The discussion is somewhat pointless, without knowing what is meant with best.

If we only take pure a2a, then the Raptor comes out on top.

If we include available weapons, mission flexibility, and availability for export customers, we will most probably see a Su-30MK Variant on top. US types suffer from the black box syndrome, and the new European fighters shine with the absence of available weapons.

Well it is diffucult to say what is best, in air to air the F-22 is the top operational fighter, followed by the Eurofighter, Rafale, JAS-39, Su-30MKI.

the best in air to air, low observability, supercruise and excellent agility coupled with AIM-9X and AIM-120http://www.combataircraft.com/aircraft/ff22.aspx
The Eurofighter has excelent agility and supercruise, but still has no thrust vectoring niether faceting or RAM treatement as the F-22, has excellent weapons AIM-132, AIM-120 and Meteor.

in air to ground, the F-22 should be still the best however it is probable the Su-34, Eurofighter and Rafale are the best swing role fighters followed by the F-15 and Su-30MKI

http://www.aviapedia.com/video/su-34-video

Someone in the Russian armed forces did say the Su-27SM should be more capable than all export models, including the Su-30MKI :confused:

However.. on topic

Today:

1. F-22
2. Su-27SM
3. Su-30MKI
4. Typhoon
5. Mig-29M/M2

5 – 10 years:

1. PAK-FA
2. F-22
3. F-35??
4. Su-27/30/Rafale
5. Typhoon

Currently the best fighters are Western, if we are totally and obsolutedly honest, Russia has only prototypes and only a fighter that is more or less in the 5 best fighters.

The F-22 is the best fighter now, followed by the Eurofighter, Rafale, JAS-39 and later we can either include the MiG-31, or the Su-30MKI, the Su-35BM and MiG-29OVT are still in prototype form and the MiG-31 is in process of upgrading so probably the Su-30MKI is the best operational russian aircraft.

Now if we include possible aircraft that might influence history as the MiG-21 did well i would say the J-10

I wouldn’t put the J-10 in the class of the F-15, simply because the F-15 and the PLAAF’s Su-27/J-11 are the heavy, long range/endurance fighters. The J-10 is the Chinese F-16 equivalent, the shorter-ranged, multipurpose type. This is not to state that some of the performance characteristics or some of the equipment might exceed or outperform that which you find on an F-15C, but merely a statement of context. Think of it as an analogy: J-11 is to F-15 as J-10 is to F-16 (or F-18 for that matter).

I agree but if you consider that in terms of technology the closest and most probable non western fighter that can wrestle air superiority to the Western fighters built by Europe and the US is the J-10, non other potential rivals sumarize the state of political change as the J-10 brings to the arms race.

The aircraft i would had liked it would had reached production is the LAVI

http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-Sinocanard.html

Fascinating anthropology discussion. But rather pointless, IMHO.

If a “pan-Asian” fighter happens or doesn’t happen, it’s not going to be because of ancient ethnic similarities.
Whatever their shared history, culture, food, religion…all that was swept aside by various wars and threats of the 20th Century.
It didn’t make the Japanese treat any of its neigbors nicer in WWII, nor did it stop the North Koreans from invading South Korea in 1950. And it hasn’t stopped Chinese aggression in Tibet.

Recent history and political factions (and of course money) will be the reason something happens..or not.

I do agree, economics and politics are the only reason an aircraft is made by two nations or more.

However we live in a world where economics are bringing togather different nations, for example now some McDonell Douglas helicopters are made in Mexico for the US army, Brazil offered the ERJ-145 for an USAF surveillance aircraft program.

Russia has flirted with Brazil to make the PAKFA a common program.

However in the context of the Eurofighter and JSF a common culture and a common economy has glued some Western Nations.

The term EURO-fighter denotes a common political and cultural project, like EUROATOM, EUROCOPTER or the EURO it self

What we were analysing was if it was possible a similar program in north east asia or if a far eastern program could be formed and this could only happen if these nations would create a common market as the EEC was created and if a regional common currency could be created, this could happen only if these nations could see the common culture they have as Europe did and they would see the economic and political advantages of such project, otherwise the political alliances will depend in the technological and economical risks they want to share but this can lead to other types of agreements like Embraer has with Harbin and Mitsubishi.

However the FC-1 has the prints of a pan asian fighter program

As some one who speaks Japanese and lives in Japan, I feel I have some standing on how Japanese and Chinese languages are different :rolleyes:
I would like to see you prove that the grammar in Japanese and Chinese are even the same.

In fact the Chinese and Japanese characters or Kanjies for Tokyo and Beijing are the same North capital for Beijing and Eastern capital for Tokyo this is the Kanji for Beijing 北京　this is the kanji for Tokyo　東京 [/B]

which simply reflect that Japan borrowed Chinese characters, but it does not prove at all how grammar is the same.

Right here you have revealed your total lack of knowledge on the Japanese and Chinese language. Even with out the i, the way these two characters are used are an example of how the Japanese sometimes use chinese characters very differently than the Chinese. In addition, the pronunciation used is native Japanese rather than the Chinese style pronunciation, reflecting different linguistic roots.

if you still need further proof
Linguistic
http://media.maps.com/magellan/images/worldlang.gif
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/languagefamilies.html
Genetic
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p104/kinnchii/W-MAP.gif

In anycase, this is my last reply on this subject because it has nothing to do with military programs and that you are simply too lazy to do a little research (just go look at Wikipedia), to see how Asian countries are different.

which is utter nonsense. China, its neighbors, Japan and its neighbors, or the rest of Asia for that matter, have rivalries now and rivalries back then. Alliances and enemies change and will continue to change. Asians are no exceptions. Koreans may be resentful of Japan invading their country in the 19th-20th cnetury, but Japan and Korea fought a number of times before that. Korea and China have fought and allied with each other a number of times as well. It is also important to note that in ancient times, Japan was of relatively little importance to China as it had few things of value trading wise, and was often in frequent civil war with itself. China was far more interested in S.E Asia, contacts with India, and expanding into Central Asia.

yeah yeah more about the uniqueness of Japanese, why you can not understand is the grammar is not a structure as you think, languages like the English and Russian have different grammars, spanish and english have also different grammar and Urdu and portuguese also have a very different phonetics and grammar however all are related.

