plawolfAccording to one American source, the Chinese did not use combat aircraft against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam because they knew, that after the fall of Saigon in 1975, the VPAF have expanded its inventory of aircraft which made of modern U.S built planes, flown by combat-experienced pilots who have prevously fought in the Vietnam war against the United States.
U.S built F-5A/B/E/F are much better then Chinese J-6/7, and PLAAF pilots are not as well trained as the Vietnamese, so to put their pilots in the air and lose against the Vietnamese would be an embarrassment.
well that american source was too generous to the american planes.
first of all, no-one knows for sure which is better out of the F5 and Mig21/J7 since they have never met in combat, but the vast majority put the two on par, and it will come down to pilot skill.
secondly, only a very small number of american fighters fell into vietnamese hands certainly nowhere near enough to pose any serious challenge to the PLAAF with its thousands of fighters.
the main reason for the PLAAF not getting involved was because of fear of the soviet supplies SAM and AAA network that gave the mighty USAF so much greef.
also, the PLAAF was at the time still mainly an air defence oriented force, so the value of their contrabution to the campaign was highly questionable.
weigh the risk against the rewards and you can see that they dont add up. hence the PLA’s decision to not use the airforce except in airdefence. since no vietnamese fighters tried to bomb chinese forces, there was no major air conflict.
plawolfYou will exactly see that in times of war because you want to minimize the time required for the prep…only way to do it is with a lot of careful eyes, losing even one fighter in those times can be consequential.
there’s a lot of things you want to do in times of war, but that dont mean you can do them all.
in many possible conflict scenarios (the kind this excerise was supposed to propare for), you have ROCAF fighters scrambling with maybe a few minutes warning to get away from their bases before they are destroyed by full scale PLA missile bombardment followed closely by cruise missiles and fighterbombers strikes. you think they will have time to arrange for all those people to get out there and clear the roads of every piece of dangerous material before jets start running out of fuel and/or munitions?
also, if the ROVAF is forced to start using roads to land and launch fighters, then its a good bet the PLAAF would have the edge in the skies. last time i checked, roads arent too hard to spot from the skies, and roads with so many people on them can blend into the background about as well as a clown in a rainforest. if you start doing FOD walkes like that, then you might as well lase your planes for your opponent as well.
plawolfThats one hell of a FOD search!!
indeed! wont be able to do that in times of war, but i guess its more about preserving the enignes then an abosolute necessity. still, i think russian ac that have speical filters and are designed to take off and land on makeshift feilds like the mig29 and su27/30 would be better suited for strategies like this.
wonder if they can retrofit filters onto the M2k-5s, F16s and F-CK-1s?
plawolfActually, the Kunlun II (1) had much more publicity than the WS-10A and is probably pretty well advance in its development. Though, according to notes, it’s actually a turbojet and the Kunlun III might be a converted turbofan. I couldn’t find to too much on the Southern Aero-Engine company’s turbofan.
At any rate, I think China is as far along with a medium sized alternative as it is with the WS-10A. For example, we know that the South AeroEngine Co. has already developed the WS-11 for the K-8.(2)
It would be very strange if they developed a low thrust turban (WS11) and a high-thrust one (WS-10) but not a medium one for the FC-1, especially considering the sensitivity of Russia components being exported to the PAF. There is no way there isn’t at least a Chinese alternative.
Whether that alternative powerplant is as good as the RD-93 is another matter but there would be an alternative, even if they needed to plug in a turbojet like a Kunlun.
The problem with substituting material is because if a wing is created with stiff, high load bearing composite material with a certain chord (thickness) then a weaker material like metal would need a much thicker chord to withstand same amount of load and you throw off the areodynamics. Or if the new material is not stiff enough then airflow would be different. These are replicated across the entire plane until the disparities are added up into something very difference from the original plan.
Unless you have designed a plane, like the FC-1, which is expected to have changes, then you can’t expect to degrade airframe without serious trouble.
It is easier to upgrade airframes, say going from heavier and softer metal to lighter and stiffer composite but downgrading the airframe where you change lighter, stronger parts for weaker and heavier parts would ruin the plane. You can only downgrade avionics and engines safely.
