a2a ucavs would cost a lot. just the engine would cost 5-8 million dollars. Radar and various other sensors would cost at least another 10 million. Software development for something like such a plane? a lot. airframe another 10 million, 20-30 million if specially designed and made to be LO. Various other systems would easely make the whole thing cost at least 50 million dollars, if not more. In today’s economy, at least.

If one wanted to strip down the whole concept to simpler engines, simple airframe, very little or no sensors and basically get a jet Reaper, it’d still cost 15-20 million dollars and it’d be more or less defenceless as it wouldn’t even know when to evade an incoming attack. and such an attack would be cheaper for the attacker as the other side would adapt to the new situation.

a2a ucavs may eventually come, but before that we’ll see a2g ucavs that are being demonstrated around the world.

that is a great video. also, it lead me to this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxfJRHRXi0A#t=12m38s where it said su27k took off from kuznetsov at 170 kph weighing 22 tons. So that is quite useful fact as one can calculate speeds as we know the take off distances, thrust, weight and thus accelleration.

On another note, there was another clip, i saw it on google videos some years ago, where it was quite evident su33 was carrying between 6 and 8 air to air missiles. It was an old film, color was faded, it was somewhat blurry, but still it was quite clear in what it showed. does anyone have a link for it?

so there is no visible length difference between 500 and 1000 kg bombs? i ask that because the bombs in the pic are quite long – some 3,95 meters long in fact. can we even be sure the bombs on the pic are lt-2 and not some other lgb? we do know jh7s use different lgbs.

so basically, there are still no official figures given on the hq16? None of those links are really reputable sources, nor do they cite their own sources.

while certainly SARH, it may also feature an autopilot and command guidance during cruise phase and use SARH only for terminal guidance. Point is, there is no way to tell. Everyhting on this missile, including stuff like ranges etc is just guesswork.