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Originally Posted by -{SpoonmaN}-
Yeah as far as I'd heard the PLA were in the early design and developement stages with the J-XX, but given their history of tech trouble and time overruns I'd say it's a pretty long way off serivce. Last I read about the Pak-Fa was that it was being developed from the Su-47 tech demonstrator with a conventional wing design and all that, but it was also claimed to be a long way from realisation, especially given the trouble finding funds, since the Russian Military seems to be planning to simply skip the 5th Generation of warplanes and stick to 4.5 until their economy is back up to strength and they can start catching up with the next gen in a few decades. Whether or not that would work is beyond me. I thought they were trying to merge the program with the MCA but that could well have been baloney. Really it seems to me that China would benefit from Russian know-how if they're ever going to have a chance of producing a plane to rival the Raptor before the USAF is taking delivery of something like the F/A-22E Super Raptor.
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Hi SpoonmaN, they continue working on 5th generation but no information is available.
Russia is going to spend $180bn on weapon procurement by 2015 (around 20bn annually). Sepratedly Russia is planning to fund R&D for 5th generation aircraft - it is going to be a light and a heavy aircraft.
So far the problem is that Russia can build a 5th generation engine which would supercruise but it is too expensive...... So work is now how to make it really affordable while exceeding performance of Raptor's F119-PW-100. Currently Russia has Izdeliye 117 which is build up on the AL-31F with larger fan. I-117 has less performance on speed (though supersonic) but stated to consume much less fuel that F119-PW-100. If I-117 is finished to a serial model it would be refitted into EXISTING Flankers making them supercruising.