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Notes:
(1) http://www.idds.org/acr2003/707e4CAR02.html
“4 November AT THE ZHUHAI AIR SHOW CHINA INTRODUCED A NEW TURBOJET ENGINE, THE KUNLUN II, TO POWER THE F-7 AND F-8 FIGHTER AIRCRAFT. The engine develops a thrust in excess of 53.98 kN, 76.53 kN with the afterburner. According to a spokesman for China Aviation Corp Iās Shenyang Engine Institute, which developed the Kunlun series, it is “the first [Chinese developed jet] aero engine which has finished the whole process of design, pre-production, test, and “test-flight.”For comparision, the RD-93 is 49.4kN and 81.4kN afterburner.
(2)http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/2001outlook/aw347.htm
“China National South Aeroengine Co. (SAC) (Zhuzhou): Developed and built six series of more than 20 engines types including WZ8A turboshaft for light helicopters, WJ6 turboprop for medium transports, WJ6G1 and WJ6G4 for industrial applications and seaplanes, HS6 for small transports and agricultural planes, and WS11 for preliminary trainers.”
interesting points! some i had not thought off or did not know, looks like i need to do my homework alot more carefully in the future š® .
plawolfAh, Plawolf, the J-10 is actually in the same position as the FC-1 prototypes as far as the powerplant is concerned. They’re both using Russian engines for now.
China actually has two medium-sized turbofans roughly in the range of the RD-93 (8300kg of thrust): the Kunlun II of Shenyang Jet Engine Research Institute and another one from the Southern AeroEngine Company (1) under AVIC II.
The WS-10A is developed for the J-11B first and foremost. It was test flighted on a J-11 which has its mountings in entirely different positions from the J-10.
So developing and testing a J-10 version WS-10A might take the same amount of time it would take China to fit either of the two domestic turbofans to the FC-1.
are you sure about that? are either the kunlun II or the other one as far down the line as the WS10?
everything on a new engine needs to be fully tested and/or modified before it can be certified. however if you are taking an existing engine that is already or almost fully certified, and make some adjestments to it, then only the areas that are changed would need to be fully tested. as such, if the kunlun II or any other engine are not as far down the development process as the WS10, then they will most likely to longer to certify then a modified WS10.
As for downgrading the J-10, you could downgrade avionics but you really can downgrade the body and the airframe so a less sophisticated industry could build it. It has to be designed that way. The FC-1 is designed for a smaller industry than China to build and develop on its own. This FC-1 has, as Alan Warnes said in AFM, the ability to revolutionize Pakistan and other small air forces around the world.
This thing is designed with an open architecture on practically everything and that includes the engines.
Notes:
(1) Chinese Airshow, Part Two, 2002“Southern Aero-Engine Corp., also subordinated to AVIC-2, will probably bring to Zhuhai its newly developed turbofan engine (competitor of Kunlun engine) as well as new air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles.”
well i wasnt taking about a complete change. currently, the major problem areas for pakistan to build the J10 would most likely come in the form of materials science as pakistan might not be able to produce, or produce at a lower enough cost, many of the composite materials used in the j10.
however, these composit materials should mostly be used to save on weight and/or help reduce RCS, as such will not be critical to the plane’s flight performance.
the FBW would need to be tweeked to adjust for the changes, flight performance and range might be adversly affected, but not by too much. seems like a quicker way for the PAF to get a pretty capable BVR platform while helping to boost their own industries in the process – the same effect as the FC1, but quicker.
plawolfThere is another reason (and probably the core reason) for the FC-1: a plane that could be produced in Pakistan.
According to “Aviation World” article both the greatest weaknesses and also the greatest potential have to do with its open and seemingly empty architecture. It could as basic or as potent as people are willing to spend in giving it weapons, avionics and engine. (And this is why the author urged the PLAAF to buy even though he just panned it of the article.)
The FC-1 was, as said in the article, designed to the needs and abilities of the Pakistani industry which is not nearly as deep as China. The J-10 can’t be built in Pakistan in the near future. It’s that simple.
But the FC-1, as Alan Warnes reported, can. In fact, it was designed to increase Pakistan’s “own indigenisation to such an effect that it could end up building any additional aircraft may order over the current agreed 150.”
