I like it. The pilot of the Mirage is taking pics for some reason. Maybe he saw the guy filming.

Nic

If the pilot was Chinese, he would have already been found guilty of reckless flying and endangering lives.

The Typhoon and Rafale are in a different weight class than the J-10; they carry more ATA missiles in combat. The F-16 and Gripen are more similar to the J-10 and carry similar loads:

As hyperwarp’s pictures show, the J10 does have a dual rack for AAMs, and I see no reason why it cannot carry at least a pair of AAMs on its fuselage stations like the Rafale and M2k. Hell, it might even be able to carry four on the fuselage, a central tank, two wing tanks, and 2 AAMs on each wing to match the Typhoon load out your picture showed.

My point is not that the J10 cannot carry as many missiles, but rather it is rarely photographed carrying so much munitions as there is little reason for to do so since it is not for sale and so does not need to put on a show to wow potential international customers.

I dont understand what you mean by “passive BVR engagement capacity”.If you are talking about HOJ then the idea is not correct because in that case the missile seeker is still active.What is this about the target having to emit actively:confused:

The main advantage of Mica IR is that its seeker being IR is passive plus it has got the LOAL with midcourse updates too which other bvr IR missiles (like R 27 T /ET) most probably doesnt have.And most importantly It cn be used with the OSF.

Read up on the interview the designer of the PL12 gave to Janes a while back.

In it he clearly states that the PL12 has two operating modes from inception, one is active homing, the other is passive homing on enemy radar (and maybe also EW) emissions.

That is why I stated it is not quite as flexible as MICA-IR in that it requires the enemy fighter to be actively emitting. But if the enemy is emitting, the PL12 can be launched completely passively without setting off the enemy RWR.

It was unclear in the interview if the PL12 can switch operating modes during flight. If it cannot, the shot can be spoiled by the enemy switching off their own radar if they visually see the missile coming, or if MAWS picks it up.

If the PL12 can switch during flight, it will have a capacity that will only be matched when the AMRAAM-D enters service.

Any one with J-10 flying with some Impressive Weapons Load?

i haven’t yet seen it flying with even six AAMs which seems but odd when compared to the Mirage-2000-5/9 or F-16s or Gripens let alone rafael or Typhoon which have far more impressive air to air war-load

All those other planes heft a silly load to make good promo pics to put on sale brochures. The J10 is not for sale yet so there is no need for such publicity stunts.

If any of those planes were flying combat missions, they would never be leaving home with so many missiles, so its all for show.

PLAAF planes are rarely pictured with weapons. If they are carrying live weapons, its for live fire exercises, and you don’t carry more than what you intend to shoot. The rest of the time, they are carrying blue training rounds, but again, you never carry more than maybe a couple of those.

A general question about PAF fighter plane basing.

With India being the assumed adversary I was wondering how well the PAF has built its bases with the expectation that India would employ precision weapons and likely SSM’s to try and knock them out?

Are there enough HAS’s for the entire fighter plane inventory? What sort of air defenses are employed to protect the bases? Does the PAF regularly practice or prepare for perhaps dispersed basing and flying from places like strips of highway (a la Sweden?).

Cheers.

On a related note, what kind of air defenses do PAF bases typically have?

Given their situation, I would have thought that in any large war scenario, all those bases are pretty much expected to be attack, so defenses should be tight.

Has there been any word about importing LD2000 type systems from China? These would be fairly inexpensive, but could save hundreds of millions worth of planes and equipment from enemy bombs and cruise missiles.

At the end of the day, even HAS can be taken out reliably with modern munitions, the best way to defend planes on the ground is to shoot down incoming munitions before they hit.

Not really,

current crop of Russian Engineers are led by men worked under the tutelage of the greats.

If you look at the current top people in CHina, what was their experience before JF-17 and J-10?

J-10 was really a learning series that built the foundation for 611.

btw, both 611 and 601 has quite a bit of Russian engineers on its payroll.

Its not who taught them that matters but what they do for themselves. A nobel winning engineer can teach hundreds and thousands of students over his career. There is no guarantee that any one of them will also win a nobel prize. OTOH, there is nothing stopping someone from winning a nobel prize just because he was not taught by someone who won one before.

Obviously having a great teacher helps, but going back to my first point, it is what the student does with the knowledge and opportunity given to him that counts instead of who his teacher was. And so far, the accomplishments of the people involved speak for themselves.

In addition, modern research is as much about having the right tools as having the right people. China has outspent Russia by an order of magnitude on everything from wind tunnels to supercomputers to materials research to precision machine tools and much more besides.

You can have the most talented person in the world, but he is not going to be able to match a super computer in crunching the numbers needed to find the best compromise between RCS and aerodynamics, and even if he came up with a wonder design, it means nothing if his country lacks the material science to build the materials needed to make that design possible, or the machine tools needed to turn those designs into reality.

Its funny you bring up Russian engineers working in China, because having Russian engineers working in China means as much as the fact that there are plenty of Chinese (and Russian) engineers working in Europe and the US. Its neither here or there.

That’s not an argument for the strength of the Russian aviation industry at all if their best and brightest are off working for someone else.

Absolutely, it would cause all sorts of issues as to which SSN skipper, at which end of the Taiwan Strait, would get to sink one bottled up aircraft carrier thats under permanent track from the Taiwan mainland!.

You do realize that in ‘just north’ I meant about a thousand miles north. Not much point in tying down hostile assets where they can still fully commit to the main fight.

Also, I would be amazed if any long range radars on Taiwan would last anywhere close to long enough to be able to provide any sort of track for anyone by the time the USN shows up.

What more, its not like the Varyag would be sitting still, she will still have a lot of room to roam to make life difficult for anyone trying to attack her, and any USN SSNs trying to take a shot at her will be operating in complex shallow waters that the PLAN SSK skippers would know intimately well, as well as be in range of land based MPA. It will be far harder and more risky compared to stalking the Varyag far out in the Pacific where she has no back up and no home field advantage.

So the Chinese are taking their clue from USN pre-WW2 carriers, and installing a catapult across the beam of the ship?

And NOT fore/aft?

A catapult would not work with a ramp.