They aren’t cutting to finance A’stan, they are cutting to rectify a huge budget deficit created by the Labour government where they spent huge amounts of money on public services that they didn’t have. The biggest offender IMO is the civil service, followed by lesser issues like governmental waste on things that aren’t needed, housing benefit and other overly generous benefits, foreign aid and European Union (see “foreign aid”).

Understand.

A’stan cost UK what… 18 Billion lbs so far? more than enough to keep RAF in good shape.

I am no brit
but I just have to jump in with the obvious.

cutting your air force in this day and age to finance an essentially guerilla civil war is the d**best thing I have ever seen any one done.

People claim the radar is AESA because everyone who’s reliable and was right about most of the previous aerospace developments say it as so… Just like how people claimed the J-XX existed and was a canard delta years ago when everyone thought it was a paper plane, because these same people leaked this kind of information.

that’s the key.

and this time it is much more out in the open.
In Janurary issue of “Weapon’s Knowledge” Magazine the top engineers from those associated with the KJ-2000 AESA system basically told in plain language what they “expect” J-20 and previous generation (read J-10B and modified J-11) to have.

^ I see… do you have any knowledge on future UAV/UCAV projects or a future bomber? (The latter has been mentioned by a number of reliable posters for years but it’s possibly even more elusive than the J-XX was five years ago)

And a Silent Flanker won’t exactly be in the same weight class as an F-35, I think 😛 But if they choose for a F-35 type fighter for both PLAAF and PLANAF, I hope they go for a lighter twin engined design (twin WS-13?).
I’m intruiged by the mention of generation 5+ espicially when 6th gen has barely been defined yet… where did you hear that, and what requirements might be necessary for this aircraft, may I ask?

There is the “county hawk” project (oppose to global hawk) by Chengdu. that’s pretty much open news.
Guizhou has that predator B. sized tactical UCAV.

don’t be surprised if Hongdu and SAC come out with a X-47B/Neuron type bird in next couple of years.

No reliable info on bomber project except that it exist.

Sac’s “Silent Flanker” would be a smaller version of current Flanker.
….

PLAAF is more and more “Americanized”. they want everything that americans have. including uniforms!

Not really — you can upgrade J-10s as much as you want they still won’t have the capabilities of a real 5th generation fighter, just like how CAC upgraded J-7s to kingdom come and it still wasn’t a competitor to 4th generation planes.

It depends on what kind of structure the PLAAF wants in the mid term, either a low of J-7s/J-8s a medium of J-10 variants and J-11 variants and a high of J-20, or a low of J-10s and J-11s, a medium of a lighter 5th gen and a high of J-20.
In the second option the number of J-20s will be far less than the first to make space for a lighter 5th gen along the lines of F-35 and AMCA.

PLAAF/PLAN thinks J-7(and by extension older J-8s) are only good for keeping up the flight hours and squadron strength. and may be a little air policying. useless against anyone who has sophisticaed air force. Their near term force structure calls for J-10 + Flankers. and get down to as few types as possible. and to max out with radar and electronics.
Shanxi is spinning a new version of JH-7 to stay relevent in face of Su-30s.

on a side note.
J-7s are nice little nifty jets though, the J-7B and later version with nice hud and avionics is reportly lovely to fly, the compound delta-ed J-7E is even more lovely. ah. wonder if they will start to sell the surpluses to western private operators when J-7Es retire, like the CJ-6s.

The UN could demand that their air force be grounded. Is the Charles De Gaulle back from the Arabian Sea yet? Is the USS Enterprise carrier group still in the Med or has it transited the Canal for the Arabian Sea? Could the Italians, Spaniards and French scare up some CAP fighters/tankers and base them in say Sigonella and run cab ranks over Tripoli?

I suggest the noninterventionist approach, what goes on inside a sovereign country wether it is a revolt or, revolution, it is their own affaris, they shall be responsible for it themselves.

on the technical side, how would you implement this? if there are pilots and units sympathetic to the rebels/revolutionists then how do you id them when they take off either to defect or attack the loyalist/reactionary forces? If a sam battery sympathetic to revolutionists fires on what they thought as loyalists but instead are french Mirages then what would the CAP flyers do?

stay out would be the best option.

I think this testbed may very well indicate J-10B will go into production, and won’t just be a demonstrator as some thought.
Why build a testbed for a demonstrator anyway?

the rumor floating around goes that J-10(p?) built for pak will the last batch of J-10 (early version) after that it is J-10B on the production line.

In another front. I think people here in west generally mis-under-estimate( is that a word?) chinese’s ability to field integrated EW systems. forexample they might have inferior performance TR modules (not that inferior) on their AESA compare let’s say to US. but when they integrate the system together: for example fielding a airborne system with jammer, elint, avionics, sensor fusion and datalink.. etc they might be surprisingly capable. the latest interview with the “insider” published in these magazines just said as much.. that the key to a 5th gen fighter, external stealth shapes etc is only a small part, great emphasis has been placed on battle electronics. ( a pointed reference supposed to directed at some of the un-sophisticated external criticisms? )

also,
remember some of the largest, and most experienced telecomm equipment makers in the world are chinese, and they are extremely sophisticate in integrating these similar technologies. have you seen Huawei’s global operation center? it might as well be the NORAD or Skynet. they have a huge (I mean HUGE) pool of RF engineers and softwares and electronics hardware designers. it is not unheard of that these companies actively poach top people from defense organization like the 14th institute to design 4G cell coverage towers instead of active phase array radars and datalinks… and may be other way around too!
The point is I have seen some very sophisticated HW and SW coming out of china. don’t be surprised if they have less difficulty integrating and field these systems than those in west confidently thought.

Yep … and IMO yet another “hint” that the J-10B features a new radar and not the same as stated by some critics.

Deino

yeah,
those who think J-10B does not have a new radar are pretty dumb.
just scour the open literature to see how much of these prepheral research has gone into airborne AESA.

Eurofighter has just released a pdf with additional information about the naval Typhoon proposal.
http://www.eurofighter.com/fileadmin/web_data/Content_Images/news_pics/Naval_Typhoon_cutaway.pdf

Interesting are the new dimensions.

Original/Naval:
* Overall length 15.96m (52ft 4in)/15.98 m (52ft 5in)
* Overall height 5.28m (17 ft 4 in)/5.46 m (17ft 9in)
* Wing area 50.0sq m (538sq ft)/51.2sq m (551sq ft)

I’ve actually compensated for calculation errors (the documents claimed height is 5.9 m and length 15.97 m). Translating from the ft/in into those values unveils a significant error (~45 cm!) wrt height and a minor one (1cm) wrt length.

Looking at the cutaway.

looks like they will have to strengthen up the nose gear attaching frame substantially. also the the main wing-fuselage-gear attaching structures and their frames. STOBAR or CATOBAR, this thing will rack up weight!