The FC-1 forms a basis for Pakistan’s a/c industry. There is little doubt in my mind that the PAF will eventual get the J-10 but the J-10 would just be another plane it buys.
The FC-1 is different. It’s a national project for Pakistan like the Agosta or the incoming 053H are.
good points, but what about the engine?
as far as i know, not even china has a suitable domestic engine for the FC1 yet, so if pakistan is to be able to build any more then the 150 on order, or to export any abroad, then it will have to get more RDs from russia, get a production licence (which isnt very likely), copy the RD (not a very cost effective or politically wise move), or develop a brand new engine of their own or have china do it for them.
any of the above will take quite some time and alot of money to do even of everyone invovled plays ball, and there is no such garentee.
the way i see it, if the FC1 can be improved by employing better materials in its production, then i guess the J10 can be ‘downgraded’ to allow pakistan to be able to produce it with its current industrial base or one of the near future.
the J10’s WS10A engine is chinese, so there is less hassle there; the ‘downgrade’ would make the J10’s early export less risky to china and the plane’s price could be lowered with increased output, also pakistan’s J10s would have a garenteed improvement potential instead of the FC1’s probabaly one. the PAF might also use what the PLAAF is doing to improve the J10 as a benchmark to upgrade their own or to suggest other solutions which might be adapted by china…
seems alot more cost effective and logical to me. but i guess it wasnt good enough for one or the other or both.
might be that the PLAAF was still reluctant to let the J10 go even with the ‘downgrade’, or it could be that too much of the downgraded J10 still needed to be built in china, or it could be that the downgraded J10 just wasnt good enough…
plawolfPerhaps the J-10 is fighter never meant to be inducted. Just like the Type 90 tanks or Su-47 maybe it was a tech demonstrator for things to come. I believe its a big leap from a J-8 to J-10 and such a jet would require lots of research. If the J-10 is ready a built which I believe they already have done why not share the jet with Pakistan which really needs a fighter aircraft. Why spend money on Fc-1? J-10 would do far better in the market if it already ready. It has a potential to be the next Soviet missile carring M2K5. The Fc-1 is like a early F-16 and by the time a nation can upgrade it…new stealth fighters would be very common like JSF, Pak-Fa or J-12.
i think you should read the J10 thread and you will see that all the indications are that the J10 is going to be mass produced, if it isnt being already.
your reason for why you think the J10 wont be mass produced dont make any sense. there are already at least a dosen confirmed examples flying. far too many if the project is just a tech demonstrator as you suggest.
as for J10s to pakistan. well when has any nation ever exported their very best miltary hardware to another nation at the same time as it is equiping their own forces? (the F35 might be a joint venture, but only the US will get full spec planes.) china and pakistan might be very close, but they are not quite close enough for china to risk seriously jepordising its own future security just to help the PAF balance the odds a little against the IAF.
the US has a requirement that no military equipment is allowed to be exported until it has been in service with the US military for at least 10 years, i suspect china is employing a similar principle in regard to pakistan and the J10. hence, the birth of the FC1.
in regard to the FC1, i share crobato’s opinion that it is in effect a brand new design and not just the S7 reserracted. the reason for its creation is most likely born out of CAC’s frustration of not being able to market the J10, so they made the FC1, which IMHO, is based heavily on the tech and experience derived from the j10 project.
plawolfi think it would be much easier to define ‘indigenous’ if you break it into two parts, design and production.
obviously, for the design of a plane (or anything else) to be indigenous, then it must have been designed in country by nationals and not foreigners. some outside help should be allowed, but these should not exceed help to bypass or overcome some bottlenecks. the ‘soul’ of the plane needs to be an original concept by local designers.
it is more difficult to define what should be classes as indigenous production as very few new aircraft are made from top to bottom by any one country.
i share fantasma’s view that for a plane to be allowed to be classed as produced ‘indigenously’, then the said nation must be able to product the plane completely independently of any other nation within a reasonably short time period (to allow for the country to switch from imported parts to indigenous ones).
obviously, some planes may be designed indigenously but not produced indigenously, while others may not be designed indigenously, but can be productuced indigenously. but for a plane to be called truely indigenous, then it must be able to fulfil both of the above indigenous requirements.