乾杯 干杯 this means in chinese Gambei or Cheers in japanese is Kampai 乾杯 かんぱい see the similarities

now water melon 西瓜 xī guā in Japanese is Suika 水瓜 【i hiragana すいか】
watermelon

三 sān three; 3 in Chinese and 三 san in Japanese

九 jiu nine; 9 in Chinese and 九 in japanese 九(きゅう) kyu

War in japanese is sensou 戦争(せんそう) and in Chinese 戰爭 战争 zhàn zhēng war; conflict and 爭鬥 争斗 zhēng dòu struggle; war

血 xiě, xuè, blood 血液 xuè, yè blood in Chinese 血 in Japanese ち chi, ketsueki, chishio

Sun in Chinese is 太陽 太阳 tài; in Japanese sun is 太陽 taiyoo

Now why Teppen in Turkish and Japanese in tepen in japanese mean the same and can be understood as top of a mountain?
During the early Yayoi era, probably the language of South Koreans and our proto-Japanese were identical. But as time went by, the language on the island started to be influenced by the phonetics of native islanders. Island people didn’t have consonant ending syllables so they couldn’t hear them clearly. Susumu Oono show many examples to corresponding

It’s one of important aspects that indicates the relation of Altaic languages and Japanese, but this vowel accordance and even the distinction of two groups of vowels disappeared by the 10th century. Isn’t this a linguistic version of same phenomena, that the average Japanese became 160 cm tall hundreds of years after the shock wave from Korea? As time passes, the Japanese language has been losing the characteristic Altaic part of its origin.

Phonetically speaking, Japanese belongs to the Southern Islanders languages.

Japanese and Korean thus separated about 1800 to 2300 years ago. Korean seems to have been losing its Southern elements, and Japanese has been losing its Northern elements. So, it’s not easy for students of today’s forms of both languages to find similarities between the two, except for syntax structure and common borrowed words from Chinese.

source http://users.tmok.com/~tumble/jpp/japor.html

You can not refutate that despite Japanese has a very distant lenguistic relation with Chinese it does have words that are common to its origins in central Asia.

If you have some knowledge of semantics and phonetics you will know how sounds are related and can be turn in other languages throughout inflections of a sound.

Now if you do not want to see that politically Japan is allied to the US and China to Russia you can not see that basicly that is what makes impossible a Chinese-Japanese jet fighter

the FC-1 cannot be compared to multinational projects like the Tornado or the Typhoon. Pakistan may have contributed half (or perhaps even more) of the funding, but much of the development itself was primarily done by the Chinese aviation industry.

Japan, Korean and Chinese cultures may be similar (more so between Korea, Vietnam and China than Japan).. but ethnically they are actually not the same, even the Chinese themselves are not homogeneous, but rather a mixture of varying groups that include those who became Sinicized. However arguing that countries would come together to develop military weapons due to similar culture and ethnic ties is totally idealistic.

Countries come together to develop military weapons out of political and/or economic priorities, not cultural. the FC-1 is between two countries that have very little in common culturally and ethnically, but much in common strategically (common rival in India).

Even within Europe, Italy has often worked together with Germany.. while some here often like to lump all Westerners as the same.. Italy and Germany are different culturally, linguistically (being different sub groups of Indo European), and ethnically.. but have worked together due to the same common enemies (Warsaw Pact).

When applied to Asia, there are many divergent views on foreign policies between Asian countries.

The FC-1 and K-9 are comparable to the early Jaguar and Alpha jet programs, so they are in the begining.

Japan is not different to China culturally niether ethnically, Usually Japanese view themselves as unique but under that disguise they are simply afraid of acknowledge their own asian identity and also because of a bit of arrogance.

Japan has similar architecture, food, religion, writing system and ethically are the same race, China is even more asian because it has a more influential culture and has more intercultural exchanges with their neighbourghs.

Japan however was for many years the only developed asian country and could only learn from nations like the US or Germany, but in 2008, China has an aerospace industry second to none in Asia and in terms of rockets and space program they are ahead of Japan.

Japan of course has its own very advanced technology and its own culture with distingtive features but Japan share many features with its asian neighbours and basicly is an offspring of the Chinese culture.

In future years Japan will be forced to share aircraft programs because economically speaking Japan is declining and China is ascending, so both nations will need to create an interdependece to survive.

At the moment that possibility is not military, but in civil aircraft already the Boeing 787 has collaboration between Japan and China

Rudder of Boeing 787 made in Chinahttp://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/6214104.html

The Japanese have been in discussions at this point with AVIC I facilities,” says Boeing’s Cornelius. “We have not seen them consummate any contracts yet, but there are discussions under way to look at taking on some subcontract work” for the 787 and 777, and Japan is considering China for the 777 because the production rate on the aircraft is increasing, he adds.

http://www.sbac.co.uk/community/cms/content/preview/news_item_view.asp?i=14610&t=0