Originally posted by troung
“What’s really amazing is that we have not documented, reported, or even rumored of any Chinese AGM-65 Maverick copy. The closest thing in the Chinese arsenal to a Maverick is the C-701, which has two versions, a thermal and a TV guided one. So while the C-701 works on the same princicple, it’s also a publicly disclosed weapon and the fins don’t look like the Maverick’s. So even if the C-701 does not work—and its very likely it does—the next choice would be to use the Kh-29T for the same role.”

I would be interested to see how the J-10 would carry air to ground loads in combat situations. Seeing as it is most likely a fighter-bomber in the F-16 mold. When I first read about the plane it was claimed to have 11 loading points for ordinance and external fuel tanks but the plane to my knowledge has only been seen with 7 loading points.

So really that makes the plane unable I guess to make use of the PL-11 or SD-10 if it is carrying air to ground weapons and the standard external fuel tanks and PL-8/9s. That of course if it only has 7 loading points.

So does the J-10 really have 11 loading points or was that just a typo or a miss reporting?

I figure its air to ground loads will likely include the Kh-31P, Kh-29L/T, C-701, KAB guided bombs (TV and Laser), FAB dumb bombs, Chinese dumb bombs, free flight rockets, cluster bombs, FAEs and anti runway bombs.

The 11 hardpoints thing came from a leaked Chinese diagram of the plane showing 11 hardpoints.

The four hardpoints, however, only appear as fuselage attachment points for MERs (multiple ejection racks) to hold small bombs in the 250kg size. So it’s not really in contradiction to what we are seeing, which is the plane having only 7 main hardpoints. These four hardpoints would be useless for carrying missiles anyway.

Since the plane lacks Russian radar, I doubt it would carry stuff like Kh-29s. If the plane has a Russian radar, you would be seeing pics of it with R-27s and R-73s for testing. KAB and FAB bombs depend on how well these are integrated with Chinese systems.

The only Chinese system I know that could use a Russian weapon is the JL-10A radar set of the new JH-7 and JH-7As, and the missile is the Kh-31P. But this is not the same radar as the one on the J-10, whch is the Type 1473, and is made by a different company. NRIET makes the one for the J-10, and LETRI for the JH-7. However, the knowhow could be passed, but implementation will take a while, before you can get Type 1473 to use a Kh-31P.

So C-701 is more of a possibilty, but you can be sure about the typical Chinese saturation rockets and bombs which are seen from Q-5s to PLAAF SU-27s. The unguided stuff is always the staple of the Chinese air to ground attack, not to mention its cheap, easy to manufacture, and plenty available. Remember, the PLA does not put a premium on reducing collateral damage as Americans do.

Yes. Tradeoffs. Luckily, the Kh-31A is not the only option available to the Su-30MK, as you know.

For antiship it is, currently. Air launched Moskit, Uran and Clubs are still paper projects in need of funding, but apparently the Chinese appear to chose to fund something else—the Kh-59MK, an antiship version of the Kh-59ME.

You can see a mockup of this missile with photos of SU-30MKK 502 in Le Bourget 2001. It looks like the KH-59ME but with the round black head.

All of which apply to Oniks/Yakhont (except the 4 per JH-7 of course, you want vastly superior destructive power and intelligence you pay for it in weight- and I’m not referring to warhed size, but what happens to a ship struck by an ASCM the size of Yakhont at supersonic speed). Not to mention that no ship will be stupid enough to sit off the Chinese cost within truck launcher range, but there you go.

Don’t give me that supersonic hits harder stuff. It only does more damage if the head comes matched with an armor piercing design. Otherwise it will only just explode on impact the same with a subsonic missile. Without explosives and an armor piercing head, a missile hitting the side of an armored hull of a ship, which by the way, is thicker than a tank, will just leave a big dent. If it hits the superstructure, it will do a lot of collateral damage, but AshMs are programmed to hit the waterline, which is the most armored part of the ship.

Even then an SU-30 can only carry two Oniks. In terms of warhead, that’s less than four C-803s.

Truck launcher range by the way, off the Chinese coast is sufficient to cover the side of Taiwan facing the mainland coast. Likewise, on the other side, truck launched AshMs can still defend against an invasion fleet from the mainland if the entire ROC Navy has been sunk.

Luckily pretty good radar is not a problem for a navy expecting to face JH-7s.

Carrier born air defense is the best way to defend against fast low level attackers with four long range AshMs. Ships alone won’t cut it.

And you know anything about the flight profile on the C-803 which is the same size as it’s predecessor? No.

