Ukraine has Antonov but a number of components has to come from Russia.
they have two aviation engine producers, Ivchenko-Progress that’s used in a bunch of shet, and Motor Bich, that also makes stuff for Russian aircraft
they have Kiev aircraft repair plant that repairs shet and also builds some parts for the 737

one day, they should combine their powers with Serbia, Poland, Czech Republic, to create the Eastern Eurofighter. I would imagine they could sell 50!

right now the biggest problem in Ukraine is deciding whether to be a western puppet or russian puppet, and their indecisiveness is drawing the ire of both.

Western puppet
Pros: lots of financial incentives
Cons: your leaders will get poisoned, expensive energy

Russian puppet
Pros: cheap energy
Cons: out casted by Olde Europe

Any chance Russian joining the AMCA project? Russian can’t afford just building Pak Fa in high number. They need a medium size fighter to fill up the inventory.
Sharing cost will be win win for both countries. It will be achieved in less 12-15 years.

OR If russian already have a Medium size project, why not join them?

well now the news reports are saying its the size of pakfa.. that aint no medium jet.
also seems like its going to be a dedicated attack aircraft.

the model that was shown looks more like a medium sized multi role fighter.
would make sense if they work together, but the Russians may have too much pride.. unless they get dominant share.

:confused:
Why are they bothering with ‘serpentine intakes’ when PAK-FA doesn’t need them and neither do prospective NGAD/FA-XX designs by the looks of it?
Why not use the RAM-fans or whatever blocker structure PAK-FA uses, given India is supposed to also manufacture those, right?

the boeing model of the f/a-xx does have s-ducts shown in one of their videos.

Wellerocks,

Air superiority requires a low wingloading for good performance at medium-high altitudes, which is where all BVR work is done because it’s the only place where missile system performance is optimized both for motor impulse and launch aircraft accelerative boost.

The ludicrous nature of this in a modern S2A environment being inherent to the F-15C’s (_Strike Eagle_ by Smallwood) which, in the first days of Desert Storm, came into the operational area at 30-35,000ft and mildly supersonic, even with tanks and PW-100 engines, and yet _immediately_ downstepped to much lower altitudes (17-19K) to get some lift under the wings and depress the slant effect because the _SA-2 threat_ was the dominant tactics driver.

That said, anything which fights well at altitude because it has a 50-70lb/sqft wingloading is also going to haul ordnance well here.

Which means that jets like the Jaguar, Harrier and Tornado which are all bunny suckers in the NATO environment make for -terrible- ‘multirole’ jets, having much higher wingloadings in the 100-150lb range. Where altitude translates to lower throttle setting and longer legs, it also equates to reduced numbers of effective threats as you just can’t buy as many S-300s as you can DShKs and other trashfire projectors, suitable for killing loloing aircraft.

What makes an interdictor (even a Battlefield Interdictor) survivable at low level, is enough gas and enough wingloading to hold down the loud pedal and mush through the bumpies without feeling like you’re teeth are being shook loose.

In this, high wingloading translates to low aspect ratio from highly swept wings which means low frontal and wetted area as drag and potentially lower RCS.

Where you throw in VG into the ring as the expectation of just holding a CAP orbit and not maneuvering against an aggressive opponent at visual distances, you can actually get both a good interdictor and a good interceptor from the same platform, the F-111A and F-111B being ideal examples. That’s right, the F-111B was always a better _interceptor_ than the Tomcat which so poorly replaced it as an indifferent fighter and a very poor Fleet Defender.

The reason being that you can adjust aspect ratio to essentially ‘reveal’ more wing area as slow speed loiter at best cruise altitude (boring holes in the sky) and then subtract that area (while increasing speed) with fuel as burner use to maximize Ps as a function of supersonic energy. Where your maneuver comes down to a crank turn to slow closure after missile boosting, enormous speed (and great acceleration) matters more than wing area or unreheated thrust to maneuver at altitude.

Which is where adding realistic LO to the mix changes everything again. First because of cost which severely constrains your inventory and forces you to avoid any and all fights which have random LER outcomes due to fluid and highly dynamic engagement conditions: i.e. traditional progressions of BVR-radar-merge-heatshot-1-visual merge-heatshot 2-maneuver-heatshot 3-disengagement as ‘dogfighting’ are all out.

Yet where LO means you don’t have to have a big wing or lots of IRT to zip through WEZs before the missile arrives or to defeat said missiles terminally, it does require that you have the absolute broadest possible protection cone with minimal bowtie effects from the sides.

