Wait a minute, wasn’t the US complaining about hacking? So its actually doing the hacking with the US NSA. That sounds pretty hypocritical no?

Yes I am serious.

I did mean it in the American sense, but looking back, I think the British meaning would also fit in. i.e. Given that the JF-17 is great value for money, it is open to discussion if the topic is relevant. OR
Given that the JF-17 can be considered a better deal than the Gripen, the topic is irrelevant.

PS: The JF-17 most reminds me in its role, the Hurricane in WWII. Not the best plane compared to the top 5 fighters in the world, but it provides decent performance and numbers.

On the other hand it reminds me of the Me-109G “Gustav”. the G did not have the speed of a P-51 (M-2000), could not out-turn a Spitfire (F-16), but it has a balance of compromises all its own. In the hands of a good pilot, the Gustav could take on any of its opponents still…

The JF-17 can’t do sustained turns like an F-16, or instantaneous turns like an F-18, It can’t fly as high or as fast as an M-2000, but it has compromises between them that makes it very well balanced.

It has a M-2000 like tubular body area ruled body that makes it cheap and easy to make, and provides it with low drag. But it doesn’t have the M-2000’s low drag and high speed delta wings. It instead has F-16 like wings that gives it reasonable turn’s and allows a dogfighter to keep more of its energy in the fight.

Yet it doesn’t exactly have F-16’s wings, it has long LERX that lets it have very decent AoA and instantaneous turn rates, well, not as good as the larger LERX of the F-18, but still, a middle ground between the 18 and the 16. F-16’s wing, combined with larger LERX, helps reduce drag in straight flight while increasing drag somewhat at the benefit of higher ITR in a turn.

It has the Gripen’s best features mixed into that as well – virtually the same cockpit, and the tail fairing for EW. It also has the same philosophy from the ground up of low maintenance and being able to be used from roads and makeshift runways. Yet, the Gripen’s advanced delta canard is heavy and difficult to manufacture cheap. So the JF-17 takes no more.

The JF-17 is a plane that doesn’t stand out, but plays the middling game well, taking the best features from multiple jets for a very decent value for money.

You don’t understand Muslims or the Muslim world. Never mess with what you don’t understand. If you asked me, our sentiment is LEAVE US ALONE.

And kindly spare us your real face:

Same as Nic , I agree on everything .

The best way to prepare the 3rd World War (Islam vs everybody else) is to let the Islamists ruin a
maximum of Countries and show their natural tendencies to oppression . Then , the West will hit hard on them once for all .

Cheers .

And of course, you expect us to sit and wait what till you hit us hard “once and for all”. And you wonder why ppl like OBL hold water in the Muslim world.
A dying civilization imploding on itself is apparently your, nay ” the world’s” greatest threat, and not anglo saxony led by the self proclaimed “sole superpower” who have for the last 3 centuries colonized, exploited and ethnically cleansed huge swaiths of this planet are of course the “good guys”. Spare this MILITARY AVIATION FORUM your godless moralizing please.

Obligatory, you would be right 20 years ago buy the nature of a “fighter” can be argued to have shifted. Notice that the jsf is also a fighter…

Hi-hi makes some paradigm shifts in what we think is a fighter. The full extent of this may still not have been explored.

Its a beautiful thought. I think that instead of going the J/H-20 route China has chosen a very potent solution. This is a high flying attacker that could potentially share the same engine as the J-20, simplifying logistics and yet not having the shortcomings of the F-22 – F/B-22. The striker obviously compromises on maneauverability and TWR for range, speed and stealth, giving it significant reach up to the 2nd Island chain.

The platform could be used for a number of other roles, potentially for an EW version or even a survivable AWACS platform ; given the future that anti-AWACS weapons are increasingly more potent, the EW environment may need to be rethought. (Just my thoughts and speculations).

I think that the F-22 – FB-22 and the F-35 have tried to get the best of all worlds, but this may not be the best solution. It may be better to not trade off performance for stealth for a fighter, while it may be better to trade performance for stealth for a bomber. Trying to be a jack of all trades ends up going nowhere.

Trying to eat the cake and have it too can be expensive and frustrating, as the F-35 shows. The future of aviation is perhaps to better understand the maturing technologies at hand, and to weigh them more appropriately than the heady days when stealth became the new fad. Here is where the PAKFA, J-20 and this new stealth striker / bomber fits in.

The relative cost of an airframe R&D and manufacture, given CAD and modern production processes such as 3D printing is going down. The real costs are in systems development, and in maintaining those systems. This understanding is something of a paradigm shift, given that the flexibility was previously seen with the systems and not with the hard platform.

The F/A-18 was one such example of the old paradigm. The new paradigm on the other is exemplified by this new striker / J-20 combination. Engines are the same. They may share a large number of sub-systems. But the structures are worlds apart. This is a very pragmatic and effective rethink, and a distinct Chinese way of war.

This plane is a striker not designed for high AoA. The top air intakes would give it better stealth characteristics against ground radars and even against airborne threats in a high altitude profile.

Compared to the chinese everyone else appears to be bungling fools.

A cheap way to scuttle the A400M.