Non does wish that really. By the way it is much easier for the USA or Europe to overcome a shortage in cheap toys, textil or furniture f.e.. Every coin has its two sides.

What the US and Europe cannot overcome is the shortage of Chinese capital buying up their debt.

China is not a big supplier of furniture by the way. But things like ships and PCs are. A Chinese company is Intel’s third largest customer in the world.

Before 1980 China was no issue in world-trade. Today even China has to face cheap labour from Vietnam or Bangla Desh.

Cheap labor is not the factor, today there are many countries with cheaper labor than China and yet these countries still face factory closures as more and more multinationals move their operations to China. The thing that you don’t seem to realize that China’s supply cycle is so complete, that to make any given high tech product, 80 to 90 percent of the components can be sourced in country without shipping them in, incurring freight costs and taxes, allowing them to be produced without delays and allowing for just in time inventories.

Maybe you did not read the post carefully. With VG, you cannot transfer load stress from the wings to the main airframe. That’s not the same as saying you can strengthen the wings and the airframe. It means the wings are isolated from the main stress bearing points, and this will subject the wings to stress issues as the wings cannot be properly supported by the fuselage with unbroken stress lines and large roots. I wonder how many VG winged aircraft can be subjected to the 9G punishment F-16s during their operational careers.

There are other issues too. In WVR, VG fighters easily telegraph their energy position by the position of their wings. Bad against shrewd pilots. Another is that they generally blow in transient performance, or the ability to change your energy state quickly, that unmeasurable quality called being “nimble”. Being lighter, fixed wing aircraft can accelerate and decelerate faster, and immediately, do not need to wait for wing sweep changes.

And VG fighters don’t bank and roll as fast as some fixed wing fighters, which can almost “flick” themselves into a bank. There are reasons for this. For faster roll, the wings have to be in the center or lower of the aircraft. But because of the VG mechanisms, the wing have to be set high in the aircraft, giving it a shoulder appearance. That is not conducive to a fast roll. Planes with fixed shoulder mounted wings counter the resistance to roll by canting the wings downward, creating an anhedral effect. Unfortunately because of the VG mechanisms, a VG winged plane cannot be turned anhedral. Then the weigh of all those mechanisms and needed reinforcement right in the wings also add to the resistance against roll, since there is more inertia to overcome.

Some VG fighters are able to outroll some fixed wing fighters, but that’s because a fighter like the F-14 has huge elevators, while the Phantom does not have a good elevator design. But these VG fighters are not going to outroll fixed wing fighters with properly sized elevators with central or low mounted wings (F-16, F-5E, etc,.)

The B-1 is far better in everything except range. It lifts a bigger payload with a shorter takeoff and the A model was more than twice as fast. Granted you could redesign a B-52 to trade fuel for more weapons, but its still slow, even if you reengined it with modern turbofans or whatever. What was the takeoff run of a B-70?

The B-1 is also nearly twenty years in advance of the B-52. But I think everyone would agree that the B-52 is still a more useful, not to mention more mission available.

Put any jet engine you want into a loaded F-105D, and it will still eat up more runway than a loaded Tornado.

Like the B-52H, its a weapons stations problem, not an lift problem. The F-111 can lift way more than any of these aircraft with the same engines as the F-14, and fly farther and faster.

Ok, lets make it the F-104S vs MiG-23M. Both were in production at the same time, both were single engined, single seat fighters optimized for air to air combat at very high speeds (faster than current fighters are optimized for). Armament was equivalent – two SARH and four IRH missiles plus cannon. Besides the better field performance, the MiG-23M has far more range. I’m sorry if the MiG is bigger. All I have to work with is what went into production. I don’t have a VG F-104 or fixed wing MiG-23 to make comparisons with. You could make a good argument that the F-4E is a closer equivalent (but its bigger than the MiG-23M 😉 ).

Yeah, because most fighters are fixed wing with high sweep. As they slow down, they have to increase AOA to get enough lift at altitude, and drag shoots up. VG aircraft cruise with minimum sweep (or very close to it) because drag is so much less at lower speeds. High lift low sweep wings allow the pilot to throttle way down and fly for much longer and with greater efficiency. Unless you get into compression lift (B-70), slower gets you farther. Its the same for cars and jets.

TF helps, but the F-14 loiters with minimum sweep, which just goes to show that its a better wing configuration for loiter than 45 deg or higher sweep that most fixed wing fighters have. (F-5 and F-18 are the only exceptions that I can think of right off.)

So what?

One of the real issues of VG wing is load transfer. In a fixed wing aircraft, the stress against the wings whether by high G, rolling or carrying carrying things, can be load transferred directly to the wing root, and there to the main fuselage structure. VG wings can’t be strengthened in the same way, and stress is likely to fall on the VG wing mechanisms itself. This creates points of both mechanical and stress failure, which in turn results for more inspections, maintenance and replacements. This also results in lower mission availability. And it does not matter how good your plane is in paper and specs, as long as it sits there in the hanger, the other plane that does the job is always the better plane.

Vikas, lets call a spade a spade..the design similarities between the Lavi and the J-10 or even the ARJ-21 and the DC-9 are not just “coincidences”..design support is crucial for those without too much experience in new generation technologies..and where China is gaining it now, it did not have it at the start of the J-10 program..assistance from Russia and Russian engineers and Israel is not surprising- and going by the development timeline of the J-10, its not hard to believe that a decade after the Lavi was shelved, a derivative (not necessarily a complete rip off) of it was flying in the form of the J-10. there is no offence to be taken in that.

By the same account, there are many design similarities between the following, so one must be the copy of the other.

The 052C to the Arleigh Burke
Lexus to Mercedes
Airbus liners to Boeing liners
all front engined econocars to the original Austin Mini.
Dolphins to the sharks.

Get real.

What’s bothering me is the clear lack of noise reduction measures. ie rubber seperators to decrease vibration.

Not an issue within the gearbox itself. You can put rubberized gaskets. Vibrations among the shafts also tend to counterbalance each other. The most important thing is to isolate the entire unit by using liquid mounted dampeners in the supports between the gearbox and the hull.

Good catch Trident, once you removed the two upper gears the two looks similar.

So will this C/N number match that plane? c/n# 2960535404.

Long time ago. After the project was disproved, all the added equipment was taken out and the plane was restored to the condition as it arrived. Then it returned to China (2001).