According to foreign media reports, not long ago, a Su-34 fighter bomber of the Russian Aerospace Forces crashed into a residential area of Yesk City shortly after taking off for training missions. The pilot parachuting succeeded, but the raging fire caused by the explosion of the fighter affected a residential building around it.
Russian officials revealed that the accidental disaster has killed 15 people and injured 20 people. After several days of investigation, the Russian side finally determined that the cause of the plane crash was that two birds crashed into the engine. If it was in normal times, this was just an ordinary accident. However, in the comprehensive escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, especially the Russian military Su-34 fighter performed poorly on the Ukrainian battlefield, doubts about the Russian Aerospace Forces and Su-34 fighter jets have once again become rampant.
According to statistics from a foreign website, since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the Russian army has lost a total of 17 Su-34 fighter jets, second only to the Su-25 fighter jets.
Compared with the Su-25 and Su-34 fighter bombers that began to serve in the 1960s were not officially put into service until after the 21st century. The lifespan and modernization of the aircraft are at a high level in the Russian Aerospace Forces fighter jet sequence. Before the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the total number of Su-34 fighter jets equipped by the Russian army was only about 130. In other words, it had lost 12% of the size of the active aircraft fleet, which is a loss that no army can bear.
As we all know, due to historical reasons, the development of Chinese and Russian fighter jets has a relationship of "can't be cut and messy". Many fighter models of the two countries can roughly correspond one by one, such as the Su-27 and the J-11, the Su-57 and the J-20, etc. So what is the real performance of the J-16, which is similar to the Su-34 in terms of overall tactical role? Going further, if it were under the same battlefield environment, would the J-16 perform as poorly as the Su-34? The reason why
can compare the two together is mainly based on two factors. First of all, the Su-34 and the J-16 are both fighter bomber , which are called "bomb trucks" by their respective military fans. They have strong ground-to-strike capabilities; secondly, they have historical development backgrounds, both based on a model derived from the Su-27 family, and are from the same school.
Overall, Su-34 is mainly positioned as a "light bomber". It is mainly used to cooperate with armored clusters to conduct large-scale deep combat during wartime. The purpose is to destroy the enemy's main air defense positions, military base , ammunition depot and other military facilities, as well as roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure. Its powerful weapon mounting capabilities and first-class ultra-low-altitude penetration capabilities can basically meet the heavy responsibility of Russian troops to strike against the ground.
However, since the design ideas and technical indicators of Su-34 were based on the 1990s, when the Russian aviation industry was in the cold winter after the collapse of , the radar , avionics systems and information technology were relatively backward, especially lacking stealth ability, poor battlefield survival, and prone to attacks from the enemy air defense weapon .
The reason why the Russian Su-34 fighter jets suffered heavy losses on the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield is due to the objective reasons for the technical defects of Su-34 equipment, and more importantly, various bizarre phenomena caused by the Russian Aerospace Forces' funding restrictions. First of all, fighter jets such as Su-34 and Su-30 are not equipped with missile approaching warning devices. In other words, when facing the many individual air defense missiles obtained by the Ukrainian army from Western countries , the difficulty of early warning suddenly increased. Therefore, there are frequent cases of Ukrainian soldiers holding "stinger" missiles to shoot down Russian fixed-wing fighter jets.
Secondly, at the beginning of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the Russian army, which thought that "the advantage is in me", did not use cruise missiles and guided bombs on a large scale, but used stock unguided bombs to bomb Ukrainian targets. However, when dropping such traditional bombs, fighter jets must maintain low altitude and low speed, which is simply a living target for Ukrainian air defense firepower to aim at shooting.
In fact, the top Russian military leaders have also noticed the relevant issues and started to correct them. As a result, fewer and fewer reports of Su-34 being shot down.Compared with the Russian army, the above problems of the Chinese Air Force naturally do not exist. With the stable growth of national defense funds, the Chinese Air Force's training and preparations are closely related to the actual combat environment, and the construction of the battlefield early warning system ranks first in the world. The frequency of various cruise missiles and precision-guided munitions remains at a high level. While paying attention to the survival of fighter jets, it pays more attention to the lives of pilots.
In addition, the J-16, which has just been released for a few years, is better than the Su-34 in all paper data. For example, in terms of aircraft body design, the J-16 draws on the characteristics of many fifth-generation aircraft. On the avionics system, the J-16 is equipped with a new domestic active phased array radar , which can search at the same time and ground at the same time. It has strong anti-electronic interference capabilities and can detect ground targets 300 kilometers away and surface ship 150 kilometers away, which is comparable to the J-20.
Final conclusion: Although Su-34 and J-16 have many similar characteristics, the actual level of the two is no longer comparable. The J-16 is recognized by all parties as the "ultimate side position", while the Su-34 is just a small-scale improvement made by the Russian army based on the Su-27 architecture. In the same battlefield environment, the Su-34 may be embarrassed by the limitations of the overall strength of the Russian army, but if it is the J-16 of the People's Liberation Army, it is a completely different scene.
