PLAAF is so much into dumb bombs. I got pics of Su-27, J-11 (no. 49) and Su-30MKK with dumb bombs. Use of MKK just for dumb bombs is even more outrageous than this.

But dumb bombs have one advantage. They are cheap and plentiful. And just remember that the PLAAF isn’t as concerned about collateral damage as the USAF. The PLA loves saturation attacks, as you can see with their obsession for MLRS. They like to map out a certain square of land, then bomb the hell out of it and kill every living thing within that square.

They are cheap, and plentiful but you need a lot of dumb bombs for saturation bombing to work. Imagine flying hundreds of kilometers in a J10 or J11 to drop a few dumb bombs and all of them miss and they go home empty handed. That is pretty stupid I must say. A better idea is to use a large bomber like the H6 Badgers to drop a **** load of dumb bombs for a Chinese version of Shock and Awe. They may miss, but they definitely will strike fear into the enemy ground troops.

I don’t see how useful it is to attach 4 dumb bombs in the front and rear of the main fuselage. Using a J10 to drop dumb bombs is, well, just dumb.

Is it possible to attach 2 AAM below the air intakes, and/or 2AAM in the rear center of the main fuselage?

But the story just doesn’t make sense. Why would Pakistan order the F7MF when it is guaranteed it will procure the JF17, and given that it recently ordered a few F7MGs?

Why would Chengdu waste time & energy to sell a few J7MF’s when it has bigger projects in the FC1/J10B/C?

If China is unwilling to give Pakistan it’s latest radars for the Jf17 (This can partially inferred since Pakistan is choosing Italian radars, and BVR missiles), why would China provide the J10’s radar (State of Art radars) to Pakstan via J7MF? China seem willing to give Pakistan Airframes, but NOT the state of the art purely Chinese radars or engines. The SD10 seems like a downgraded export version of it’s indigneous PL12. Probably the SD10 has russian components instead of purely Chinese ones and therefore, it is available for export. Likewise, China will probably also license produce for export Chinese versions of the RD33 but not export indigenous state of the art engines like the WS10.

It doesn’t make any sense.

I doubt the veracity of this story.

Until Pakistan or China releases press about this, I will discount this story.

Googled this. Clearly Taiwan has capability to build nukes overnight.

TIM WEINER, “CIA Spy Kept Taiwan From Developing Bomb, Former Officials Say,” New York Times, December 20, 1997

——————————————————————————–

WASHINGTON — A U.S. spy whose role was cultivated for two decades rose to the top of Taiwan’s secret nuclear weapons program and, at a crucial moment, stole vital documentation that stopped the bomb program in its tracks, according to former intelligence officials.

The theft by the spy, a colonel in Taiwan and longtime Central Intelligence agent, halted a program that 20 years of international inspection and U.S. intervention had slowed but never stopped, the officials said.

The covert U.S. operation culminated 10 years ago this month. And though it was reported then that the colonel had defected, dealing a crippling blow to Taiwan’s nuclear weapons program, his work has never been acknowledged openly or described in detail before by U.S. officials.

That weapons program had the potential to ignite a war; China had threatened a military attack if Taiwan deployed a nuclear weapon. And Taiwan was closer to developing a nuclear weapon than was previously known, according to a study to be published next month in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The study provides lessons for stopping the spread of nuclear weapons today. It shows how a nation can secretly and patiently assemble a nuclear weapons program piece by piece, as several U.S. allies and enemies — among them Israel, Iraq and Iran — have done with varying degrees of success. And the study also demonstrates how international political and diplomatic pressure can disrupt a nation’s dreams of possessing nuclear arms.

The story of the spy who stopped the nuclear weapons program — Col. Chang Hsien-yi, who was deputy director of Taiwan’s nuclear energy research institute — has never been fully told. The CIA refuses to discuss it, and Chang effectively disappeared after he defected to the United States 10 years ago.

He was recruited as a CIA agent in the 1960s, when he was a military cadet, according to former intelligence officials. In the 1970s, as he rose through the ranks of Taiwan’s secret weapons hierarchy, Chang was nurtured and cultivated as a spy for the United States. And in the 1980s, he provided the United States with a unique inside look at the burgeoning nuclear bomb program — secret information that could not be obtained by electronic eavesdropping or spy satellites.

Of the former intelligence officials who discussed the case, only James Lilley, a retired U.S. ambassador and former CIA station chief in Beijing, agreed to be quoted by name. Lilley said he believed it was time for the case to publicly acknowledged as a great success, a classic in the annals of intelligence, which should be made known to the American public.

“You pick a comer, put the right case officer on him and recruit him carefully, on an ideological basis — although money was involved — and keep in touch,” Lilley said. “Then, in the early ’80’s, it began to pay off.”

“You couldn’t get this stuff from intercepts, and you couldn’t get it from overhead,” he said, referring to covert electronic-eavesdropping and satellite reconnaissance systems. “You had to get it from a human source. And you had to use it very carefully.”

In December 1987, as the secret program was gaining steam, Chang defected to the United States, with the CIA’s assistance, smuggling reams of documents out of Taiwan: damning evidence of the progress Taiwan had made toward building a bomb. State Department officials confronted Taiwan, which agreed to halt the program.

“This was a case where they actually did something right,” Lilley said, referring to the U.S. intelligence and diplomatic communities. “They got the guy out. They got the documentation. And they confronted the Taiwanese.”

Taiwan’s official position ever since has been that it will not use its scientific expertise and technical abilities to build a nuclear weapon.

