Originally posted by Srbin
H177 aka SD-10 just did by stepping here, he’s the biggest dumbass AFAIR, just check some of his comments on PDF.

Ok do you need a 400km radar to launch this thing or how else would it target an AWACS or any other large aircraft?

You can do this if the missile is setup like like an ARM. The missile is drawn by the emissions of the target radar itself.

Of course if the AWACS caught on to this, it could turn off the radar, in which case the missile must continue on its flight inertially or by seeking heat (the radiant heat left from the radome is a good choice). At terminal phase, it should switch to its own radar via active guidance.

You must be a pretty big missile to travel 400km. Any AWACS should see this coming a long while away.

Originally posted by GarryB
[B]Quite true.. but..

As I have repeatedly mentioned the 25 ton thrust NK-321 would be ideal. It is an engine of the same generation as the RD-33 and Al-31… upgrading it with more modern technology in the same way the Al-41 scaled to AL-31 size generates significantly more thrust a similar upgrade would make 30 tons easily reachable.

(regarding suitability it is a Mach 2 capable turbojet… what more can you want?)

Yes but is this a bomber or an airliner engine?

You also have to figure its diameter, spool time, and weight. Not everything with a high thrust can be a fighter engine you know.

It was drawn up specifically for the USAF requirement of low cost day fighter.

No the F-16 was not. Read about its origins. It was entered to the competition, but it was not originally drawn up that way.

Photographers refuse to fly in Forgers because they are considered unsafe, but the Harrier has killed more pilots than the Forger.

Only because there is a lot more Harriers in the world, did a lot more sorties and fought a lot more missions. You know better that you should compare attrition with sortie and flight hours.

So what? Are you suggesting that twin engine aircraft is what bankrupted the Soviets? What a joke. A fishbed was an incredibly limited aircraft that flew at Mach 2 but was otherwise not that exceptional. Third world countries that would probably have been better off buying Su-25s bought them for airshows.

Quantity and complexity are not mutually likable fellows. The Soviet Union fell due to a myriad of reasons but building a lot of complex planes in large quantities at a cost they could not afford certainly didn’t help matters a bit.

They are also getting SH so they obviously have very little taste (or choice).

Yup another short legged fighter.

How many modern Helicopters have one engine?

Most of them are.

The Mig-29 can fly at Mach 2.3 are you suggesting the F-16 can fly faster than that?

The more you talk, the more I am convinced you truly don’t know about aviation.

The F-22 flies only up to Mach 2, by the way, so what does it prove, huh?

Bird strikes are a regular occurance… especially at sea or in coastal areas. In the case of bird injestion I’d rather have two engines than one.

So is mechanical failures. Please note that twice as many engines means twice the chance of failures, or twice the chance of missing something during inspection and maintenance.

I think you need to take a step back. The difference between maintainence of a twin and a single engine aircraft is not going to be a ratio of 2 or three. It is going to be one or two hours tops.
The so called simplicity is also relative, just because an aircraft has one engine doesn’t make it simple or cheap.

Having two engines does not make it simpler too. We’re not just talking about simple maintainance but also more extensive ones to an overhaul. Two engines never amount to lower cost of ownership both in the long and the short run.

In addition to the added work, there is a third work—the two engines must be synchronized together, meaning you can’t have as many variances. You can’t have one engine that is more powerful and the other less. In a single engined jet, it’s easier to get away with variances.

So all twin engined aircraft are hangar queens and an F-16 is better than an F-15?

The F-15 is the superior all out performer, but the F-16 did more of the work. Which do you think has the ultimate value?

And WTF is your common sense? You don’t have to worry so much about them when there are two of everything. It is only money… if two engines saves two aircraft over 15 years that is 60 million dollars worth of maintainence… considering the engines are only one piece of an aircraft that needs maintaining it is worth it.

Saves aircraft?

There is no real statistic that says two engined fighters are safer than one. Even the USN is looking at the JSF—a single engined fighter.