It is based on its predecessor, so yeah, it should fly the same way. Range improvements could easily come from an improved turbojet engine. The C-802 has been out there since the mid nineties you know, so that’s plenty of time for improvement.

Erm- funds, hello?

China with 400 billion in foreign reserves, and you’re asking about funds?

Improving a radar in later blocks does not mean the CPU is ‘insufficient’, it merely means it can be improved. This is like saying the AN/APG-63(V)1 sucks because the V(2) came out.

Maybe you should refresh yourself with the Jane’s articles on this matter. Clearly at this point, the AGM potential of the radar is not fully realized. Once radars are used to make differentiation of ground targets, the processing requirements are much greater.

It is quite unusual for a buying nation to insist on using their own CPUs on a foreign bought system. Its not a matter of cost, as CPUs are pretty cheap. It’s a matter of seeing that the Russians—whose processor technology is frozen at the 486 to Pentium I level at least, ergo 0.8 micron tech—-do not have the CPU technology to realize BARS to its full potential.

BARS II will have an improved Russian processor. BARS III will have the Indian one. By the time HAL will be making MKIs domestically, the MKIs should supposedly be on the BARS III level. BARS III is the definite BARS on the MKI, not BARS I and BARS II.

APG-63 V1 is not a multirole ground attack radar, so it does not count. V2 was.

Why do you think the SU-30MKK in its original form, could not handle the Kh-31A in the first place? Insufficient CPU. The MK2 had to have an improved CPU and DSP to help support the system.

Because the Indian’s want to use their own stuff? This persistent reference to preference of foreign over domestic is as repetetive as it is fallacious in proving anything.

Processors are too cheap, and the planes are too few to insist on that. It has to be something far more fundamental.

Same reason why I think Brahmos will be better than Oniks.

It could’ve been any number of reasons, including the ever important foreign vs domestic preference. I don’t know, and neither do you.

There is never such a thing as prefering to use your own CPU. This is unusual, and unpredecented. The Japanese used their own radar on their F-15s yes, but they didn’t insist on putting their own CPU on the APG-63.

It’s clearly an architectural deficiency on part of the BARS which the Indians saw, and which they only have the hardware to resolve it.

Launched does not mean commissioned. There is quite a large difference.

FACT: The arrays have been installed.

The ships could be seagoing within the year, given the rate of progress.

But you can’t answer a single question about what they can do, can you?

Just because things are secret does not mean they’re there.

Ever heard of the Sky Watch 3D electronic scan phased array radar on the Kuznetsov and Admiral Gorshkov? These were 1980s designs that were put on *commissioned* ships- and they failed- never lived up to their true potential- including a highly intergrated air battle management system tied to them. Too much for Soviet 80s industry I guess. Some sources say they’re inoperable, though who can say with the recent refits Kuznetsov has gone through.

But it illustrates two points:

1: the Russians actually did have something close to these in solid matter- over 20 years ago. Extremely solid, in fact, and still visible on the Kuznetsov. I imagine when the Admiral Gorshkov goes to India, we’ll perhaps see this system as it was meant to be, considering the better processors and such out now.

2: the fact that things that look like phased arrays are on ships doesn’t automatically mean they’re any good,

(as you can see, I have no qualms about pointing out Russian failures)

And hey, to really get you annoyed, I can easily raise the more possibility (shared by an article posted on this very forum) that the Russians had a hand in the arrays on the 052C.

Oh please. Skywatch is nothing like the Chinese PARS. And that one is not just a failure, it was removed from the Kuznetsov.

Pics of the Chinese PARs as they are being delivered, are shown in the CDF. They appear much more like the Raytheon made PARs used to support the Patriot system. It is a multifunctional PAR, where air volume search, tracking, locking, guidance, are all in the same unit rather than in seperate vehicles like the S-300 complex.

Pictures of the land based Chinese equivalent, the HQ-9/FT-2000, also show trucks of a very similar layout. Like the Patriot system, the FT-2000 only relies on one control vehicle. The HQ-9 is often mentioned as the basis for the HHQ9 system on the 052C class DDGs.

Skywatch does not even the kind of cooling system the Chinese PARs are using, which is more like the SPY-3. There are eight large ducts around the mount, and the whole array now appears to be encased and cooled by liquid. You must be an active array to make that kind of heat.

And you can’t tell me a thing about them or what they can do, save that they’re ‘arrays’ and that the ships ‘may’ be in service within the year. I’m completely unimpressed. Especially considering that, for example, the December 2003 article “A Paper Tiger No More” calls the arrays on the 052C type simply “rudimentary”.

Rudimentary for an AEGIS type system, that is. This still puts it ahead of any Russian efforts.

