When you have a billion+ people willing to work for a pitance you can get a lot done.

Wages are rising at the rate of 60 to 70% each year (take note, India!). Provinces like Guangzhou are having difficulty filling factories now with skilled labor. The PLA itself is having trouble keeping people when they practically use up their 14% budget increases on salary increases alone.

If you have a country with over a trillion in dollar reserves, bigger even than the Japanese, you sure can get some work done nonetheless. The amount of interest the US pays China alone for TDs can buy over 50 to Su-30 Flankers every year.

PLA appears to have copied Kh-31P as the YJ-91. How much they have is a mystery. How many planes can use them, is a mystery. There are suspects but the picture can easily expand.

I’m not sure if this healthy either.

http://english.people.com.cn/200609/11/eng20060911_301735.html

PLA uses laser imitators in “tank war”
font size ZoomIn ZoomOut

A laser imitation system for tank battles developed in China has been used in a training exercise in the deserts of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, North China.

Experts from the PLA Beijing Military Area Command training base designed the sophisticated imitation system, according to military sources.

An exercise to check the maneuverability of the Chinese Army under real-war circumstances is now under way, with the “Red Army” brigade, from the Shenyang area command in the northeast, trying hard to break the defenses of the “Blue Army” of the PLA Beijing Military Area Command.

The exercise began on September 5 when the “Red Army” left their home barracks in northeast China, heading for the training base in North China. Since then, the “Red Army” has been attacked by warplanes and electronic and electromagnetic weapons from the “enemy” — the “Blue Army”.

After trekking 1,500 kilometers, the “Red Army” arrived at the real “battle ground” — the training base, where the “Blue Army” lay in wait for the “enemy” troops with the newly-developed imitation system.

Since the “Red Army” knew little about the new training equipment, the “Blue Army” introduced the new technology with a laser imitation “tank battle” performance. Later, the two sides will fight a “tank war” using the imitation system.

A group of Xinhua reporters have been authorized to provide exclusive on-site coverage of the exercises.

Source: Xinhua

James Soong of the Kuomintang referred to it as 100km in one of his speeches. Basically I see around 110km to 170km. The point is not the air base locations but where you can put SAM sites. This is a distance that is easily covered by 150 to 200km SAM which the TK-2 and S-300PMU1 both claims. Even if you account for the need to reserve energy for less target escape, that would still mean 75 to 110km which is enough to cover the middle of the straits. Air superiority in my opinion, should guarantee a blanket of dominance for around a radius of at least 300km to make the term meaningful.

I quite agree, but at least the F-23 looks more original. The F-22 is just plain ugly, a robot. The day when all the fighters in the world look like faceted robots is the day my interest on aviation ends.

SR-71 is one of those planes I fell in love in my youth.

Taiwan would most likely be shooting itself in both foots if it tries to take it to the mainland in anything more then a handful of strategic skirmishes . Firstly even if they somehow manage to negate some risk of s-300’s they would still be loosing jets to SAM’s and attrittion alone will kill them ( think about needing 10-12 jets to go and destroy 2-3 targets and comming back with 7-8 jets ) , secondly if the f-16’s are tanogin in the mainland who the heck is gonna stop the hoards of chinese fighters comming in???

The problem is, the Straits are too narrow that S-300 or HQ-9 (assuming they’re S-300 copies) located in the mainland coast have the range to cover not just all of the straits, but right to the middle of Taiwan. There is more than enough range there to cover an invasion fleet. Even the J-7s still have enough range to cover the invasion fleet. A ROCAF response to meet a PLAAF wave with an interception point in the middle of the Straits are going to get SAMs thrown at them. And vice versa to the PLAAF wave because the ROC has similar SAM capability too. The problem is, the PLAAF has devoted much more attention with the suppression of SAM compared to the ROCAF.

Sooner or later, you still need to deal with those SAM sites, one way or another.

Well, we aren’t going to get a F-22 type fighter for USN Carrier Airwings! The next best thing is clearly the F-35.

USN vs. USAF sibling rivalry can be some of the most politically intense yet. “No way in hell” can be said to be the motto of the USN adopting a USAF fighter for its own, and vice versa for the USAF too. Let’s put it in another way—its a clear line in the sand.

After working with all the Centuries series designs and the Navy F-4 so proving to be abject superior to all of them, it was the political humiliation for the Air Force to adopt the F-4. But not for long.

The Air Force was coming out with the F-111, and the Navy saw that it will suck, and so the squids say “no way in hell”. So they ran another program and came out with the F-14. So aptly named too, “Tomcat” is the call sign for the general who was a staunch Navy aviation advocate.

Seeing that the F-14 is kicking the F-111 in the buns, the USAF is facing the prospect that the F-14 might be forced into them just like the F-4. So they jumped on Boyd’s theory and came out with their own answer. The F-15 is as much as a response to the Navy Tomcat as it was to the Soviet MiG-25. But I would take it its more of the former.

So when the F-16 won the LWF competition, the Navy said no way in hell they would fly that thing, and suddenly came out with the requirement they needed a two engined plane for “safety reasons over the sea”. This despite all the single engined A-7s and A-4s that have flown all the carrier decks for years, and it didn’t seem to matter for the Marines when they got the Harrier later.

So they took the losing candidate of the LWF and turned the F-17 into the F-18. And goes on to this day.

To get the Navy and the Air Force to work on the “Joint” F-35 is a monumental political achievement. Without that “Joint” wording, neither service would have bought it, and both services were probably dragged screaming and kicking into this by the politicians. It was clear the USN ain’t going to accept the Raptor no matter what, and they’re looking for their own fifth generation plane. It can be said that the Raptor’s designed superiority is intentional to such an extent that it was also meant to preempt the Navy effort.

This is still a clear line, and nothing is more representative of the USN’s aviation autonomy than to fly its own fighter type. That still, there is still some that may resist to the idea of the F-35, and so the Super Hornet is going to be taken as the idolic symbol of Navy’s aviation independence. and with that, the Navy is going hang on to that plane as long as it can.

However i love the front part in the F-4E, specially those large intakes and long radome that is couple with a large tandem cockpit, the integration looks better to me than the MiG-23UB twin seater cockpit fuselage in terms of pure aesthetics

Psychologically it can be said that a long large radome set between two large intakes is “naturally” pleasing to the eye because it is a penile suggestion.