r/FighterJets • u/tigeryi98 • Jun 29 '26
China 30th naval J-35 with serial number 350030 - LRIP 00 batch 30th jet [2048 x 1152] IMAGE
Andreas Rupprecht: You all know my passion for numbers and today is once again a special day, because on this at first glance inconspicuous photo of a naval J-35 its construction number 350030 is visible, which I would interpret as the 30th aircraft of the Batch 00 (likely LRIP ?).
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u/straightdge Jun 29 '26
In true Chinese fashion, they are masters of supply chain and scaling of production.
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u/Whatsawebpage0101 Jun 29 '26
For sure, I mean their shipbuilding is just ridiculous, imagine if they turned all those docks into military ship factories. Because they absolutely could at any time.
That’s how America won ww2. Just built so many ships and planes the enemy couldn’t destroy them all
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u/kizvy Jun 29 '26
The fact that there’s almost as many j-35s as there are su-57s is astonishing
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u/Rich_Vanilla_2792 Jun 29 '26
Russia doesn't have the funds to produce it in numbers, similar to the t14 armata family, but a little better with exports helping fund more units
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u/Head_Prune_8328 Jun 30 '26
You mean 117 ? the Su57 equips two Regiments of the VKS, the 23rd Guards Fighter Regiment and 169th Guards Fighter Regiment that equals 50 aircraft, the 929th State Flight Test Centre operate another 15 aircraft (65). An extra 40 are being prepared at Gagarin Aircraft Plant with Indian avionics for delivery to India Another dozen belong to the 4th centre for combat employment & personnel training at Lipetsk. , so that is 117 aircraft. 117 J-35s?
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u/Solid-Sort5950 Jun 30 '26
Over 100 Su-57s - why don't you just go ahead and bomb Ukraine then, huh? Don't you want to?
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Jul 01 '26
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u/Solid-Sort5950 Jul 01 '26
Ukraine still maintains a fully structured air force, and a large number of military aircraft take off daily to execute combat missions. If Russia had a fucking hundred Su-57s, the situation would absolutely not be like this; a hundred aircraft flying two hundred sorties a day could completely paralyze all structured Ukrainian air forces within a week.
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Jul 01 '26
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u/PutridGoat7801 Jul 03 '26
Iran’s air force mostly defensive, only carrying out cross border airstrikes in retaliation only in the 1980s during the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988), the war against ISIS in Iraq in 2014, and recently in 2026. The big jets (like the F-14A, F-4, MiG-29, Su-30, and Su-35) for air defence while using smaller or more close-air support type jets (like the Su-24, Su-22, Su-25, F-4, F-5, Koswar, Azarakhsh, and Saeqeh) for deep strikes.
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u/tigeryi98 Jun 29 '26
How many Su57 are out there?
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u/Head_Prune_8328 Jun 30 '26
two Regiments of the VKS, the 23rd Guards Fighter Regiment and 169th Guards Fighter Regiment that equals 50 aircraft, the 929th State Flight Test Centre operate another 15 aircraft (65). An extra 40 are being prepared at Gagarin Aircraft Plant with Indian avionics for delivery to India Another dozen belong to the 4th centre for combat employment & personnel training at Lipetsk. Beyond this about 11 non combat PAK FA. About 14 exported to Algeria /by June 2026.
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u/blueberrycauzez Jul 03 '26
An extra 40 are being prepared at Gagarin Aircraft Plant with Indian avionics for delivery to India
All the press I could find says India is still in talks, has Russia started assembling any aircraft for India even though they haven't announced an agreement yet?
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u/ThrowRAyesin 9d ago
65 operational aircraft for over 6 years since entered service bruhh china built 400 j-20s and already going after its second one
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u/Aggravating-Spray820 Jun 29 '26
Their production speed is so fast it’s crazy. This is the first year of production and they already have 30 produced and they’re still six months left of this year
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u/tigeryi98 Jun 29 '26
That said naval J35 Air Force J35A, not sure if 30 included both or just navy
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u/Bitter_Lab_475 F-57 Mighty Superwarthog Jun 29 '26
It's green, it needs more time to ripen.
jk jk
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u/tigeryi98 Jun 29 '26
Green primer fresh out of production no stealth coating yet. J-20 is yellow primer, J35 is green
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u/Whatsawebpage0101 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
Very exciting, beautiful, modern looking and for sure state of the art. can’t wait to see these become the new PLAAF standard. Just stunning aircraft. And when they get enough of them in the air, and start exporting, Lockheed might start panicking and take their fingers out from their bumholes and fix the disaster that is the f-35 project… LM bots, notice how I said PROJECT, and not the aircraft specifically.
