how would that work? when air is pushed through the fan and and the jet, force is already applied as lift. what contribution to lift does air underneath the plane have?

With J-10b equipped with WS10 entering service, we can expect the total figure within chinese air forces to rise to 1000 within seven or so years.

There’s also parabollic 2.0 in the manner of twist cassegrain antenna, remedying some of the deficiencies of the pure parabollic arrays, which US more or less skipped and went straight to slotted planar arrays but both soviets and europeans used them quite a bit in 70s and 80s.

Recent articles actually shed some light on that. Plane is 50-50 financial deal. Both parties pay equally for development. More development is done in Russia. Engines and wings will be done in russia. Fuselage and final assembly of all parts done in China.

Helicopter deal is basically China ordering development of aircraft from Russia. China pays for most/all, Russia develops most, developed aircraft probably mostly built and assembled in China.

Range.

Su27s has some 3800 km ferry range, f15c has some 3900 without the conformal fuel tanks option.

Now that i think about it, SAC has nothing else to build but flanker derivatives until 2025 or so, when FC31 derived plane might be ready for mass production. Chinese govt didn’t make any breaks in either SAC or CAC’s production capacity in decades now. So i don’t see it happening now either. Which suggets SAC will indeed keep making J16 for several more years. Then J11D will come online (possibly around 2018-2020?) and it will either be produced instead of J16 or both types will be produced alongside, only in smaller quantities. I guess it depends on what PLAAF wants to replace its Q5 with. J15 will likely be produced in small numbers all along, since we’re seeing steady progress on more carriers and larger carriers.

One has to remember there are 150+ Q5 left to be replaced. As well as seven regiments worth of (non recce) J8. Alongside those early Su27 which are showing age already and half of those have been retired already. We’re talking about upward of 300 planes, or at current production levels, about 13 more years of production.

Of course, there are j10 and j20 to replace some of these – so it won’t be just flankers replacing old flankers. But there are still some 400+ J7 to be replaced. That’s another decade of current high rate j10 production. IF numbers will remain the same. Those russian su35 will help a tiny bit, but they’re a drop in the bucket when it comes to replacing old generation aircraft.

C17 took a few months less from first flight to first delivery. A400M took a few months longer. They’re all about the same, so nothing strange about the delivery schedule.

To be on the safe side, due to possible errors in judgement, an 8 second turn is more sensible. That’s still a very, very good 22.5 deg/s turn.

For comparison, F16A weighing 10,8 tons with only two empty launchers (so only internal fuel) can at sea level with max ab achieve 22.5 deg/s at 0,5 mach and that’s very close to its absolute limit of some 23,2 deg/s at mach 0.6.

Even if we’re being really negative and say “it didn’t complete that 180 turn” or “turn started later” and use 9 seconds we get 20 deg/s. That’s slightly better than max turning ability of 9.5 ton (carrying 4 aim9) AV8B harrier for example. So possibly slightly worse if we use a clear, near empty Harrier, assuming f35 was also clean.

Of course, we don’t know how much fuel that f35 was carrying. Nor if it had any internal load. But even if it was empty and carrying just enough fuel for a half hour long show – it’s still quite decent turn performance. If it was fully laden that’d be superb turn performance but until further evidence surfaces it’s safer to assume air show display is made with as little extra weight as possible.