Combat radii of 2130 km?
The Lavi had a worse fuel fraction than today’s Gripen E and its combat radii was 800 km bigger?!
Actually thats a way bigger combat radii than the likes of the Rafale or the F35 and double the one from its most equivalent aircrafts, the Gripen A/C and the first blocks of Vipers. That number is irrealistic.
Well I double checked it and this is the value he states for Lavi. For comparison for F-15 he gives 2000 km, while the F-16C sits on 1410 km, but he do not specify the loadout, although nevertheless the numbers seem to be a bit inflated. It may have something to do with the amount of fuel in external tanks, as the Lavi was supposed to be capable of carrying additional 4160 kg of fuel (about 153% of internal capacity, although I’ve seen even higher number of 4722 kg). In general the whole Lavi layout was optimized for aerodynamic efficiency, but such radius would still be a huge advantage over contemporary designs. The problem is that there is no way to validate this figure given the premature ending of the whole program.
The original design goal was MTOW of 17240 kg. However, the design team concluded, that a few changes to the wings and fuselage will allow to increase it to the 19280 kg value. The first two prototypes were built without these modifications, but the B-03 had them applied.
I am a happy owner of John Golan’s book, the exact values are: 6940 kg empty weight, 19280 kg maximum takeoff weight and 2720 kg of internal fuel.
It looks like someone else posted the same question on the author’s blog. You can find his answer below.
http://john-golan.blogspot.com/2016/10/lavi-armament-stores-and-weapons.html
To add to this information, I found the original article on which the post of the John Golan was based. Here are some images of the most basic configurations of Lavi:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]249366[/ATTACH]
The full article can be found in the proceedings on this site http://www.icas.org/ICAS_ARCHIVE/ICAS1988/1988.html
As for the discussion on the J-10 and Lavi connection it should be noted, that J-10 cannot be treated as just an enlarged copy of the Lavi, as they were optimized towards different goals. The J-10 is a multirole fighter with the air-to-air operations as the first priority. The Lavi was far more advanced design from the aerodynamic point of view, with its main mission being the tactical air strike and in some cases strategic attacks in similar fashion to the Osirak bombardment (operation “Opera”). The air-to-air capabilities were treated as a secondary ones. It should be remembered, that we are talking about an aircraft with the empty weight of about 6940 kg and of maximum takeoff weight 19280 kg (from the B-03 prototype onward if I remember correctly). Its combat radius in Hi-lo-hi profile is given by John Golan as 2130 km. So basically F-15 range/payload performance by a Gripen-sized plane. To achieve such lofty goals the IAI used extremely close-coupled canard design to maximize the aerodynamic efficiency, as well as aerodynamic tailoring (about 50 different airfoils were used to define Lavi wing). I don’t think that Chinese would go as far with the applied solutions as they simply don’t need such performance. So while clearly the general configuration of J-10 was based on the Lavi, in details they are very different planes.