And? We both know the reason for that is cash, not a lack of technical know how, besides, wow, 6,500t destroyers with unknown stats, performance, and weapons. Never been done before!

Its called secrecy.

Its better than having a lot of paper stats with an undelivered, vapor ware product, which the Russians are notorious for, e.g. air launched Moskit.

Now you’re comparing 25-30 year old missile designs of the Soviet Union with new Chinese ones incorpating new Russian technology, even while the same country goes after missiles like the R-77MPD!

There is doubt about the Russian technology part (why would Russians sell them a technology that competes against their own market the R-77).

Big doubts.

The R-77MPD is not a sellable product. More vaporware.

Obviously. I don’t argue against facts. Just hyperbole. This is relevant to the debate how? I will not be drawn into a silly “russia vs the west” argument, because a: because russian military technology is inferior to the West in most, if not all, departments and b: this is not what the thread is about, now is it?

My golly, if anything, the Russians are best know for hyperbole. After a decade of marketing all sorts of stuff, how many have actually been accepted?

No, but it has enough Russian participation that it sure as hell isn’t indigenous Chinese, and it illustrates the point that China isn’t ahead quite well I think.

Russian participation on the SD-10 is contrary to logic.

1.) It competes against their own R-77 market. More SD-10s, less sales for R-77s. It’s not just the Chinese market, SD-10 is also being positioned for export.

2.) It has a chance of being used against the Indians, which are Russian customers.

3.) SD-10 appears currently requiring a Chinese made radar, fitted on the J-8II. If SD-10 has Russian systems, why don’t you test it on SU-27s and SU-30s?

4.) If the Indian government really believed that Russians are participating in the SD-10 project which may be procured by Pakistan, a formal political objection should have been made long ago.

So yeah, it defies major logic.

That’s what the reports say. I’m sorry if you find it inconvenient, but until evidence is presented, I go to the existing evidence.

Existing evidence? Those articles are innuendo and do not count as evidence. Testimony of unproven innuendo does not count as evidence.

N011M Bars. You and I both know if the Russians actually had the funds they would have better antennas (hell, they’d have new fighters), but the technology is undeniably there.

The basic fundamental semiconductor technology to realize this design fully is not available to the Russians.

You would have to revolutionize Russia’s semiconductor industry to a Western exportable standard first, maybe in the same level, like say, Malaysia.

How have you shown me anything worth looking at? You can provide me with no stats, no performance characteristics of any kind- about anything, lots of “may bes” about future Chinese developments of which you know very little, spurious suppositions appealing to the ‘intent’ of the Chinese or Russians in doing a certain thing, and red herrings about the West, not to mention a consistent attempt to steer my argument away from what I made.

Excuse me, but stats don’t mean crap.

After a decade of not fulfulling rosy stat sheets, I can’t help but feel skeptical to a lot of hot air stats, which is just marketing gimmick.

Show me the real stuff, real action.

Stats like the 250km on the new Uran II don’t mean squat, since it’s only a paper project, and the missile is vaporware.

But when an actual missile like the C-803 is tracked by US military intelligence for a flight range of 255km, well over its publicised stat of 160km, that means a different thing. Its reality.

Originally posted by Deino
What J-13 is here discussed … the “old” Shenyang J-13 or the maybe new designated (whatever it is ??)

Thanks, Deino 🙂

Good point. Very likely to be the old one.

[i]Originally posted by Vympel
Yakhont-M is a paper-project? Not according to the prototype at MAKS 2003. It hasn’t flown yet (2005), but the acceptance of the shipborne, full spec Russian version makes it a rather foregone conclusion.

It hasn’t flown yet, it hasn’t flown yet.

Simple as that.

And which can fight off an enemy fighter of any kind? Not JH-7, that’s for sure. Which is more likely to strike the target? SM-2s were designed to blast Kh-22s and Bazalts, Granits- supersonic targets. The C-803 is subsonic Phalanx fodder, let alone SM-2. If I want to actually get near the vessel, and have a chance at killing it, rather than perhaps getting near it and just feeling good about shooting at it, I’ll take Kh-31As.

Except that your plane will be shot down long before that.

Sorry, it’s better for a C-803 to be shot down instead of an entire MKK.

Besides, with smaller subsonic missiles, the strategy is saturation attack with ECM. You can shot down one, maybe two. But you cannot get them all.

Pure anecdote. I can cite many, concrete examples of entire fleets of Western aircraft being grounded just as easily, not to mention ridiculously bad MTBF for say, the F-15s AN/APG-63. That doens’t mean they’re unreliable aircraft.

