Absolutely the F-4 was a sparkling example of a cross-service combat aircraft. It was designed as a naval aircraft and the USAF wasn’t really interested in it to begin with….they had the F-105 and were working on Mach 3 types at the type. It wasn’t until they were kind of forced to think about the F-4 (F-110 as they called it) and realized it had some real capability that it became an “Air Force plane.”

The inter-service rivalries between the USN and USAF are long and mostly ridiculous.

Had the foresight been there in the late 60s-early 70s to cooperate on on the major fighter programs rather than compete, imagine what could have been achieved:

-F-15N/F-14 as the primary “high” fighter for both branches. Either would have filled the role and the economics of the larger buy would have made it ultimately cheaper.

-F-18 as the primary “low” for all three flying branches. Again, the scale of the larger buy would be dramatic enough to realize cost savings.

Combine this with joint-common training and support structures for all of the branches and the possibilities in savings are boggling.

Ultimately, this is the goal of the JSF program today.

You talked as if the USAF at that time was happy getting it. The interservice rivalries were so intense at that time, this could have only have happened if this was forced down their throats. Robert McNamarra was pushing for a unified fighter program, and all the Centuries series fighters the USAF fielded were clearly falling short embarrassingly against the Phantom.

While legend has it the F-15 was designed to match the MiG-25, I would think that it was designed clearly not just to match that, but to also surpass the F-14, so to remove any possibility that the F-14 would also be forced upon the USAF.

Of course, the weight I gave is for combat weight. If you like my MTOW I beleive it’s about 19000kg.

What is that? Is that supposed to be a JDAM type of bomb (FT-1)? Or does it use infrared?

7.9 tons is my info, too.
You must consider two things:
– it is still 1 ton lighter than standrad F-16C
– it is faster than most available jets (not by itself an advantage, but some people may want it)
– it is known for very rugged structure and didn’t show any fatigue problems, something the F-16 cannot claim
– it is 3-4 tons lighter than a MiG-29 while having mostly similar capabilities

Under the Mirage 2000 the only available designs are the SAAB Gripen and possibly the FC-1 and T-50 (but both 20 years younger).

They claim they use a semimonoque. The F-16 uses a monoque, where the airframe and the engine support is stressed near the skin and around the aircraft. The aircraft is built like a tube around an engine, and you strengthen that entire tube. On the M2000, you only need to strengthen key parts of the airframe, like for example, the spine. Also the M2000 uses a full delta configuration, and delta wings are known to be rugged, having a much longer wing root to distribute the stress and larger spars and sections.

The disadvantage of the M2000 lies in prolonged ACM. Every turn the plane slows down and it does not accelerate that quickly to regain that energy. You have to make that kill within a few turns, then bat out of there. There are three factors working against the M2000—delta wings are particularly draggy at high AoA, the engine itself isn’t that powerful to make up for that, and compounding all of that, the intakes are not as well positioned to gather airflow at higher AoA, so you get even less real thrust.

PL-12 officially shown and acknowledge.. 😉

Its more than that. It’s part of a rather long clip CCTV broadcasted about the first successful launch of the PL-12 in front of officials. Probably took place years ago but is now declassified. You have officials in the control room, operators looking at MFDs, watchers operating their trackers, a J-8 being prepped for launch, two J-11s serving as chase planes. This was said to be at lab 14 (NRIET). The J-8II had the black radome with electrostatic strips like you see on the J-8H and J-8F, but the wings only had singular wing fences meaning it was converted from an older type. The clip follows with the J-8II being airborne and launching the missile. I only saw a series of still pictures about it, but I like to know if someone has a copy of the entire clip and hope they can upload it to youtube.

FM-1 is a good possibility. The Su-33 have uprated engines to help them take off. They need every spare thrust they can get.

Wooh, accessory gearbox on the bottom. That means J-10 version of WS-10A, not J-11 version.

I count up to no. 17. So this picture was taken before no. 18 to 22 reached the regiment. Pics of 20, 21, 22 appeared around the spring of 2004, so this picture has to be taken earlier.