With redundancy you reduce the chance of a double failure. and protect the aircraft from x amount of battle damage.

Works only if you have four engines or more.

In WWII, twin engined fighters and bombers fell down the sky as easily as single engined planes.

Having double the parts, you increase your chances of failure.

It is when one engine fails due to battle damage. The Fulcrum pilot doesn’t have to get out and walk like a Viper pilot.

The Fulcrum pilot tends to do more walking since his aircraft stays in the hanger more than the Viper pilot.

Looking at some of the accidents that Fulcrums are involved in, like in one particular airshow, which involved an engine flameout, I see no reason why the so called “redundancy” actually works.

First of all personal insults are for children… stop that.
Second this so called “internal friction” is BS.

You’re full of bull. You really don’t know about engines do you. This is basic mechanics.

Given the same displacement, a four cylinder engine is more economical than a six or eight cylinder engine because it has less moving parts. Less moving parts = less internal friction.

For producing the same amount of thrust, a single engine is more economical than two engines.

Read up your text books.

Twin engines generate more frontal area which increases drag.

Aw geez, that is not the main reason.

If you want to say internal friction causes drag then just sut down both enignes… they won’t move which equals zero friction… with zero friction the plane can therefore be pushed to any speed you want and it will maintain that speed…

Read your textbooks.

What does atmospheric friction got to do with it? Yes it is significant. But what about thousands of metal parts rubbing against each other spinning thousands and thousands of times per minute in horrendously high speeds.

Can you imagine the kind of friction that is? Can you imagine the energy that is needed to move all those parts? Out of the total potential energy from fuel, only a small amount actually goes to thrust—the rest is wasted in heat, and heat from friction.

But Mig is a moron for not designing a single engine fighter despite the requirement for a new engine?

In a way, yeah, MiG is moron by not following up their Fishbed in a true way.

akes sense to you and I and the Soviet Union, but the west built for peacetime… cheap to maintain, but don’t carry more than x lod and don’t fly faster than x speed.

High mach speeds is useless in combat because you don’t attain it without a clean unarmed condition, and doing this wastes your fuel.

You are confusing the Cold war with today. Today they want something cheap and with a long life… during the cold war they didn’t care if a plane stayed in service for five years or 50. What they wanted was a simple reliable aircraft that could do its job when it was needed. After 300 hours or whatever the alloted time for that engine might have been it was given an overhaul and parts were replaced whether they needed to be replaced or not. Why else do you thnk they were considered to be maintainence intensive? The simple change to examining the materials and testing some and replacing those that needed replacement extended the engine lives to 1,000 hours. Changes in new materials have led to 2 or even 3,000 hour lifetimes for the newer engine designs.

One thing you don’t understand, is that you can get away with short life in simpler single engined aircraft. Why? Because its a lot easier and quicker to fix.

The more complex your aircraft is, the more short MBTFs become unacceptable.

In fact, the more inferior components become more unacceptable. The potential or possible rate of failure per component is multiplied by the number of components, and you are looking at a logistical nightmare.

Crap quality can be acceptable for a Fishbed, but you can’t apply the same on the next generation of more complex designs.

Read more about quality management, and you will learn why quality management is essential if designs become more complex.

A Fitter is not even fitted with an air to air radar… how could it intercept an enemy aircraft at night or in bad weather?

Sorry I meant a Flagon.

hahahahahaha… can I borrow some money… you must be very rich if you consider a Gripen or a M2K to be a cheap aircraft…

For today’s Western standards they are relatively cheap (around 35-40 million). Compare them with two engined Western aircraft, running at around 80 million and above.

In a sense you are correct but where are we now? F-16s that cost about as much as a big expensive aircraft does and what other light fighter is there?

The reason why the F-16 now cost as much as it is has nothing to do with its avg fly away cost (20 to 30 million) but because of corporate profit, and all sorts of perks like maintenance, parts supply and pilot training (pilot course at Luke AFB etc,.)

Its those perks that raises the contract prices. Flyaway costs are generally at least half to less of a contract cost.

And lastly your Block 60 F-16 has AESA radar, which alone adds several millions to the cost, compared to a slotted planar which is about a million.

A really big twin engine fighter has a significant range advantage over a single..

If it is really big—and expensive.

. this means either greater coverage of ground or persistance… remember your comments about hangar queens?
If cheap is most important then UAVs are the way to go.

UAVs will indeed come our way.

But before that, really big fighters have to be supplemented by smaller fighters. This is the case of the US, the case in India, and even the case in China. You simply cannot afford all the big fighters you want, either in outright cost or in long term cost of ownership.

Notice why the Indians are considering paying for M2000s that cost as much or more so than MKIs? Even if the initial cost of purchase of an M2000 is more expensive than an MKI, the cost of ownership is much lower, and it saves more money in the long run. This is not to mention the M2000’s sortie generation rate, its superior uptimes and operability rates.

But a fleet of 100s of light single engine fighters would be expensive to maintain… think of all those engines and fasteners…

No it’s not. Compare the F-16 fleet to an F-15 or F-14 fleet.

Compare the M2000 fleet to your Fulcrum or Flanker fleet.

You are assuming that both sides will have AWACS… how difficult would it be to use Tactical ballistic missiles to hit all the enemy airfields long enough to launch AWACs aircraft from?

What do you know about tactics now? Nothing.

At the slightest hint of trouble, the slightest alarm in DEFCON, your AWACS are the first to fly up there, before any fighter or bomber will ever be.

It will be very very difficult to catch an AWACS on the ground.

As I said before… bought initially as a cheap token of self defence, but later when they actually had to do stuff with them they had to upgrade them… getting an F-16 to do what an F-15 does makes it cost very close to that F-15. There are things the F-15 can do the F-16 never will.

Yes in sheer performance, the F-15 has its advantages. But that is not what cost is about.

In terms of sortie generation, no. When it comes to being available for missions 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it was the F-16 that reigned supreme. Realize this too, that not only are their uptimes higher, but being cheaper, you can build more of them, and having more of them, means having more of them to call upon missions.

Ergo. Availability rules. Lots of cheap simple and reliable works in a big way.

Yes, an F-15E can deliver more tonnage per mission. So you use less missions, and therefore less costs. Is that what you mean by saving?

Where this logic fails is against a TARGET-RICH environment.

Let me explain it to you. If you have one hundred targets, you will still need one hundred missions to hit them. It does not matter if you haul 5,000lbs of payload or 10,000lbs of payload. You still need to take them out one by one.

Thus, the plane with the supreme payload—F-15E—would be tasked in against the most important and bunker hardened targets. But against numerically rich targets, like SAM sites, radar sites, etc,. numerical presence and availability becomes more important and that’s where you call upon the F-16.

And for roles where twin engine safety is useful… a very low high speed interdictor has an engine failure flying through the mountains…

I can tell you there has been numerous low flying accidents involving Flankers and Fulcrums in record and some in airshows, so yeah, I wonder if what you say really works.

Originally posted by GDL
On the APG-68 and Zhuk-ME, I may have had my wires crossed with regards to the exact mode. Clearer now.

Could this have something to do with the fact that the Mirage 2000-5 Mk.2 uses the far more powerful MDPU from Rafale?

Probably does. Also the Thales RC-400 could also be doing as well.

But I have not made sure if the large number of targets being tracked is done in TWS mode or in VS (Velocity Search mode).

Phazotron once pulled a hickey by putting on their specs sheets that the Zhuks can track 20 targets. Turns out this was done in VS mode, which does nothing but show the target’s close in rate. In true TWS mode, it’s only 10 targets.

Originally posted by GarryB
[B]The 25 ton class NK-321 is in service on Tu-160 and Tu-22M3 aircraft… what exactly can’t be made about it?

There are engines more powerful than the F-22’s flying everyday in your Airbuses and B747s. Why can’t you make a fighter engine out of them?

No you can’t.

There is something about thrust to weight ratio of the engine as well as its thrust to diameter ratio.

Ummm, that is rubbish. What engine would you have fitted? The AL-31 of the Flanker at 12.7 ton is not powerful enough. The only real option a the time would have been the 15.5 ton thrust D-30F6 which has slightly less max thrust ratings than the two RD-33s they chose and it weighs half a ton more (ie RD-33s are 1 ton each, the D-30F6 is 2.5 tons).

What don’t you understand? Its the thrust to weight ratio that counts.

When you have two engines, you need more structural support. You need more support underpinings and you need more accessories. All that adds up in weight. In fact the weight is significant enough that your plane would need two tail stabilizers instead of one. That also adds more weight.

The twin RD-33 aircraft like the MiG-29 starts at 10,000kg at least. The F-16, with remarkably the same performance, starts at 7,000kg.

If their design didn’t meet the needs of the Soviet airforce what chances would you rate it on the international market at the time? We are talking late 70s early 80s?

The F-5 and the F-104 are not bought by large numbers in the USAF but they are both major international successes.

The original F-16 wasn’t drawn up to meet the needs of the USAF either.

It lost the USAF contract for cheap simple day fighter to make up numbers when other fighters of the day were big heavy and very expensive.

Because the dual engined F-17 wasn’t exactly cheap nor simple.

The USN recognised the safety afforded by two engines and they chose it to meet their needs.

That requirement is really one of the most fabricated BS and unjustified myths in modern day aviation. The F-8 Crusader is one of the most reliable carrier born planes, itself combat proven in the USN in Vietnam and served for two decades in the French Navy without an accident.

Guess what, the Crusader is a single engined plane.

Another prominent carrier borne plane and a combat proven one at that is the Sea Harrier. It also has a single engine.

That single-dual engine issue is going to boomerang back to the USN in a big way. They’re destined to receive the carrier JSF—a single engined plane.

Of course… the US navy and the Russian Airforce and Navy only choose twin engine aircraft out of spite for the USAF…

The Russian Airforce at its peak, were powered mostly by single engined planes. The most prolific and the most tactically significant planes in its inventory, were single engined planes. It was best remembered for its single engines planes—your MiGs.

When the RuAF tried to be more complex, and still planned to build lots of them, that became a no-no since that helped bankrupt the budget. You simply can’t expect to build as many Flankers and Fulcrums as you once did with Floggers and Fishbeds.

As for the USN, they’re getting the JSF, a single engined plane.

When it first entered service the Mig-29 actually had BVR missiles and was both faster and better performing in many areas, including WVR combat.

The BVR missiles didn’t impress anyone. The MiG-29 wasn’ t faster, because the speed advantage was with the F-16A, and when it came to maneuver, they were equal. In fact, the Viper appeared to sustain energy on turns better. while the Fulcrum held better on slower turns.

The MiG’s advantage came from its helmet sighting and R-73.

[quote]
Let us also remember this was almost always based on cost. The Hornet won a few competitions… Finland, Canada, Australia…[quote]

Yeah, keyword—few. Canada and Australia choose the Hornet ironically because they deemed it as a medium fighter that can better cover the large territories of theirs.

By far the big contracts were won by Vipers. One of the most significant Viper vs. Hornet competitions was the South Korean market. That alone was worth more than 150 planes.

I would have thought it was the perfect example… the USAF wanted an extremely cheap aircraft to make up numbers due to the increasing cost of big heavy fighters of the day.

Which was exactly the point of a light single engined fighter.

The USN had limited space on a carrier and didn’t want to lose any aircraft so reliability was more important than cost.

Dual engines are not necessarily safer than single engines.

Could say the same about F-16 purchases… officially to be compatible with the USAF, unofficially to save a bit of money instead of paying money for a more capable type.

The F-16 is more than capable. Better yet, it is cost effective.

And best yet, it proved to be the staple and the workhorse of the USAF.

Since the time it arrived, the Viper generated more sorties, performed more missions, than any other aicraft in both USAF and USN inventory.

Realize this—a simpler aircraft, being easier to maintain, will also have better turn around times, and will therefore generate more sorties. The Viper is unmatched when it comes to sortie generation. The other three and twin engined “teen” US aircraft cannot match its sortie generation. No matter how capable an aircraft is, if its a hanger queen, if it cannot generate the sorties required, if it has to sit on the ground most of the time, it’s useless. Better an F-16 in the air, than an F-15 on the ground.

Are you trying to say that a Mig-29 is more complex than an F-16 or Mirage 2000? BS.

BS?

WTF is your common sense, Garry?

Two engines.

Two sets of accessories, underpinings, control wires and linkages.

Two sets of things you have to worry and check about.

Two sets of things versus just one set.

That’s complexity enough. This concept of redundancy does not help since it’s really just having twice more things that are prone to breakdown.

The Fulcrums range shortfall was mainly due to the operation requirements leading to it having a very low fuel fraction. Current upgrades offer much greater internal fuel capacity which is all that was needed to improve range.

Oh god, get a griop.

The early standard Fulcrum carries 3,000kg of fuel.

That’s the same as an F-16.

The same amount of fuel on an F-16 enables it to do the job done with more than sufficient range.

The same amount of fuel on the MiG-29 and its short legged.

That’s fuel consumption to you.

The upgrades raised the fuel on the MiG-29 from 3,000kg to 4,500kg. For what, just so you have the same legs as a Viper does with 3,000kg?

That’s not efficiency.

Internal friction? Apart from being faster and higher flying the Mig-29 derives a lot of lift from its lifting fuselage design. Please tell us how that lifting body fuselage could have been implemented with a single engine?

You really don’t know anything do you.

Has nothing to do with aerodynamics.

I’m talking about the friction of moving parts inside an engine and all its accessories moving against each other.

Two engines will no doubt generate twice more internal friction than a single one. Overcoming that friction will require more energy.

Oh, and you don’t think that a lifting body fuselage cannot be implemented on a single engined body? It can. You build an extended rail edge around the body. Your leading edges and wings actually extends and blends to these body rails, and so will your elevators. Look at the planform of the F-16 closely.

So the Americans must be fricken idiots then by your reckoning. The engines the F-22 uses are designed especially for it. If they had a single brain in their heads they would have been designing a single engine instead right?

The engine used on the F-22 is also the engine used on the JSF.

You’re the one who is freaking out of his mind. To create a single engine of the size and weight to fit an F-22, while generating the same output is currently beyond today’s technology. This is considering that the F-22 engine is already the leading edge of engine technology that you can find.

You seem to think that designing engines are easy when it is not. To design and perfect one is a project that can last well over a decade.

The Indians are finding the Mig-29 to be maintainence intensive because it was designed to be that way. It was designed for war, not peace. It was designed to operate for maybe 300 hours without any attention at all… plenty for a war scenario.

That is pure crap. Things are designed for war should not be maintenance intensive. In fact, it is the opposite.

Something that was designed to work for only 300 hours should also be to make such parts easy to replace. This favors the single engined fighter much better than a dual engined one.

Again you pose an empty and non sensical argument.

The 300 hours you say probably won’t even match their original requirements, which I believe to be a minimum of 1000 hours. That’s what the new AL-31Fs and RD-33s have now. 1500 hours is the intended spec actually. if they are improving the engine lives to such an extent, then 300 hours is obviously not something that is part of their requirements or the intention.

You’re telling me that the 300 hours is really a feature?

Blaming MIG for not building a plane during the cold war that would be suitable now in the post cold war era is a bit harsh don’t you think? They built what the customer wnated and they did a very good job. The Soviet airforce wanted a mini F-15 for short range interceptions and they got that.

The PVO has Fitters that could do the same job.

Now they need a cheap multirole fighter and the Mig-29M2 can do that too. The fact that the major powers have made the transition from cheap light fighter to larger more expenisive aircraft and the rest of the world hasn’t is hardly MIGs responsibility. With the US invading every country it can smaller nations might start buying more sophisticated aircraft but who knows… are you going to gamble on lots of cheap light fighters only to find that a neighour has bought a few expensive fighters and kicks your a$$?

What makes you think it’s easy to kick the ass of a single engined fighter like a Gripen or Mirage 2000-5 Mk2 huh?

If the US invades a country, it does not matter of you have cheap aircraft or expensive aircraft. They will be destroyed equally. That’s a nonsense and moot argument.

You are better off investing in SAM systems and guerrilla warfare.

The facts are that the aviation technology moves in cycles. When it starts to grow more complex, a counter reaction happens to push it backward.

In the sixties, aircraft were increasingly becoming more complex and planes like the F-4, the F-15, the F-111, the Foxbat, the Tomcat, promise to make it even more. This lead to a counter reaction, and a series of light fighters, from the Starfighter, to the F-5, and ultimately the F-16.

Without any proof either way who is to say that an F-16 with AMRAAMs can easily defeat even a mig-21 with R-77s? The Super weapon here is medium range smart active radar AAMs, not the F-16s. Who is to say that Hawks with AMRAAMs with AWACS support couldn’t do everything an F-16 could do?

Further proof of the single engined fighter’s viability. It does not matter where the R-77 comes from, whether it’s from a MiG-21UPG or an SU-30. It’s still the same R-77.

So, to increase your deadliness, you increase the number of platforms shooting the missile, rather than having fewer platforms with more hardpoints. Because of AWACS, you nullify one of the advantages of big fighters—more powerful built in radar. If fighters rely on AWACS for situational awareness, it puts big and small fighters on an equal field. This actually gives advantage to the side with smaller, but numerically superior fighters because you have overall greater battlefield presence.

BTW if numbers built = economy of numbers then if the F-16s had two engines then there would be twice as many F-16 engines sold so they would be cheaper too. 🙂 [/B]

That’s bull. When there were not enough F-16s yet, they were already coming out cheap. You could take the block number of the F-16 (Block 10, 15, 20, 30, etc,.) times it with a million, and you can guess approximately what’s its supposed to cost.

You think that F-16s were only cheap after they pounded out 2,000 or more? Wrong. The reason why they pounded out that many is because they were cheap and sold that many. In fact, it was the later F-16s that became more expensive as time goes by.

Originally posted by Wolverine
YF16 and 17 example is very much true and it is indeed a bad example to choose.
but there was nothing wrong with Mig choosing two engines for Mig29.
the plane wasnt built for exports specifically. it was to give the USSR a suitable counter weight to the american F15s, 16s and 18. it couldnt be a light single engined fighter. it had to be able to take on the F16 in AA duels. or so was hte operational requirement. ofcourse the flanker did come later on. and whats funny is that Mig29 has actually made alot of sales.

Yes, but a lot of those “sales” are to captive markets, satellite nations and through subsidies. True non alligned sales are fairly rare like India and Malaysia.

The MiG-21 and the MiG-23 are not built for export either but they were surprisingly cost effective, and its a lot easier to build large numbers for. Building more complex planes in large quantities would help bankrupt a country, wouldn’t it?

