I read an article (forgot what publication) where a US pilot got to fly in a SU-27UB with a russian test pilot. He made some very interesting comparisons.
He said the stick grip was uncomfortable high, negating his habit of resting the arm on his thigh. This makes the airplane “harder to fly” in that it makes it harder to make very small inputs…flying by the tip of the fingers if you will. (personal experience).
He said the forces required on the stick were higher than on US aircraft, probably the reason for the longer stick…more leverage. Also the -27 had a tendency to continue rolling or pitching after the stick was returned to center.

this was almost certainly a result of the early flankers not having FBW controls. these problems should have been resolved after full digital FBW was introduced on later versons (and being retro-fitted to older ac).

On visibility he wrote that when he first sat down in the cockpit he was very impressed with the visibility. That was until the crew chief told him to adjust the seat down, due to seat CG limitations. After that he said the visibility was poorer than in a US aircraft.

well thats rather suprising, why would you have the option to make adjustments that is entirly useless in all intents and purposes? :confused:

back to the topic.

russian ac tended to have their cocpits lower down to minimise drag. many western ac also did this (F4, F5, tornado etc). however, later the west started to move away from these designs after the design teams started to do ‘wish list’ studies with pilots to see what they most wanted in a new fighter.

but the raised cockpit did carry some penalties, with the F16’s rather slow speed being a good example.

so as you can see, its not really about having everything. the west decided to sacrific a little speed for much better visibility. the russians also decided to go down the better visibility road, but thir designs still placed a greater emphysis on streamlining, and the result is the likes of the mig29 and Su27.

Nope, I didn’t miss a zero. I was referring to the trade restriction on weapons with a range of more than 300km. As I pointed out the Chinese certainly already have weapons that exceed that range already and also have nuclear weapon capability… even if they couldn’t match the original a simple 20 Kiloton device would be enough considering the weapons accuracy.

And the Original Kh-55 had a range of about 2,000km, it was the improved later model with the so called saddle tanks that extended the range to 3,000km.

come on, these missiles were supposed to have been sneaked out of the country, probably to make some corrupt generals/polititions a nice nest-egg for their retirement. as such, i doubt any treaty ranked very high on their concern list.

the iranians may want the KH55s to help form a nuclear deterant, but the chinese would only be interested in the weapon for its technology. and even then it would almost exclusively used what it learned to help improve or design conventional cruise missiles. nuclear deterance will be left to the ICBM and the soon to be expanded SSBN forces.

thanks alot guys, clears up alot of my worries. much appreciate. 🙂

I won’t push it that far yet. Firing a simple rocket is an easy task. The important thing is to determine what sort of ordinance is being fired. Is it a tv guided missiles? It looks to me it’s firing unguided rockets.

guided missiles would be a far bigger scoop, but even just dumb rockets is still pretty significant.

why would they be wasting valuable airframe and pilot time test firing rockets when AAM intergation isnt completely done? is there an overwhelming need for the J10 to be able to fire off some rockets as soon as its in service? :confused:

thing is though, it certainly doesn’t look like PLAAF is gonna drop the J-7G, especially when its so cheap and effective. Hey, there has been reports of J-7G beating Su-27s in manoeuverability, and it has been agreed by most ppl that it has a similar level of manoeuverability to the earlier F-16s at least. In reality, the only drawback is range and medium-range missiles capablity. However, if this plane is used over Taiwan Strait, you dunt need much range anyways. Plus, there has been rumours, keeping in mind only rumours, that J-7G is medium-range missiles capable.

J-8B/D is a different story. The story is pretty bad at the very start, and manoeuberability has never been credible. In my opinion, J-10 could completely overwhelm J-8B/D in performance, and yet, its not that more expensive than the former.

the J7G only approaches the F16’s level of manoverability in certain feilds and is still lacking in others. but is still a massive improvement over any other Mig21 derived ac.

the reports about J7Gs v Su27 is only in dogfighting, and is probably conducted much in the same way as the US top gun flight school, with senior instructors flying the J7Gs to practice dissimilar air combat with younger pilots in flankers. so that does not mean that the J7G is superior to the flanker in terms of manoverability.

also, the J7G does not have the nose space for a bison-like radar to allow for proper use of BVRAAMs (the italian grippo for the PAF J7MGs have a reported range of 23km IIRC, so you can probably fire off a missle at 18km if your lucky, but why you’d want to waste good BVRAAMs like that is beyound me).

Why to invade Iran, when two B-2s are enough to destroy all atomic-program related installation in a single night?!
If Iran responds to that militarily, it risk to loose all power generation facilities the next night for example.
If this is not enough, Iran can loose its AF the next night. The Navy and so on, there is nothing Iran has at hand to prevent this if the USA is willing to force its military might.

The USA have the capability to disarm Pakistan, India and North-Korea from their atomic weapons. But to do so, the USA have to use atomic weapons and create an unknown number of casualities their. As long as those atomic weapons there pose no real threat to vital intrests of the USA, there is no reason to justify such use of force. 😮
The Europeans have the same intrest to convince the Iran not to look for atomic weapons. Otherwise there is no need to negotiate this issue with Iran. 😉

What are the number of losses in Iraq, an atomic bomb and what are the number of losses through a Tsunami? The world is still traveling. 😡

so the US would think long and hard about messing with a nuclear power where they would merely bomb a non-nuclear power without much of a second thought. point made. :rolleyes:

K8 Assembly line in china (from CDF)

ahh, just like the old days. 😀

i wonder what those ppl who said tha PLAAF arent using the K8 in large numbers are going to say now. :diablo: