Here is the break down: “..In Bekaa Valley in 1982, 8 kills were with guns, 54 with IR missiles and 12 with radar-guided missiles; more than half of kills were made by “multirole” F-16 despite it being primarly tasked with bombing missions. All radar-guided missile kills except one were from visual range. Total of 5 BVR shots were made, making data range very low…”

Note that most kills were made WVR. Dog fights.

Regarding gun kills we see this:

“During Six Day war all shootdowns achieved by Israeli were by cannon. It dropped to 70% during Attrition War, 30% during Yom Kippur war, and 7% in Lebanon Interdiction in 1972. During 1982, only 4 shootdowns scored by British fighters were by gun, and US only scored 2 during Desert Storm.”

The Israelis seem to favor guns whenever the opportunity presents itself

Source: http://defenseissues.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/air-to-air-weapons-effectiveness/ I have more if needed

I’m not sure how 30-50 year old records have much to do with the realities of today, we all know the problems missiles had decades ago. Just looking at how far your computer and phone came since 1982 should tell you Bekaa Valley is useless for projecting present day missile effectiveness let alone future scenarios, which is why I asked for data from Gulf War to present day.

The gun kill data is particularly useless. The two gun kills in the Gulf were A-10s zapping helicopters.

I always thought Japan, India and Korea do have some common technical and geopolitical requirements on developing a new stealth fighter plane. But in reality, why it’s so hard for them to co-operate?

Because the Americans and Europeans have more to offer. This project already had some help from the French.

@ Multirole:

In the times the Mig-21 and Mig-23 have gone against the F-15 they have come out on the short end of the stick. This would be USAF F-15s in the Gulf wars against the Iraqi air force and Israeli F-15s against Syrian Migs in the lop sided Bekka Valley air-to-air fight in 1989. In most of these cases the victories were scored in BVR combat.

During Cope India however the F-15s engaged Indian MiG-21s, Bisons, flown by surprisingly competent IAF pilots. using innovative tactics that surprised and impressed USAF pilots. And during the Red flag exercises it was noted as I mentioned earlier that the Su-30MKI was spotted earlier in the merge leading to WVR tussling which gave the USAF pilots tactical advantage.

Considering that the J-20 is at least as large an aircraft as the Su-30MKI and lacks the TVC of the visually smaller ATD-X it can be surmised that the J-20 may very well enter a WVR dogfight with a disadvantage against its more agile opponent.

And when one takes into account the experience and training of JASDF aircrew it can be argued that the PLAAF may be placed at even greater disadvantage.

In the real world MiG-21 stand no chance against F-15s. Yes you can construct unrealistic scenarios where the F-22 can be shot down by a biplane but what is the relevance? Real world air battles are primarily BVR engagements supported by AWACS.

Why did they paint it up like a 1970’s prototype? It’s so conspicuously out of style.

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Penetrative ISR in non-permissive environments requires a healthy mix of passive sensors. Its the perfect package for something like an RQ-180 (the existence of which has now been confirmed by the operator) that has long legs and the ability to stay up for many times longer then a fighter bomber.

http://aviationweek.com/defense/secret-new-uas-shows-stealth-efficiency-advances

Yes but LRS-B also has legs, and it will probably operate with other manned aircraft, why wouldn’t they put passive sensors on it and network it?

They might be able to export to Indonesia which is wholly lacking a heavy transport. Don’t know how the Aussies would react though.

I kind of wonder why PLAAF never ordered a “Super Fantan”, scale the Q-5 up sharing the same powerplant as the J-7s. It would look a lot like a twin engine F-105.