plawolflooks like we are finally finding some common ground. š
plawolfPlawolf,
We are not going to see eye to eye on this, and I may have missed your point, but I have made mine. But that’s what these forums are about after all, debate and discussion. No one is ever going to accept everything all of the time. It is impossible to obtain a Holy Grail of absolute truth about historcial events, UNLESS you were actually there. I can live with that.
not trying to pick a bone with you, but i dont see the absolute truth coming out even if you were there to see it for yourself. if you have ever been in court or anywhere else where a number of participants are asked to independently describe a single event, then you would realise just how many ways a single event can be observed and described. the only way to accurately record an event is to record it with a camera, but even then you are only recording a small piece of a larger picture.
plawolfeverybody’s “real” truth :rolleyes:
Forget the past…what about the truth today? Yet so willing to “feel good” now of the bad today by focusing on the bad of the past :rolleyes:
Of course then your children will focus on the bad today to avoid the pathetic bad of their days :rolleyes:
pathetic indeed…
some people must have been brainwashed real good if they believe they can get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about anything important that has happened in the last couple of milenia. not a long time, only from now to…say the begining of recorded history.:rolleyes:
for example say, just hypercetically, that bush had a CIA/pentigon or whatever report on his desk saying that iraq had no WMD months before the US invaded iraq, does anyone serisouly think they have the chance of a snowball in hell of seeing it before their lifetime is up? personally i’d be amazed if my great grandchildren live to see it, if there was such a report in the first place that is. if america is like that, then one can imagin what other places are like.
if history is like that, its not hard to imagin what the news is like. so stop being so neive by beleiving everything you hear on the news and use your own heard to think things through for once. :rolleyes:
plawolfI don’t recall exactly what was in the books, it was a news report from years ago. So if I am off, fair enough. But my point is not exactly what was in them, but that they HAVE casued an uproar of controversy in Asia. This they did, that much I do remember.
And I don’t need the rambling history lesson either, I am perfectly well aware of what was happening prior to Pearl Harbour.
Again my point is, the way Japan has portrayed it’s attitude toward the war and the aftermath has often caused ripples through modern day Asia. Hence everytime an even remotely offensive (or pro-active defensive) weapon system is introduced into the JSDF, or foreign policy altered, we usually hear a rumble about it from a paranoid Asian community.
you have said it, but you still missed the point! did any asian nation occupy japan? the answer is ‘no’, it was the americans that forced japan to surrander, it was the americans who occuplied japan after the war, it was america who effectively governed japan after the war. and do you see the japanese trying to ‘change’ the parts of WWII history that relates to the US? no, most japanese accept the american verson of what happened (that japan suddenly and unexpectedly attacked the US), while many indications show that the US knew for quite a while that a japanese response to their sanctions and support of china was coming, but they did not expect the japanese to be able to hit pearl, and that was the main cause of the pacific fleet being caught off guard.
few japanese would beleive the stories (and i seriously doubt many knows) of US soilders multilating dead japanese soilders (mainly for their gold teeth, but skulls have been knewn to have been sent home as presents), and you dont see anyone in japan fighting to put that in any new history books…
instead, more and more japanese are starting to believe in the fairy tail that all the attrocities japanese occupation soilders committed throught aisa were just a giant conspiricy despite overwhealming evidence suggesting the exact opposite.
as the old saying goes, the devil is in the details, if you dont want some ‘rambling history lesson’ even when you got it wrong, then the best thing to do is to not bring up history at all.
believe it or not, i personally believe that china and south korea etc are making too much of a fuss about nothing at times in regard to japan and the war. i think alot of the time its just political tactics to help leverage some advanatge in negociations with japan or to shift attention abroad, other times its just angery people trying to find an excuse to bash japan.
however, what makes the situation tricky is that there are chucks of truth mixed in amoungst all the hipe, and i seriously doubt anyone (people and government) would act/feel any differently if they are in china, SK etc’s shoes. so please forgive me if i feel a ‘little’ synical anytime someone who tries to criticise china etc on their policy towards japan when they have demontrated that they have very little knowledge of what happened in the first place.
plawolfI am also surprised by the numbers of non-stealthy features everywhere. I doubt the boat will have a real stealth advantage. Maybe the stealthy caracteristics are only coming from hull commonality and because of the electronic suite and radars they don’t expect it to be stealthy.
