Actually I view the J-7 as inferior to the F-5 for several reasons.

First off, it doesn’t have the range of the F-5, and obviously range is a good thing for any airplane to have. Secondly, it has a rather poor equipment fit in terms of radar, which is very short-ranged. It has a very limited air-to-ground capability, with no precision weapons unlike the F-5 which can carry an array of air-to-ground stores. This makes the F-5 much more versatile and therefore more cost effective.

The J-7 is faster, and more agile with that double delta wing, but those are about the only advantages I see it having. An F-5 with a helmet sight and Python. can compete with a J-7 with helmet sight and PL-8/9. In addition, the F-5 has a BVR capability with some of its upgrades in the form of the Derby or the AIM-120 AMRAAM.

If I had a small air force, with limited resources I’d rather have a refurbished F-5 because it can simply perform more types of missions, and for around the same cost as the J-7.

It’s a shame that Northrop doesn’t still build the F-5 because it is still quite a useful little fighter even today in 2006.

The FC-1 is a better replacement for the F-5 than the J-7 for sure, but as someone pointed out earlier you can probably get older F-16’s for not that much more expense and upgrade them to a resonable standard. You’ve got a pretty decent capability for low-cost. I don’t understand why China keeps building the J-7. The FC-1 is the better aircraft by far and for a price that’s certainly not unresonable. I think the J-7, while being very cheap, is just too limited to be useful today.

FC-1 is not ready yet, that’s why. I’d expect the J-7 line to get removed and replaced by a FC-1 line in the next couple of years. Also, a refurbished F-16 is a used plane. There are advantages of a new plane over a used one. Btw, how much is a used+refurbished F-16 these days?

Ya sure J-10 beats flankers, got any more jokes to share? If the J-10 had all the gizmo and tech pakistan wouldn’t be running after russia, and US for other planes. Also why not use the avionics of J-10 for Jf-17? why look for grifo and other sources for avionics. Yes the J-10 would make an excellent replacement for Mirage3/5, it wouldn’t stand upto a F-16blk 50+ or modern flanker.

if you don’t want to believe it, that’s fine. I’ve posted plenty of stuff on this in the past. And again, the first 50 JF-17 are using Chinese avionics and radar. There is no indication grifo will ever get on JF-17. Maybe you should catch up on the news a little bit?

There are at least 4 regiments of J-10. Radar specs is a general unknown and the BVR weapon is PL-12.

People need to think out side the box. Consider this: They “think” they’re close to discovering which particle is responsible for the property of mass. If they could somehow suppress it’s effects the whole lightspeed issue goes away. Granted that’s not saying pulling it off would be any easier but it would be a way around the problem. Of course it opens up a whole other can of worms best answered late at night with beer in hand but it’s food for thought. If it’s ever broken it won’t be by spending months of time and 2 million tons of antimatter to get one pound going 99.99…% c.

Correcting on what I said before, Einstein’s theory isn’t entirely correct. Just as Newton’s theory isn’t entirely correct.

I need to ask a friend of my who is doing his PHD in ECE. He was saying that there are particles that can travel at the speed of light, but have no no mass when it’s at rest, but when it is at motion, it does have energy. I can’t remember what they are calling this particle. I tend to fall asleep when he talks about stuff like this. Anyhow, for anything with resting mass, the past experiments have shown that as you get closer to the speed of light, the time also slows done and so forth. Anyhow, I suggest people to read up on general relativity. Fascinating stuff.

ever read the theory of relativity?

I suggest you go and take a look.

Golden Dragon, I didn’t make it up…

Previously there was an article with Venezuala considering the J-10 or Su-27 as its next generation fighter, due to the embargo on F-16 parts from the US.

This is just suggesting Venezuala is favouring the Su-35, thats all. Funny from a Russian source.