While a good wingsweep may help here as well (See F-117), VG is probably out because of all the surface discontiguities as lap joints it creates folding the glove over the retractable outboard wing panel (see the A/FX for a dovetail way to beat this). And so you’re basically left with a low aspect ratio stub wing with minimal residual Ps for dogfighting anyway.

Something which is further hampered because SSC at Mach 1.x both increases the rate at which you rush towards a new emitter threat in blink-mode. And also requires a lot more yank and bank to accomplish basic route-around flight maneuvers, increasing the hotside deflection and vortices visible to said radars. So you cannot use speed to increase smash and make a couple high G swish maneuvers (as goes the intercept, so goes the fight) because the SM-2/3/6 environment will shoot your side aspects as you beam them.

If tactical conditions over an active IADS constrain you from radical maneuvering and SSC anyway, you don’t need a big wing or T/Wr for absolute performance at altitude. Fuel fraction is still important for absolute payload:range (with mission type modifiers for ordnance weight further adjusting internal fraction) but desired T/Wr can generally be burned off to in a step up profile that brings you to the target area at 40-45K and Mach 1.4 after a long climbout to profile height during transit ingress.

Speeds as altitudes you will use for traditional sprint boosting of your weapons before turning for home to make twice the travel rate, empty.

This is why a Stealth aircraft cannot be labeled as ‘either/or’ because the truth of the matter is that it is -neither-. It doesn’t go low, fast, to escape intercept. And it doesn’t use supersonics to go high with dominant cutoff vectors (sub or supersonic) to make intercept. It never in fact wants to -see- an enemy aircraft, visually so it also doesn’t need wingarea to make EM curves happen above 20K.

Provided your primary mission weapons standoff reach is quite long, you simply don’t have to be ‘self defending’ in the way a Strike Eagle or a Hornet is. Indeed, the concept that you will be engaging anyone is entirely under your control. As long as you do nothing drastic, even with a relatively high wingloading, you can play 1G airliner and stay above the ConBelt which removes your optical signature and aids fuel efficiency by 50% radius factor or more.

It is when you look at the J-20 with this COE or Contempt Of Engagement methodology as operational paradigm that you begin to understand it’s specific design tradeoff choices as airframe parameters. It has a relatively small wing, augmented by a middling sized canard and compromised by a long fuselage with high bending moment and low ruling tuck as poor SC&M capability. Because it doesn’t need any of those things as a 1G cruise platform whose only business (on the outbound leg) at altitude is fuel efficiency.

It has only two stations per weapons bay because it isn’t intended to aggressively fight multiple threats to achieve air supremacy but rather to bypass all but absolutely necessary obstructions enroute to attack their high value basing modes or mission enablers. It likely has an enormous fuel load and a lousy thrust to weight ratio because it will go twice as far as an F-22 before using burner like any other jet to sprint to up to pole boosting speed for whatever surface or air target weapons system it is intended to optimize. Which means that the necessary Canard Delta compromise to absolute LO as RCS numbers necessary to accommodate the long weapons bay and the long engines and the heavy fuel load has been paid for by a 100-200nm launch standoff.

And then it will turn for home.

On the way back to base, the J-20 will likely be light enough on fuel and an empty weapons bay to supercruise quite well, which means that the principle advantages of this high-fast option, namely: running away from kicked hornet’s nests and rapidly RTB’ing to turn the HDLD jet for a another mission assignment are all satisfied on a sortie generation and utilization rate basis.

Not a tactical one.

sexy legs, if you believe the J-20 is designed to be a fast destroyer of high value strategic targets
what do you believe the Pak-fa is designed for?
also the J-31?

If the deal goes through, this is what the PAF circa 2020 could look like approximately:

110 J-10s/ F-16s High end 25% of fleet
200-250 JF-17s (Blocks I, II, III) Mid-range 50% of the fleet
100 F-7PG / Mirage ROSE Low end 25% of the fleet
400-450 Fighters

This will be supplemented by modest numbers of Chinese LR-SAMs – HQ-18s

Overall perhaps one of the most powerful air forces in the world. Only behind China, US, Russia and India.

they should work on retiring all those f-7s and mirages by 2030
probably no more than 200 jf-17s (most likely 150)
no more than 100 f-16s
no j-10s.
perhaps 1 or 2 squadrons of j-31 instead as a silver bullet.