Yes, but look who got stuck with a bad reputation?

What does this have to do with “China is ahead of Russia”? N011M Bars. Nuff said.

Which means nothing (J-10 radar may be a phase array version of Type 1473).

I will show you the multifunctional active array on the DDG 170/171, and the Russians simply do not have any equivalent to it in service or the drawing board.

Which is not what I’m arguing against – that being the patently false assertion that China is ahead of Russia. It is not, and you’re only helping that along.

Man, man, many. Russia is only ahead in military technology and that’s only because of the Soviet era spending. The only other science level Russia is ahead is materials (metallurgy) technology.

But in other areas—quality control, plastics, electronics, precision manufacturing, machine tooling, telecommunications—Russia has fallen behind.

Badly.

Whatever it has left as an advantage, it will be gone within a decade, if not before 2010.

Which is not what I’m arguing against – that being the patently false assertion that China is ahead of Russia. It is not.

In terms of economy, infrastructure development, commercial technology, it is, and quite a lot.

Not to mention that there’s nothing particularly Chinese about the SD-10 at this point in time either. Then there’s RVV-AE-PD. Etc.)

The airframe and booster of the SD-10 is Chinese. Only the seeker may have Russian involvement. The rear side fins dogtooth approach is quite novel—it improves missile agility and reduces the torque needed to turn the fins at high speed. Only the AIM-9X and the Japanese AAM-3 uses dogtooth fins, but only in the front and not with a BVRAAM.

The lofted flight profile of the SD-10 and its dual mode motor certainly did not come from the Russians, since Russian AAMs don’t have either. These parts of the SD-10 seem more Western—lofted flight profile is learned from the Italian Aspide and Sparrows, while the dual burn motor approach from the Israelis and the Python 3 motor.

Which is not what I’m arguing against – that being the patently false assertion that China is ahead of Russia. It is not.

It is certainly in the area of electronics. Are Russian CPUs being exported to the US? Chinese CPUs (ARCA) are, inside Wyse Network Computers. Russia got 12 inch/300mm wafer semiconductor production?

When you have basic electronic/semiconductor/computer technology advantage, soon you will have an advantage on areas reliant on electronics, which means avionics, radar, and communications for aircraft for example. Why do you think the Chinese want to replace the radar on the J-11 with their own—against Sukhoi’s own roadmap for the SU-27?

Maybe you should read more what the Russians have to say, and why they fear that Chinese arms purchases may—no WILL—diminish in the future.

Originally posted by digdream
Crobato, China Air Force (ISSN1002-6010) is published by the politics department of PLAAF, very official. This cover is definitely fake. How could the J-13 be discussed on an official magazine?

Your right, the J-13 is a giveaway. Otherwise I thought this is one of those military enthusiast street rags you can easily buy off the street. I got some of those in my last visit there.’

Those Mavericks are a clear PS. We have already established the original F-16 pic that was carrying the same Mavericks some time ago.

What’s really amazing is that we have not documented, reported, or even rumored of any Chinese AGM-65 Maverick copy. The closest thing in the Chinese arsenal to a Maverick is the C-701, which has two versions, a thermal and a TV guided one. So while the C-701 works on the same princicple, it’s also a publicly disclosed weapon and the fins don’t look like the Maverick’s.

So even if the C-701 does not work—and its very likely it does—the next choice would be to use the Kh-29T for the same role.

As for the pics of 1013, I always suspected that pictures of 1013 were intended as Chengdu’s own posters and advertisements. The sharpness and tonal qualities of the prints screams “professional photographer” with high quality cameras, lenses and slide film—which is used over print film for magazine and professional publicity work.

Plawolf,

Not all Chinese cities are foggy and dirty. Dalian does in fact, have a reputation for cleanliness, and it regularly completes with Xiamen (Fujien province) as the cleanest city in China. However, cities like Xiamen and Dalian are more of the exception than the norm. Shenzhen is pretty clean too, with highways that ofen remind me of an American city, but Shanghai and Bejing gets pretty dirty at times. The more you get to the interior, the dirtier it gets, and Chengdu is pretty interior. South of China and to the inside, you’re looking at the Smoke Belt. The most polluted is probably Lanzhou.

There is still too many powerplants using coal and factories without emission measures.

It’s also pretty air polluted.

Humid fog + sulpheric fumes from coal fired plants = bad combo.

China does not have sandstorms, at least in that part of the region where this J-10 may be, which is around the city of Chengdu.

The front part of the canopy appears covered, but it’s clear that the raised hinge part appears to have some tint film in it. If you look closely to the edges of the raised canopy you can even see the borders of the tint film.