The Republic of China on Taiwan was established by Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Chinese Nationalists, who fled with 2 million followers after Mao’s Communist forces took control of the mainland in 1949. China regards Taiwan as a “renegade province,” and from time to time over the years has threatened to attack if Taiwan develops a nuclear bomb.

These tensions rise and fall; after China test-fired missiles into the waters off Taiwan’s coast in 1995, Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui told the national assembly that Taiwan should consider reviving its nuclear weapons program. Days later, he said that Taiwan would “definitely not” resume work on a bomb.

The article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, written by David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, and Corey Gay, a policy analyst at the institute, is the most thorough study available on Taiwan’s nuclear weapons program.

The program dates back at least to China’s first nuclear test in October 1964, though its roots may lie as deep as the 1950s. When China developed the bomb, Taiwan wanted one, just as Pakistan went to work on building a nuclear weapon after its neighbor and arch-rival India tested a device. Ownership of a nuclear weapon is a matter of national pride and status as much as a matter of national defense.

After the Chinese test, Chiang pressed the United States to attack China’s nuclear installations, the study shows. Rebuffed, Taiwan went to work on developing the know-how, the technology and the techniques for building a bomb.

Taiwan’s work on the bomb took place at the Chungsan Institute of Science and Technology, a military installation, and the adjacent Institute for Nuclear Energy Research. The authors of the study say the latter institute, known as INER, was set up to produce plutonium metal, the desired form for the fissile material in a nuclear bomb.

INER bought a 40-megawatt nuclear research reactor from Canada, the same model India used to produce the plutonium it used for its first nuclear test explosion.

The facility also bought nuclear equipment, supplies and expertise from the United States, France, Germany, Norway and other nations. South Africa supplied 100 metric tons of uranium. The United States supplied a form of plutonium. All of this material was ostensibly for civilian research.

But by 1974, a decade after China exploded its first bomb, the CIA concluded that Taiwan’s nuclear energy program had been run “with a weapon option clearly in mind, and it will be in a position to fabricate a nuclear device after five years or so.”

That Taiwan was potentially within five years of becoming a nuclear power was a clear and present danger. In the early 1970s, Taiwan had lost its international status as an independent nation. The United Nations had recognized Mao’s People’s Republic of China as the sole legitimate representative of the Chinese people.

With that loss of diplomatic status, Taiwan was no longer a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors nuclear programs. And Canada, which had supplied the nuclear reactor at INER, no longer took responsibility for safeguarding it.

The United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency agreed informally with Taiwan on independent inspections. It took years of work, but by 1976 the international agency concluded that Taiwan could be secretly reprocessing plutonium-laden fuel rods from its research reactor. The agency also concluded that Taiwan could make plutonium metal from ingredients supplied by the United States, the new study says.

“It did not appear that the United States was aware what Taiwan was doing with the plutonium,” one author, Albright, said in an interview.

In late 1976 or early 1977, the inspectors found there was a trap-door at the INER facility through which Taiwan could divert fuel rods from the research reactor into a weapons program, the study said. This proved to be the last straw. Washington insisted that Taiwan shut down its weapons research program and return the plutonium that the United States had supplied.

On the surface, it appeared that Taiwan’s drive for nuclear weapons had been stopped. But under President Chiang Ching-kuo, who succeeded his father in 1978, the program continued, in greater secrecy.

Just how much progress Taiwan made in the following decade remains uncertain. The authors said in interviews that they believed Taiwan was perhaps just a year or two away from completing a nuclear bomb in December 1987, when Chang fled Taiwan carrying documents on the secret program. The authors also said they were actively discouraged by United States officials from inquiring into the role played by Chang and the nature of the information he relayed to the United States. They report nothing that has not been previously revealed about the colonel.

They said their research showed how concerted international pressure can make it harder and harder for countries to hide secret weapons programs. They also note that until the late 1980s, the news media in Taiwan were tightly controlled, military budgets were secret and public debates over national security were stifled by that secrecy.

Albright said he thought the race for nuclear weapons in Taiwan had been ended, for the time being, by a combination of forces: “Democratization, the colonel’s defection and pressure from the United States.”

But, he added, “it may not be over yet.” With a crash program conducted in great secrecy, he said, Taiwan could still build a bomb in a year or two.

Dont u worry,things will fasten up, due to ToT from Russia or France..

Remember Kaveri is lot different from what conventional engines we are used
to in subcontinent.What we are trying to achieve 100% self reliance it takes … time.U see Kaveri will not only power LCA but also MCA.

Meanwhile GE 404 will power the initial batches….

All right Bye for now ,Recieved Urgent work..will be back soon

Regds
Infinity

Yeah right. Like France or Russia will EVER grant a ToT for engine. Get real.

NOBODY will give you ToT for precious technology like an engine.

And it’s sad that you are mentioning the MCA. Dude, don’t you get it? If the LCA is a bust, there will be no MCA. Not for a long long time.

There is no reason at all for China to buy the FC1. It is a plane strictly for export and Pakistan. It has a foreign engine, and does not outperform j7mf to justify it’s expense because both are capable of BVR and SD10. The FC1 will probably cost around 13M for chinese market using Chinese radar, and foreign engine. The j7MF will cost around 5-7M. Why pay double for a plane that is not much better?

China should save the money and pass on the FC1, and continue development on the J10C/XXJ. For now, the J-11/J10 serves as it’s hi/lo mix, with J7MF as it’s lo-end.

I recall reading an article from Japan newspaper about an indigenous jet turbofan engine. It had a higher thrust to weight ratio than American Jets. Does anyone know what happened to it?