Provided we are talking on confirmed sources. There is info avaliable on bits and pieces. On the contrary, can you prove its indegenious? Can you prove that CIA intel is wrong?

We are talking literally of dozens of clear distinct pictures of Lavis and J-10s that can be up for comparison. You can see major fundamental differences.

The nose is bigger, rounder.

The canopy is smaller, shallower. No doubt it has less of the canopy drag phenomenon that afflicts F-16 designs at the expense of some cockpit visibility. This reduces canopy wake against the rear stabilizer.

The canards do not have the same sweep angle. The rear edge of the canards are perpendicular to the axis of the plane, not swepth within.

The wings are larger, and have less sweep than the Lavi’s.

The wings end in rounded wing tips, not rails for missiles.

The forward edge slats only start halfway of the wing, more like a Gripen’s, instead of going the full length like in the Lavi’s.

The rear edge of the wings are perpendicular to the axis of the plane, not swepth within.

The rear rudder stabilizer is much larger indicating a more heavily rear centered C/G.

While the back of the Lavi curves inward, the J-10 back’s humps out, to allow for either more fuel or avionics.

The engine tunnel bears zero resemblence to the Lavi. The intake is a variable squared one, while the lavi’s is a fixed oval.

The J-10 has five fuselage hardpoints, much like the M2000, while the Lavi only has one.

CIA intel can be quite wrong, just as they did in Iraq.

Not a single part of this plane is imported from Israel or is shared with the Lavi. Collectively, the fundamental differences require an all new aircraft, although the conceptual inspirations are similar.

Are you going to prove to me that the US assisted in the development of the Red Aegis 052C destroyers just because it looks like a Spruance? Or the Swedish assisted in the development of the Y-8 Balance beam AWACS because the radar looks so similar to the Eyerie? Or the Germans assisted in the ZTZ-99 tank project because of the way the turret locks? Maybe the US is helping China do those J-X stealth fighters by the way, cuz they look like an F-22.

What, this? 😀

Yes, that’s the model with the variable inlet design. Given that the WS-10 and the PW1120 has possible similarities in the core (thanks to the PW commercial turbofans imported to China), it seems funny that the Israelis could not provide all the volumetric calculations for the airflow needed to design a fixed inlet, which would probably cost a lot less and a lot simpler in line with Chinese construction philosophy, than you would do with a lot more complex variable inlet.

more importantly, if you studied chinese aviation history, you would know that engines have been the key bottleneck until quite recently. the Lavi is just a paperweight without its american engine (and the AL31 was never an option in 85, since, ironically, the J10 was concieved to fight Mig29s and Su27s).

it is just laughable to assume that CAC would invest half an billion dollars in a design only to sit twiddling its thumbs waiting for a suitable engine to materialise (since israel couldnt share the engine tech even if it wanted to, and the WS10 – the chinese engine origally planed to power it, was nothing like the F100 engine of the Lavi).

The engine relationship may be a bit closer. The WS-10 is based on commercial PW turbofans China imported in the eighties (CM56 I think), which in turn had similarities to the PW F100 used in the F-16. The WS-10 was originally rated around 24,000lbs afterburning, much like the original F100s; the current WS-10A is rated around 29,000lbs, similar to the F100-229. The Lavi’s PW1120 is a close relative to the F100.

However, based on an early model of the J-10, the plane did have circular intakes like the Lavi but it was more of a variable inlet cone type of design that looks much more like a Mirage 2000’s, quite far from the Lavi/F-16’s fixed oval intake. If Israelis were involved in the project, I doubt they were quite helpful with the inlet design.

In any case, Paul asserted that the US pressure was applied to suggest that the Israeli involvement gradually thinned out towards 1995. I don’t think so. The latter half of the nineties were in fact, most probably the peak of Israeli involvement in China, climaxing to the Phalcon deal of 2000. The gradual reduction of Israeli presence in the J-10 towards the midnineties as other Israeli involvement in China’s arms was growing, seems to point rather, the growing dissatisfaction of any said Israeli involvement in the J-10 (useless advice?), just as the plane continues to evolve further and further away from the Lavi and starts to show quite marked aerodynamic differences.

…which would be the reason the West would have gripes with Israeli engineers taking jobs in the PRC assisting with J-10 development.

Actually it describes the situation perfectly. If you only have group leaders, these people would only be responsible for broad, advisory courses of design, leaving the team members to do the nitty gritty. The relationship between the J-10 and Lavi appears only in the broad, general scale but not in the nitty gritty details, which can only be executed by the Chinese engineers. For example, there is no structural similarities between the two planes, both are completely different in that regard. A similar relationship could have existed in Chengdu, but certainly not all the Israeli engineers would be involved in this, since some of them should be involved in avionics development as I mentioned before.

In terms of flight performance and thrust to weight, it would be more like the F-15 who is Arnold and the F-14 more like the sitcom guy. You will know the real difference between the F-15 and the F-14 when you take the F-15 into the vertical.

Without knowing the mass distributions and airfoil chord distributions, i fail to see how anyone can make that claim… :rolleyes:

He probably made assumptions based on what he read about the F-16 and the Lavi. But you can guess this was strictly an amateur work, which involved a number of crudish CG models of various planes including the F-16 which he used to represent as the aerodynamic models of various planes. All done very much like that pic of the Lavi/J-10 shown.

Wow what an intelligent analysis.