lets not forget just how reliant the US is actually on stailites. all new gen US weapon systems rely heavily on all sorts of satilites, from the JADAM to preditor/global hawk and the new gen of UCAVs.

knocking out a few satilites would have negalagible affects on the US war stragegy and opperations ability, but if someone can knock out enough sats to render the GPS network inoperable for example, then that would have major implications as to how the US plan and fight wars.

going one step future and knocking out all US sats would, in my view, bring the US military back abt 20 to 30 years in terms of overall capacity (but the nation lauching the attack would also be knocked back by about the same degree as his sat network would also be destroyed by the US by the end of it). of course this would have major implications for the whole world as such a move would most likely rander near-earth obit too dangerous for any sat use until we come up with the tech to clean up all the wreckage.

“The four hardpoints, however, only appear as fuselage attachment points for MERs (multiple ejection racks) to hold small bombs in the 250kg size. So it’s not really in contradiction to what we are seeing, which is the plane having only 7 main hardpoints. These four hardpoints would be useless for carrying missiles anyway.”

purhaps these four hardpoints were designed to carry navagation and targeting and ECM pods? this could explain why they are so ‘light’ and so could help to save the other hardpoints for ordinants and droptanks.

“Within 10 or 15 years..China will have caught up with the US already and will not have the problem of delays and people wanting to stop programs, like your Commanche, and now F/A-22!.”

a little over optimistic i’d say.:rolleyes:

china is catching up fast. but in some feilds we’re are still far behind the russians not to mentions the americans. but what matters most is that china is catching up fast. so it will only be a matter of time.

without any unforeseen circumstances, china will surpass russia in terms of technology and military equipment, and start to challege the lead of america. that time is just not now.;)

“It depends… If an empty Flanker is more manouverable than an empty F-15, looks like this doe not change if they are fully armed. Yes, even a Flanker cannot escape laws of physics.. A fully tanked and fully armed Su-30 is surely less manouverable than an empty one. Still can show you several videos of pretty stunning combat maneuvers that Flankers perform with eight hardpont loaded with Kh-31 etc.”

yeah, probably should have worded it better. i meant in comparison to enemy fighters. MKKs fully loaded will be better the JH-7s, but still wont be good enough to outfly enemy CAP a/c. so it makes little difference.

“And which can fight off an enemy fighter of any kind? Not JH-7, that’s for sure. Which is more likely to strike the target? “

flankers might be, arguable, the most manoverable fighters in the world, but once u strap on a couple of elemant sized AShMs on them, their manoverabilty wont be that much better then that of a fully loaded JH-7.

strikers need CAP support against targets with good air defence or u risk loosing planes and pilots unneccesarily, so the manoverability of the MKKs dont really count for much in this scenario.

have u ever seen a plane in the paint shop? they just cover the parts the dont want painted with water proof paper or sth simliar (kinda like what the front canopy section is covered with), there is no point in waster time and money applying a carefully finished semi-transparent film just for it to be painted over and peeled off in a few hours.

“Large Chinese cities (with over a million people, although they would probably be still be referred to as ‘towns’) often have terrible pollution problems, giving a grey sky even if the weather is otherwise sunny. I don’t think it is any different for Chengdu.”

well no disprespect, but that’s not true.

i cant speak for all large chinese cities, but i lived in the large chinese city of dalian for nearly half my life now, and the wether there is much better then here in england. on average, there are as many sunny blue skied days in dalian as there are cloudy and overcast days in england.

maybe the wether is worse off futher inland, but my guess is that most of these pics were taken early in the morning when there is alot of fog. the poor vis as a result and the fact that fewer ppl are awake and abt then might be part of the secrity programme to keep the J10 secret.

here are a few J10 pics with clear sky behind them.

“maybe the tint is just to prevent the pilot from being blinded by the bright sun. I don’t know if it works, byt my glasses have a goldish tint over them and trust me, they are not stealth!”

i think the big shaded visor all pilots have on their helmits are for that.;)