Who knows, in the end, Venezuala may take up the J-10?

sure there is, but you can’t just believe it just because one article said so. The person who wrote the article probably was just speculating since Chavez mentionned Russian or Chinese plane. Before that, there wasn’t even any mention about when J-10 would be exported. The only country that probably got clearance so far on J-10 is Pakistan. Other than that, China is just actively promoting FC-1 right now.

hmm, I honestly don’t see how China getting the source code for JSF could help it that much. Let’s just say that different software designed for fighters are very specific and it is extremely hard to use on other fighters. Also, you have the issue that the entire software architecture used in Chinese military is entirely different from the one used in America. In order for China to make use of any JSF code, it would have to rewrite a huge portion of its already developed code. Let’s just say that is not going to happen. So, this entire protectionism over software transfer is total bs.

http://military.china.com/zh_cn/news/568/20060321/13185344.html
中新网3月21日电 据黑龙江日报报道，哈航集团制造的两架“运十二Ⅳ型”飞机19日交付斐济国家航空公司，这是中国“运十二Ⅳ型”机首次出口国外。
　　
　　报道说，这是斐济第二次购买“运十二”飞机。1991年6月，斐济购买了2架“运十二Ⅱ型”机，至今已运行了15年，“运十二”飞机高效的出勤率、在艰苦环境条件下所表现出的优良的性能和高质量及哈航集团优质的售后服务，深受斐济航空公司的好评。
　　
　　“运十二Ⅳ型”机是在Ⅱ型机的基础上改进设计研制的。其起飞重量、载客、载重量均有所提高。截至目前，“运十二”飞机已经出口到20个国家和地区90余架。据了解，今年下半年，哈航集团还将有5架“运十二”飞机出口赞比亚。 (尤志强、薛婧)

Y-12 type 4 has its first export

First of all, to date I doubt that except for testing purposes an Su-33 has taken off with anywhere near a 30 ton payload operationally let alone a 33 ton payload. Even with the long range R-27E missiles that are about 350kg each you’d have trouble finding an air to air payload that would reach the 6.5 ton max weapon load of the Su-33, especially considering it can’t carry external fuel tanks. The Max load of R-27Es is 8, which leaves 4 pylons for R-73s, so the normal weight with full missile load is 4 x 110kgs + 8 x 350kgs, which equals about 3.2 tons. In reality two of those R-27Es would probably be replaced by R-77s, which would reduce the weight by about 300kgs as the R-77s are about half the weight of a R-27E. (R-77s are about 175kgs vs 350 kgs for an R-27E).

Second all model Flankers that take off from carriers (ie the Su-33 and the two seat side by side Flanker) have similar engines and dry weights and are described as having MTOWs as 33 tons from carriers. Now that obviously doesn’t mean Gorshkov carriers as they can’t take off from those carriers, so I am assuming they mean the Kuznestov class carriers. (The two seat side by side flanker model has the added spec of MTOW from land as being 38.8tons, with the MTOW from carriers as 33Tons… the same as the Su-33.)

Its limits are not weight but avionics. It can’t currently carry guided air to ground weapons, so although it can carry a 6.5 ton payload, no actual combination of weapons it currently carrys is likely to max out the payload except for the very unlikely payload of dumb bombs, and considering it has no avionics for attack it would be a very weak daylight only capability. It is a fighter, not a bomber.

The mig-29K on the other hand is a full multirole aircraft with a wide range of air to ground ordinance and it can certainly carry loads at its full MTOW weights and do so quite regularly.

The Mig-29K is a smaller lighter aircraft with a MTOW of almost 10 tons lighter, but increased thrust engines that put out 18 tons of thrust at emergency rating. (The engines it uses have a 9 ton thrust especially for takeoff rating). Unlike the Flanker the Mig can carry external fuel, but there would be little point in having the ability to carry external fuel only when lightly loaded, as you’d need the extra fuel only for strike missions in the first place.

Again, my issue was with the external fuel tanks, not with the AAMs.

yep, I know that the original su-33s do not support A2G munitions and missiles. That’s not what I was asking. I remember reading on CDF that the a normal payload for su-33 was just a couple of R-27s, 4 R-73s and a fully tank, otherwise it can’t take off Kutznetsov or something like that. Basically, I’m under the impression that su-33 has less payload in practice than 6500 KG and same applies to mig-29k when taking off from a small carrier like Gorshov without a catapult.