KJI is threatening to launch a nuclear missile unless he gets 1 on 1 talks with the USA. So far, the man has followed through (apparently) on every threat he’s made. As far as I’m concerned, he just signed his death warrant. Granted, nK ICBMs (and apparently nuclear weapons) are failures so far, but you never know, do you? Cut off all aid, period. If the people want to sit in huts and starve, so be it.

The thing is, the guy is trying to get the US attention. And he’s doing it because he perceives a threat behind him—China. He knows that China has connections within his own military, and might have plans to kick him out, turn the country into a transitional dictatorship/authoritarianship based on the Beijing model, then with the aid of South Korea, turn the country into a free Economic Zone based on the Chinese model. Not to mention the PLA buildup around his borders.

Why the Chinese are outraged at his behavior is because he gave his word to the Chinese that he won’t explode a nuke. So the deed is in every violation of what Kim discussed and apparently agreed with the Chinese leadership, which is now looking red faced after their assurances to the US, Japan and South Korea on this.

North Korea is a humanitarian bomb waiting to happen. As much as the terrible the plight of people in Iraq, at least they still have food to eat. The NK is a Sudan waiting to happen in north east Asia. No country wants that in their border, not the least the Chinese. Given a few more years, the NK has two choices, one is to collapse or two, follow market reforms (they’re starting to acquiesce on the latter but grudgingly).

My question again, on what expertise that the Russians have had about the Lavi program which qualified them to judge on the Lavi content in J-10 program? Can you please be specific? I think this is a valid question to ask. How can it be “wrong” to ask such a question?

According to what is suggested, SIBNIA may have assisted in the structural analysis. It sounds to me that if they have helped they were helping to fit the engine.

I think MiG may have helped. The J-10’s variable ramp intake along with the braces look very similar to the one the MiG 1.44—which also have this braces. In fact, the MiG 1.44 is the only other plane to have such braces. If you look at the FC-1, the original design has strakes in the wing root. MiG loves strakes, it worked on the MiG-23, so they put them in the MiG 1.44 and their Project 33 concept. Although in the end, the later FC-1 prototypes removed them. This also suggests that Russian input can be thrown out as easily as they are taken in.

I don’t think the Russians played a part in avionics and if they did, the input was thrown out. When China seriously considered the Zhemchug radar for the J-10, presumably Russians are going to be consulted with its integration. Actually I don’t see how SIBNIA could work on this, it is MiG again that has more experience integrating with this radar since this radar, also known as the Zhuk ME, is the radar used in MiG-29 upgrades.

But China went back to a locally developed radar instead, using locally developed weapons. These technologies were already developed and perfected on J-8IIs. Any article or report that fails to account how development on the J-8II contributes to the J-10 becomes somewhat discredible.

Oh yeah, you’re correct. At first I thought that was a reflection highlight.
It’s also true of the J-10B in the picture.

The AIM-7M (100 km range) is the next best thing to the AIM-120.

I don’t think the AIM-7M reaches 100km as much as I don’t think the R-77 reaches 100km either.

Actually does anybody kown the status of AAM4?

In service since 2004, upgraded between 24 to 26 F-15EJs currently.

Cobrato, two points:

1. Carbon fiber composites DO ABSORB radar energy. Glass fiber ones don’t..
2. Reflecting radar energy is just ONE means of RCS reduction. Absorption is a major factor. Otherwise how will you justify the RAM coating?

RAM Coated Carbon fiber composites can be in fact practically a black body (ie it absorbs the energy completely).

Yes, but they’re also frequency selective. Given their molecular structure, only certain wavelengths are absorbed. For carbon fiber to be explicitely used for this, they have to be specially designed against a specific and intended frequency (I don’t know the formulas), and I don’t think most structural carbon fiber composites had this priority originally in mind.

I am asking the same question I asked in the PAF thread….if the J10 is so far down the development path and is getting inducted into the PLAAF, why is PRC not releasing the details of the induction process for this “4th Gen” aircraft.

Is it cuz they are still scratching their heads trying to figure out the procedures. They have never done this before either :confused:

The PLA never releases details of anything. Literally. Never in their history I have ever seen them mention numbers.

The defense military complexes like CPMIEC, AVIC, etc,. are not part of the PLA. You only hear specs released by the complexes when it comes to looking for potential export markets. You will only hear specs of the J-10 when it’s approved for general export.

For example, we don’t have actual specs of most J-8IIs variant except for the F-8IIM which was the export model, and the planes they sent to the US for the Peace Pearl upgrade.

Some news just before the test.