the design of the hull is actually quite stealthy, its all the domes, missile launchrails and rocket launchers that spoils the effect. the reason for it is that china probably dont have the ability to design compact, stealthy sensors and VLS (the VLS in 170/171 are more like a transitional type until a cell based system can be perfected) for ships of that size, so need to rely on a large number of bulky equipment. as for the rocket launchers, well since the stealth charateristics are already compramised, they might as well add some more capacity and/or save some expence my adding fixed types instead of using retractable or intergrated systems.
these ships will be in serice for decades, and there is no reason to think that china will not have developed the ability to design and produce sensors and weapons that meet the requirements of a stealthy warship before then, and these will probably be intergrated into these ships during a refit later on. this way china can enjoy the use of fairly advanced warships today that will still have alot of potential for improvement even after a few years in service.
plawolf[QUOTE=Indian1973….(2) I see four banks of rockets behind the Shtil. assume they are
ASW rockets ?[/QUOTE]
chaff launchers, ASW rockets are the ones in front of the main gun.
plawolfI am not assuming this. I am simply referring to what I have heard in the past regarding their text books and the teachings on the war.
From what I recall, SOME of the text books were painting the war as a justifiable cause against western aggression, and a grand plan that was to benefit the nation at the time – or something along those lines. Further more, Japan has never admitted it was wrong and apologized for the war. The paranoia that Asia often feels about a Japan on the move is not baseless, but can be traced from the collective controversy that Japan can still generate with regards to it’s past, and the text book saga was just part of it – this is fact. BUT, it is just paranoia. Japan is no longer an imperial nation.
unfortunatly that little statement betrays just how little you really know of the situation.
no mainstream japanese history textbook (or any other as far as i know) has ever tried to portray their expansion into the rest of asia as resistance ‘against western aggression’.
the lines goes that japan was ‘liberating’ the people of asia from western collonialsm and/or that japan anexed ‘some’ land as a ‘buffer-zone’ to help protect japanese interests from foreign (mainly chinese) ‘aggression’.
in fact japan has a far better case for trying to upture the popular western idea of japanese ‘uprovocked aggression’ against america.
the slaughter at pearl happened not because the ‘slippery’ japanese suddenly attacked america for no reason, as the american press of the time (and ever since) has portrayed, but because america seriously underestimated the japanese.
america was slowly choking japan to death through sanctions (especially oil), and a japanese ‘reaction’ was long expected. hence US forces near japan and east aisa were on high alert at the time pearl was bombed, and had been for quite some time before. the americans just never expected japan to have the capacity and the balls to bomb pearl and were caught with their pants down.
however, if you go ask the average japanese, the have no bone to pick with the american verson of japanese ‘unprovocked and shameful’ attack on america, and instead beleive in the fanatsy of japan expanding into the rest of asia for the good of the native people and that japanese troops behaved like professional soilders ( :rolleyes: ).
have to look at the history books to see who was the one occupying japan and you could easily see what was going on.
You stated to me: “history is written by the victors. would you have been taught the same lessons in class had germany and japan won?”
Agreed that the history books would be different, but would the ones written by us (the losing side) be accurate? We can speculate, but would never know, as this is a hypothetical WHAT IF scenario. True, history is written by the victors, but my point is that the losers don’t always portray an accurate recollection of events, or reasons, etc. This is what has caused controversy in Japan in the past, with respect to the rest of Asia.
missing the point, big time. all i said is that history is written by the victors, did i even imply that some would make ‘better’ victors then others? why are you trying to overcomplicate things by going into a discussion about who would be able to record history more accurately?
if you had focused on what i did say as opposed to what you thought i also said, you would have easily seen the point i was trying to make. which was that everyone writes their own versons of history, but when it concerns wars and conflicts, it is only the verson of the victor that is widely ‘accepted’. as such, one cannot simply take what is said in the ‘mainstream’ history books and take it was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
if you want the truth, you have to dig for it, often by examining as many versons of the same bit of histroy as you can, and then by looking for tangable EVIDENCE to see which verson or parts of a verson looks like the closest to what really happened.
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