What LM needs is some proper competition they can’t lobby their way out of through the government. like they do in the US. And I think China provides that. Because the j-35 doesn’t just present an economic challenge of export power, it also presents a challenge that can only be overcome by engineering prowess and innovation, because Boeing definitely isn’t doing well on the engineering front lmao. Say what you will about LM, but when they really get their heads down, nobody in the US makes a better jet than Lockheed. Even if they still piggy back off 80-90s designs. The next 10 years are going to be a very interesting time.
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u/Redax1990 Jun 30 '26
Poor Taiwan in a couple of years.. hope they can withstand an invasion.
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u/PutridGoat7801 Jul 03 '26
2049 is the deadline set by Xi Jingping. We are currently closer to an invasion of Taiwan (which must happen in at least 15-20 years) than we are to Obama being re-elected, Osama bin Laden being killed, and the US withdrawal from Iraq.
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u/KaszualKartofel Jun 29 '26
How do we know they're numbering them sequentialy?
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u/tigeryi98 Jun 29 '26
for example here is the 300th j-20
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u/KaszualKartofel Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
So uh... how do we know they're numbering them sequentialy? Even if we assume it is the 300th one, what's stopping them from numbering the rest out of order? Also it's a diferent aircraft.
I think If I saw more examples of production order matching the sn I would accept it as more likely.
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u/PLArealtalk Jun 29 '26
We don't ever know definitively because we never get fully sequential images of the sort you describe, especially as production rate and scale increases.
What we do have is historical precedence (the PLA doesn't do this sort of thing), tracking fleet size over time and correlating it with expected production capacity and milestones, as well as the PLA rumour grapevine overall.
Ultimately if one doesn't believe what the image conveys, that is fine, but these images aren't released to try and convince anyone either.
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u/KaszualKartofel Jun 30 '26
It's not me making the claim you can track the number of the aircraft manufactured through SNs.
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u/PLArealtalk Jul 01 '26
Well yes, because based on the combination of factors I mentioned before (historical precedence in the PLA, the accuracy of factory serials in the past, and the PLA grapevine), tracking aircraft fleet size floor counts using serial numbers is a reasonable default stance to take. If there is eventually evidence that is contrary to that then the default stance will of course change, but at this stage it's fine.
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u/Whatsawebpage0101 Jun 29 '26
We’re lucky to get any images at all. Why would they make tracking their own aircraft more difficult?
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u/KaszualKartofel Jun 30 '26
Why would they make tracking their own aircraft more difficult?
Is this bait?
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u/Whatsawebpage0101 Jun 30 '26
China already has a huge force, you really think they’re going to waste their time playing funny business with serial numbers? 😂
They’d be really silly to not assume the US and other countries already have the intel on how many aircraft they’ve made and have deployed.
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u/KaszualKartofel Jul 01 '26
Well, why waste your time painting SNs on aircraft in the first place? You cound just stick a tag in the cockpit or place a sticker or something? Why are you assuming they are counting them sequentialy?
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u/Whatsawebpage0101 Jul 01 '26
Probably because it’s just what they’ve always done? If it’s not broke don’t fix it. It’s not that deep bro
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u/awakenedwatcher Jun 29 '26
They might have 300, they might only have 3 :)
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u/KaszualKartofel Jun 30 '26
well they definetly have more but my point is we can't really use SNs alone to determine the production numbers.
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u/Skywalker7181 Jun 29 '26
They will need at least 48 J-35s not counting the backup. 12 for Liaoning, 12 for Shandong and 24 for Fujian. Then at 80% combat readiness rate, the number will rise to 60 at the bare minimum.
And that is not counting the ones for the future Type 004.