For your complexity, the Fulcrum does not offer anything more than the simpler F-16 or the Mirage 2000. Even if the radars were on the same technology level, the radomes would still be of around the same size and the theoritical performance would still be of the same. And it did turn out this way—N010 is analogous to the APG-66, the Zhuks to the APG-68. So in the end, despite your complexity, both your overall flight and radar performance are not superior. And you end up paying the consequences of greater complexity by having lower uptimes and lower operability due to requiring more maintenance, and that also ensures greater cost. Lastly your fuel consumption is indeed higher, not like double, but significant enough to be on shorter legs compared to the more efficient alternative of the single engine. Yes, yes, energy is used up against the mass of the airplane, but realize this, the twin engined fighter is both heavier and having more internal moving parts means greater internal friction.

The Indian example is one case where the single engined alternative (Mirage 2000) has shown to be more workable and efficient than the dual (MiG-29). It’s not really about the superiority of French quality over Russian—a lot of the quality issues involved with the MiG-29 vs. the Mirage 2000 is due to the greater mechanical complexity of the Fulcrum over the Mirage. To start with, its already in a considerable inherent disadvantage by being more complex.

If you can use one big engine, use it. If you don’t have the single big engine that can fit your requirements, then use the two smaller engines to create your needed output.

Originally posted by phrozenflame
[B]dont you think every word there looks something like what you said??? :rolleyes:

No. The “10” is the second character in the first line. The first character is “Jian”, where the “J” comes from. A Jian by the way, is also a two edged straight Chinese sword. The other characters pretty much says flight manual—the word “flight” is the fourth character in this first line of five characters.

@Crobato: If I’m right, Griffo had planned to propose Griffo-2000 for J-10 to China, seems like Chinese arent interested…how would one compare Griffo-2000 to RC-400, offcourse earlier one being superior..just want to see the difference…they also used G2k on F-16 MLU program back home..? [/B]

FIAR like Thales is pushing for the Chinese market so they, among others want the restriction lifted. But the restriction will still be in place, dashing these hopes. I think it’s pretty useless anyway. You got three powerful factors working against the Europeans that it’s just better to keep the embargo and remain in the good side of America. The chances of getting a Chinese order is very very small.

The first is the Chinese cultural ethos for self sufficiency. They would prefer doing things their way. If not, theywould want to license it and build it in their own land.

The second is their propensity to watch costs. They will want it cheap. European arms deals however, tend to be very expensive.

The third is that the Chinese if they ever buy it, only want the technology anyway. They will study what they bought, assimilate the technology, and in the long run, you will lose the business anyway, when they come up with their own domestic version. Read the first reason again.

The fourth reason is that the Chinese fear the Europeans can impose an embargo again anytime or pull a “Phalcon” if the US State Department lays the heat on a European arms deal.

The Russians are in a different boat because they can nearly match number 2 reason here, and they have a strategic relationship with the Russians who is their most powerful next door neighbor. Buying Russian arms has become very symbolic of the strategic relationship between Russia and China, and the Russians could take it the wrong way if the arms trade decreases significantly. So yes, its political, and at the same time the Chinese need the Russian oil and natural resources.

Not to mention they also pay the Russians partly in barter, and they also have to buy from the Russians anyway since the Russians owe them lots of money in loans, and its very difficult to get those loans repaid back in hard currency. The Russians were there to help the PRC during the embargo, defying it to sell the first Flankers. They know the Russians won’t give a damn what the US says, and for that the Chinese trust the Russians’ words. So they have an excellent setup with the Russians and a ton of reasons to buy from them.

So they will buy from the Russians first before any country if the PRC don’t have a domestic radar available. I really wonder where that talk of the FC-1 choosing the RC-400 ever came from; it seems quite wishful thinking to me (not even credible speculation) and I wonder where it came from. The PRC would get a NRIET or LETRI radar first, and if both are not available or not accepable, they will buy from Phazotron. In fact, that’s the order of candidates in the way I see it—a NRIET radar probably has the greatest chance (KLJ-X type), followed by a LETRI (JL-X type) then Phazotron.

The “10” is in Chinese. It’s that cross like symbol in the book.

Anyone who can read Mandarin can see “Jian Shi” in the title of that book.