The Sunday Times October 08, 2006

China on alert over a nuclear neighbour

Michael Sheridan, North Korean/Chinese border

THE North Korean refugee had one request for her captors before the young Chinese soldiers led her back across the steel-girdered bridge on the Yalu River that divides two “socialist allies”.

“She asked for a comb and some water because she said that if she was going to die she could not face going to heaven looking as dirty and dishevelled as this,” recounted a relative of one soldier who was there.

What happened next is testimony to the rising disgust in Chinese military ranks as Beijing posts more troops to the border amid a crisis with North Korea over its regime’s plan to stage a nuclear test.

The soldiers, who later told family members of the incident, marched the woman, who was about 30, to the mid-point of the bridge. North Korean guards were waiting. They signed papers for receipt of the woman, who kept her dignity until that moment. Then, in front of the Chinese troops, one seized her and another speared her hand — the soft part between thumb and forefinger — with the point of a sharpened steel cable, which he twisted into a leash.

“She screamed just like a pig when we kill it at home in the village,” the soldier later told his relative. “Then they dragged her away.”

Such stories are circulating widely among Chinese on the border, where wild rumours of an American attack on nuclear test sites have spread fears of a Chernobyl-type cloud of radiation and sparked indignation at the North Koreans. “I’ve heard it a hundred times over that when we send back a group they stab each one with steel cable, loop it under the collarbone and out again, and yoke them together like animals,” said an army veteran with relatives in service.

As international tensions over North Korea have soared, China has deployed extra combat units of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to man the border from the Yalu River in the south to the Tumen River near Russia – evidently fearing the risk of chaos and collapse.

The troop trains were rolling even on the Chinese mid-autumn festival on Friday. Civilian traffic on a main line was halted to allow one train to pass, with carriages jammed with glum soldiers in camouflage uniforms and flat cars carrying olive-green military vehicles.

And while a few off-duty men strolled with their sweethearts under the full moon along the banks of the Yalu, others watched from outposts at the silent, darkened shores of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“All visits by Chinese have recently been stopped,” said a local official. “They gave us no reason for it.”

The bomb test could come as early as today, the eighth anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s ascent to the top of the North Korean Workers’ party and one day before South Korea’s foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, seeks election as secretary-general of the United Nations.

Last Friday, North Korea’s traditional allies, Russia and China, joined in a UN security council warning that a weapons test – likely to be in a disused mine 6,000ft underground in Shijung district near the Chinese border -would attract “universal condemnation”. It has put the Chinese under maximum pressure to restrain Kim. Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is due in Beijing today to urge on the effort and the leader of South Korea is coming to make the same plea on Monday.

China’s dilemma is that its ruling elites are still bound to those of North Korea by a like-minded political authoritarianism. President Hu Jintao has even praised North Korea for keeping to its Stalinist politics, a view he may be repenting now that Kim has brought China to the brink of a nuclear crisis.

Beijing’s main fear is that if Kim tests a bomb – the CIA believes he has enough plutonium for four; other US experts think more – then Japan will feel it has no choice but to acquire its own atomic arsenal. That would destroy the balance of power in northeast Asia that has kept the peace since the end of the second world war.

China’s secondary fear is that if Kim’s regime collapses, hundreds of thousands of desperate, hungry North Koreans, some armed, will flood across its border to sow unrest and instability.

The Chinese regularly round up small groups of escapees. But uncounted thousands have slipped into the towns and villages inhabited by ethnic Koreans in the border provinces, building gleaming new towers and labouring in fields of fat corn.

China’s prosperity lures the poverty-stricken but has failed to convince North Korea’s leaders to deviate from their course of rigid state control.

“Why are they poor?” asked a local official, who was drinking heavily in a bar at festival time. “Because that gangster Kim Jong-il spends all the money on nuclear weapons!” Several Chinese soldiers have died in clashes with rogue North Korean soldiers who have crossed the border, shot up buildings and, in one case, robbed a bank with their AK-47s.

A PLA platoon leader was killed last year while catching five North Koreans who had attacked a hotel, robbed guests and kidnapped the manager, according to state media. Shots were fired yesterday as five North Korean troops crossed into the southern side of the demilitarised zone that separates the two countries.

The Chinese authorities are also irate over an influx of counterfeit US dollar bills and vast quantities of fake Viagra from North Korea. Some 50,000 Chinese gamblers a year are estimated to cross the other way to squander their money, much of it suspected to be the fruits of official corruption, in a North Korean casino.

The sense that Kim’s regime is losing control lies behind the Chinese military buildup. But some South Korean MPs fear China could grab territory from the north in the event of a collapse.

Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.