its performance is actually superior to the engines that china has imported from russia so far, however there were some issues with reliability, but all evidence shows that the problems have been solves as the engines is now in full production, it is of course not up to par with new american engines, the US has monstrously powerful AND reliable engines, china will be one step closer, however, with the ws-15
This will seriously affects deployments and more importantly -- readiness.
ORI 101: What Airmen need to know about Operational Readiness Inspections
ORIs are conducted to evaluate and measure the ability of a unit to perform in wartime, during a contingency or a force sustainment mission, according to Air Force Instruction 90-201, Inspector General Activities. Every wing undergoes an ORI approximately every five years.
Speaking from a USAF perspective: No one wants to be in a flying wing that failed an Operational Readiness Inspection (ORI).
Life will be near hell for everyone and if sh1t rolls down hill, the wing will live in sh1t for a long time. Twelve-fourteen hour shifts will be the norm between repeated ORIs until the wing is certified as deployment ready. Only emergency leaves will be granted, meaning if there is a death in the family, it had better be an immediate member, before your CO will grant you time off. Your wife is in the hospital with birth complication? Tough sh1t. Now get yer butt out there and fix that jet, with your gas mask on. And so on...
We do not know what the PLAAF standards are for combat deployment certification but if there are reliability issues with hardware, certification standards will reflect that, as in a lower standard. You are only as combat deployment ready as your hardware will allow. Training will also be affected because flight hours availability are heavily dependent on aircraft availability, and even if a pilot can fly, either as a student or just to maintain proficiency, reliability issues can affect what he learns, how quickly can he learn them, or maintain proficiency in his current skills, because directives came down to restrict performance in order to reduce the odds of catastrophic failures that would negatively affect a wing's ability to deploy, and that is with lower standards compared to other air forces.
This is why the US military have standards that we do and why it is so often easy it is to laugh at US for cost overruns and how much we pay for our war fighting equipment. Standards and technology are in a push/pull relationship. We want X so the manufacturers worked hard to meet X. Somewhere along the way, manufacturers happened to produce X+1 so we raised our standards to match. The result is the US military that the world sees today, in particular to my USAF where we have aircrafts that are older than the people flying and working on them that are still flying and still capable of changing with the times.
Underestimate hardware at your peril.
