too fast and didn't write things down. In the nuclear weapons case we deliberately dismantled it.
- rbanffy 3y ago> In the nuclear weapons case we deliberately dismantled it. I'd say that is actually a good thing. Nukes are meant not to be used. They are a deterrent, so it's important they exist, that they are functional, and that you are willing to use them to hit hard against an aggressor. MAD kept us alive until now.
- sudosysgen 3y agoChinese fighter jet engines are supposedly already better than the best Russian jet engines they've been given, though. General perception is that the WS-10 is generally better than the AL-31FN, hence why they started replacing AL-31s with WS-10s, both in domestic and export aircraft. The WS-15, if it does get even close to it's design goals, would be significantly better than any Russian engine. They seem to be struggling a lot with airliner engines, yes, but they've only recently even considered making them. Even then, the WS-20 has entered service, and if it matches claimed specifications, it's as good as anything Russia has either.
- kkzz99 3y agoThe recent leaked picture showing a J-20 with dual WS-15 puts their development on par with F-119/F-135. Lets see how quickly they can ramp up production. It seems they have fixed their supply chain issues.
- ls612 3y agoIt seems easier to make an engine that gives very high power at the expense of efficiency than an extremely efficient engine with reasonable power which is what airliners want.
- sudosysgen 3y agoIn the Pacific, efficiency is the main goal for fighter jet engines. The goal of the WS-15 is to have F-35 level efficiency while being able to go relatively far in the supersonic regime and outrange every US plane. And of course the engines for strategic lift planes are based around efficiency first.
- ls612 3y agoI could believe the J-20 could match the F-35, and apparently the Air Force could believe it too because there’s also the F-22. And strategic lift planes use normal jet engines not supersonic ones so they face the same issue as Chinese airliners do.
- kkzz99 3y agoThey recently got the WS-20 and WS-15 which puts them very close to US engines.