as per this article, it may well be that the JJ-9 is not the best solution for LIFT for PLAAF for its future fleet of J-10/J-11s. the Hongdu L-15 may be a better solution for the future.

BTW, why does the PLAAF need a Lead-In Fighter Trainer ? Is the JL-8 (K-8 Karakorum) not good enough for the role of AJT and LIFT combined ?

I’m asking this because Insig and Rimmer for several pages in the IAF thread kept questioning why the IAF would need a LIFT (it doesn’t have one currently) and why the Hawk AJT could not suffice for the role.

hmm, that’s what people thought before, but it turns that JJ-9 is better than they thought and L-15 development is even slower than they originally thought.

I think the point of having LIFT is that it can simulate flight performance closer to modern fighters than AJT and the cockpit and man-machine interface on these LIFT is also much closer to modern fighter.

Edit:
Actually, I think I got mixed up before. I think K-8’s role is intermediate jet trainer. From the recent Dubai Air show, L-15 was shown to be capable in both AJT and LIFT roles. I think JJ-9 would be able to also.

PLAAF considers JJ-9 to be able to do all the lead in flight training tasks for its current fleet of J-10/flankers + next generation fighter jet. I don’t see why it would not be able to do so for Indonesia, unless they are looking for more of an attack aircraft than a LIFT, that would be a different story.

FTC-2000 makes no sense as its not even being considered by the PLAAF. Indonesia will become the launch customer if true. It is more logical for them to consider the FC-1 or L-15 if they had to go the Chinese route. For logistics sake, they should just consider one type all together rather than two.

that’s not true. FTC-2000 is the export version of JJ-9, which is now in serial production for PLAAF. It’s L-15 that is no where near ready for PLAAF. Until it gets its engine situation sorted out (and who knows how long that will take), JJ-9 is it.

Wiki got it wrong , they say the loaded weight is about 7.8 t, the engine has 66.7 KN , thats not a T/W ratio of 1.3… none of those performance figures seems real anyway…

the engine could be swapped from WP-13F to WP-14 to improve TW ratio. Although, I’m not sure if they will actually do that.

hmm, it will take some times, but it’s probably going to appear on J-10s pretty soon. Or at least, it will be available on mass for J-10 pretty soon. After all, if PLAAF gets offered to power J-10 with FWS-10A or AL-31FN-M2/3, the latter will clearly be the superior engine. Would PLAAF sacrifice greater performance just so that they can say they are using domestic engine? I’m not sure.

I think that this shows the mass production problems that they have for FWS-10 have been resolved, so they can probably get production certification in a year or two, which would be good enough for a single engine jet like J-10.

I really don’t think subs use radar to detect ships. If it has to use search radar on sail to find surface ships, then it might as well be over for the submarine. It’s certainly fine to try to make ships more capable and such. However, there comes a point when you have to freeze design to keep the cost down. Continuing to allow changes after you have already started production is just bad management practice. You have to decide at an earlier stage on what you want on the ship at what cost and stick with it. Otherwise, the cost will just keep going up. For something like a 2500 ton AW Corvette, you really don’t need to keep spiraling cost just to make it slightly more stealthy. That article seems to just be justifying inability for keeping down the cost.

Hmmm …. I have to admit, but I don’t believe that these two projects are still both alive in their original way:

As far as I understand the situation, SAC won the original contest to develop the PLAAF’s next generation fighter, but after some years without any real progress – and also in mind of CAC’s sussess to stem two moderne fighter projects nearly simultanously (J-10 + FC-1) – a decission was made August 2008 to transfer the XXJ program or whatever it is called to both design teams: 611 Institute was selected to be the main contractor for the development of the J-20 and 601 Institute as the sub-contractor.

Therefore, the new fighter is a typical heavy one to be powered by two AL-31F/WS-10A and later WS-15 turbofans ….

The other rumoured second one and smaller project is more akin to a JSF-type … and this one for sure has a long way to go.

Deino

i think the original one was over-emphasized, that was more for research funding. The decision in 2008 was actually a selection of CAC’s design over SAC’s design.

A conjectural drawing of the Shenyang J-14

The main contractor for the one in question is CAC. Shenyang also has a next gen fighter in development, but that’s the lo part of the hi-lo combination.

Well here are some of the official/semi-official releases.

Here are three configurations – Link. The tri-plane config was said have been eliminated at an early stage.

Here are the image folders :

601-SAC -Link
611-CAC -Link
Eliminated -Link

It is said that CAC was awarded the main contract, with SAC possibly playing a minor role.

I said this before, and I’ll sat it again, these may or may not represent the real thing. Only time will tell….

There is also a revised version of the JH-7A (dubbed JH-7B), with RCS reduction features as well as other changes. J-10, J-11 takes the headlines, but JH-7A is an important milestone since they can build every piece of it including the turbofan locally. Both PLA-AF, PLAN-AF operate them.

those pictures are nonsense imo. I don’t know why you both posting speculations online.

I put a CCTV released CG on my blog
http://china-pla.blogspot.com/2009/11/j-10-and-4th-generation-news.html
These photos, while not official, are actually kind of close to the description of some of the speculations we are getting on Chinese bbs. We don’t have any evidence JH-7B is actually an officially sanctioned project.

They also have a exact land based replica of nuclear submarine. It’s done to train the crew with getting used to the surroundings in day-to-day operations and also to test out the electronics. Nothing different with this installation, it’s suppose to be a one to one replica of the carrier. I’m assuming they should be on the inside too. This installation was referred to as the “integrated testing platform” by the local newspaper.

Speaking of which, it also would make sense for at least the first generation of Chinese carriers to adopt the same island. Shouldn’t just be for Varyag.