That comes from the Su-35 Sukhoi brochure. Personally I would’ve liked to have seen the vertical tails canted outward slightly to remove that large RCS hotspot as well, but the above features should at least help to reduce forward-hemisphere RCS.

You can deal with that by RAM-ing the tail and by using all composite tail structures. Both of which won’t be hard.

Looking at the shape of the canopy, the shape of the instrument panel cowling, and a few other features, that guy is in the backseat of a FLANKER-series aircraft.

Besides the helmet ruling that out—the J-11 pilots use a different helmet—the arrangement of the back view mirrors would rule out an Su-27.

Su-27, Su-30MKK, J-8F and J-7G pilots all use the same helmet with the HMS attachment. Everyone else uses this one.

Boyd’s basic thoughts (before he expanded his theory) are very close to what Erich Hartmann said about air-to-air combat. Wonder if Boyd knew Hartmann.

Hartmann treated it rather intuitively and into doctrine. Boyd on the other hand, coded everything scientifically and mathematically into charts and models.

AT present, because of the veil of secrecy the PLA throws over everything, the US does not have a very good idea of everything that the PLA is doing, and that opens the possibility of the PLA catching the US out by developing weapons and tactics that are tailor made to take on US forces with the added bonus that the US would not be able to train to deal with these new threats.

The point is, without transparency, it can also lead to threat inflation. The US may still be developing weapons and systems to counter whatever ‘imagined’ PLA threat would be.

Isnt the Yak-41 project dead?;)

There are recent pictures of the plane popping up again that may suggest that Yakolev is still trying to sell the project. Peace Mission 2007 is currently on and MAKS 2007 will be on later this month.

http://tuku.military.china.com/military/html/2007-08-07/39246.htm

The cooling and increased power transformers will surely add up weight. By the way, today’s notebooks are also lighter because technology advances have also saved on power requirements. CPUs and electronics are not the ones that are eating up the power here. its the AESA radar.

When I mean structurally beefed up, I’m not talking of just 9Gs, but to achieve a longer service life (post 12,000 hours) even with occasional 9G maneuvering and ground missions.

The question is…is this more like a Typhoon that needs 3 Trenches to get to the level of capability most people look forward to or on the same level of cap plus growth factored in for the future now. Is this a F16bk5 or bk60 in capability?

When I am talking about dense here, I’m talking about density in the true physical sense. Not about growth or capability, which is mostly electronic and don’t really factor that much in weight.

The F-35 is built remarkably heavy for its size. That’s a lot of beefed up structure there.