How much does the J-20 need to carry out a combat readiness mission?
Some people say that this kind of top-level fighter is not only expensive to manufacture, but even the cost of conventional use is beyond the scope of ordinary countries. In terms of daily fuel consumption, the J-20 is equipped with a turbofan 10B C engine, and may be equipped with a turbofan 15 engine in the future.
The fuel consumption per unit of these high-power aero engines is as huge as that of an "oil tiger". A J-20 has a fuel tank capacity of up to 10 tons, and aviation fuel is used to ensure its maximum range and combat radius. According to the current market price of aviation fuel ranging from 8,000 to 10,000 yuan per ton, the J-20 needs nearly 100,000 yuan to fill up before each mission.
A fully loaded J-20 is capable of flying continuously for 44 hours, covering a distance of about 4000 km, its ideal combat radius is 2000 km. However, in wartime, the fighter may need to perform various difficult maneuvers, and even need to discard the auxiliary fuel tank, which will further shorten the combat range of the J-20.
Considering the aviation fuel consumption required by the J-20 to perform combat missions, this cost may not be too large, but it is indeed not easy to maintain a flight squadron dominated by the J-20 for a long time. After all, although the J-20 is powerful, daily maintenance, including engine life and other issues, is enough to cause headaches for many small countries. So, how long is the entire service life of a J-20?
How long can the service life of the J-20 reach?
Although the cost of the J-20, including parameters such as engine life, is classified, preliminary estimates can still outline a rough answer. The life of the J-20 mainly depends on the life of the engines it is equipped with. Take the turbofan 10B engine equipped with the J-20 as an example, this engine has a thrust of more than 14,000 kg and a thrust-to-weight ratio of up to 81. The overall life can reach more than 4000 hours. If you consider the J-20 deployed on the front line, in extreme cases, if you maintain a daily attendance status, it can operate continuously for up to two and a half years.
However, the J-20 does not fly like a normal passenger aircraft. The application of engine thrust in flight will have different scenarios and use different thrust, and a sudden increase in thrust may cause maximum damage to the engine, thereby seriously shortening the engine life.
Fortunately, China's turbofan 10C has begun mass production, and the more advanced turbofan 15 engine is expected to be equipped on the J-20. These two more advanced engines far surpass the original domestic turbofan 10b engine in terms of power parameters and life. Therefore, the life of the J-20 is expected to increase simultaneously.
As a top-level fighter, the J-20 not only has a huge daily fuel consumption, but also has an average engine consumption of up to 700,000 yuan per hour. However, with the installation of domestic engines, this figure has dropped to 300,000 yuan per hour. Therefore, the cost of a cruise on the J-20 can be as high as one million yuan. In addition, the most expensive part of the J-20 fuselage is actually not the engine, but the stealth livery.
In flight, once the J-20's fuselage livery is damaged, how much will it cost to repair it once?As we all know, stealth fighters like J-20 have a more expensive fuselage painting cost. Previously, the American Machinery Industry Network claimed that the three most expensive fighters in the world are the American F22, F35, and China's J-20.
At the U.S. Air Force base in Nevada, a large number of F35s are restored each year, and the cost of a single restoration is a staggering $35 million. The cost of painting and repairing the Chinese J-20 is relatively slightly lower than that of the American F35. Because of this, there was such a scene on TV: At an air base in the east, a J-20 that frequently performs combat readiness patrol missions still insists on carrying out its tasks due to serious detachment of paint.
On the one hand, it shows the importance of China's J-20 in maintaining the safety of the motherland's territorial waters and airspace, and it also shows that in the daily combat readiness cruise, in order to reduce the wear and tear of the paint, our army avoids large-scale dispatch of the J-20 in turn as much as possible, and adopts the principle of giving priority to the main force to reduce the loss of fighters as much as possible.
This indirectly shows that countries with fifth-generation aircraft are facing great pressure in terms of painting costs, and the thrifty Chinese Air Force has taken a number of corresponding measures in terms of spending on the principle of careful calculation. Many people are unbelievable that the most expensive stealth livery in history is not the J-20 or F22, but the American B2 bomber of the year.
The cost of stealth painting has reached an alarming level, because the early plasma painting technology is immature, resulting in a certain amount of damage to the fuselage painting once the fighter encounters a harsh environment, and the cost of a repair paint is as high as 77 million US dollars. This shows that maintaining a J-20 fleet is not an easy task, and it requires strong national support behind it.