I think it was Argentina actually. cant find the report itself, but it was argentina. havent heard much more about it since.

Fc1-04 it is then. no canards, and the J10 is much taller.

FC1 04 under construction.

some question about the KJ-2000 radar.
I been reading in the Chinese website,claim that KJ2000 uses locally design AESA,but according to january 2006 issue of kanwa,Vega-NIIR chief designer A-50E radar system claim that they have sold main AWACS transmitter to china,and they believe KJ-2000 uses Vega transmitter.this could implied KJ2000 adapted PESA radar system.
MT artilce about airborne radar system claim that AESA has wider search angle (80+dgree) compare to 70 degree for PESA,that’s why wedgetail AWACS,MC-10 and Swedish Eyrin radar use just 2 radar antenna sufficicent to cover 360 degree,by contrast KJ-2000 with passivarray antenna has to use 3 antenna to provide 360 dg. coverage.

do you have a link to this claim of Vega emmitter sale?

as for the ‘balance beam’ v ‘dish’ radar arrangement, well clearly the ‘balance beam’ design has huge blind spots in the front and rear hemispheres whereas a triangle arrangement does not.

cost, its as simple as that. three radar sets cost more then two, and would be heavier to boot (hence the need for a bigger ac to carry it). generally, the likes of Eyrin are considered a class below the likes of the much heavier and larger A50Es, E2s, KJ2000 etc (which carry much larger and more powerful radar sets).

funny, i thought the courts were the places where guilt and innocence were decided. no in police stations. and a fare few such ‘spy’ cases have fall apart in courts in recent years. :rolleyes:

right now, the only fact is that there is an alligation. if you have some inside information on the evidence the prosecution might have, please share it. else enough of these pre-mature determinations of guilt and associated wild guesses already.

the RD93 used in the FC1/JF17 is considerably smaller then the AL31 used in the J11 and J10 fighters. the F1** seriese engines used in F15s and F16s are considerably larger then the RD and about the same size as the AL31.

as for the blackhawks, well they perform better then the russian and chinese/french helos the PLA have in high altitude, so have an important role within the PLA. but the helos themselves were deemed excessively complex and expensive to warrent RE. since the time/cost needed to RE it would be huge, and even if china did manage to successfully RE it, its unit cost would be prohibatively large for the PLA to take on enough to justify all that expense and effort.

Somehow I doubt they would be able to pull this off.

If the US limits its operations to aerial bombardment (which they will unless they run totally amok), I do not see Iran retaliating militarily. Indeed, what could they do? Sending a few Scuds into the Green zone would only elicit further US bombardment (and I take it that the Green zone is protected against such attacks). Sending land and air forces makes even less sense – Iranians would be rapidly wiped out!

There is, of course, the possibility for the Iranians to instrumentalize the Iraqi Shias. But somehow I doubt that this would be really effective. The Iranians have never controlled the Iraqi Shias in the way they control Lebanese Shia (i.e. hizbollah). As a matter of fact, Iraqi Shias have always refused to do Tehran’s bidding, and one should not forget that in the Iran-Iraq war they did side with Iraq. In my view, unless Iraqi Shias see that their own interests are promoted by abetting Iran, they will not go down that road. And at this stage, the interest of the Iraqi Shia is that the US gradually relinquish power over Iraq.

So what is the most likely options for Iran? I would suspect some type of oil embargo for some time to ensure that the price of oil sky rocket. They could also seek to hamper shipping in the Gulf. But that is about as far as they can go.

one word, ‘inflitration’. iran and iraq share a considerable boarder. a conventional ground assualt by iran would be idiotic, but they can have specially forces and/or regulars sneak across the boarder and conduct gurillar raids on US occupation forces in iraq and then melt away into the shia majority. if the US did attack iran, i think you will find a great deal of sumpathy for iran from iraqi shias.