If Russia opens itself like China to West. the investmen will be in trillions.

:rolleyes: Russia is far more open to the West than China. In fact, the West DID invest more in Russia than China. Germany and Europe invested far more in Russia than China. During the beginning of the China boom, 90 percent of all investment in China came from Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Overseas Chinese community. There was hardly any great rush of Western investment in China in the early 1990s in light of what happened in 1989.

Even today the majority of investment comes from overseas Chinese though Western investment had picked up because unlike Russia, China has a massive domestic market. General Motors, KFC or Caterpillar can actually make China its top overseas market which can’t happen in Russia simply because Russia’s consumer spending power is less than a fifth of China’s.

Greater level of German and other Western investment did happen and it did not make Russia’s economy bigger than China. China’s growth is first and foremost an overseas Chinese funded phenomenon.

Trade between Russia and China today is actually pretty lopsided. Most manufactured goods go from China to Russia. Russian export to China, outside of arms, is mainly oil and raw material. Arms contract are at the most $2-3 billion out of a total trade volume of $30 billion.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/russia-turns-up-trade-heat-on-china/2006/03/23/1143083906152.html

Although Russia is still exporting more goods to China, the Russians are complaining that more than 90 per cent are raw materials.

China says its exports of mechanical and electronic products to Russia last year increased 70 per cent, to $US7.2 billion (24 per cent of total exports). Machinery made up 25 per cent of Russia’s total exports to China in 1998. But that has now plunged to about 2 per cent.

Courtesy of CMF:

but they are Inducting Su-34 which is missile proof and radar signature of a missile. and there are several hundred MIG-31 with supersonic radius of 720KM.

The MiG-31s are an even older concept. The VVS is still full of MiG-29s and Flankers. All three planes mentioned are overmatched by the F-22. If your theory holds true then the VVS is already obsolete.

but USAF is not building F-16 either. they are left overs from previous times.

Only the US could afford their backbone to be the F-22 and the F-35. Hell only the US could afford the F-16 as their “cheap” fighter. You’re talking about technology on a scale that no other air force can afford.

A F-16 would be the sophisticated front line aircraft for every other air force in the world and it is for a whole bunch of them.

800 against country without airforce. and even if majority of smart weopons is from Navy. F-18E is a swing role fighter unlike J-10. Just look at fuel tank size that J-10 carries. it looks smaller. than 2000Litres. it cannot carry heavy long range stand off weopons.

:rolleyes: You’re using a basically worthless term. The vast majority of the Navy’s smart bombs dropped were by the notoriously shortlegged F-18C/Ds.

F-18 of whatever variant were designed for multiple roles with the most sophisticated multi-node radar in the world until the coming of the F-15E. Even the F-18E is short-legged (but not as notoriously short-legged as the earlier variants.)

So what point are you trying to make?

dont Put Ruaf in same category as PLAAF. just look at the airdefence, space and communication network of Russia, and the strength of there strategic aviation that can destroy anything with in hrs at great distances premptively. 80 bombers were used simulataneously in one exercise.

If Russia had to project power against an island like Taiwan, it would be dead, dead, dead. The VVS might be of a magnitude more powerful than the PLAAF but it still wouldn’t have a chance against the United States. If you want to talk about a defensive net, an US attack on China would encounter a similar problem it would against Russia. But that isn’t what you’re talking about now is it?

Otherwise, the J-10 is more than capable of dealing with anything thrown at it if it with fighting defensively and striking beachheads that a foreign invader is trying to establish on Chinese soil.

nope J-10 is petty much hopeless against even M2K-5. just look at BVR distribution of M2K and larger external fuel tanks. I admit MICA is lighter so it carries 6 with 3 large tanks.

That’s like saying the F-16 is pretty much hopeless against the M2K-5. Sorry you’re just pulling opinions out of your rear end.

Just look at currently F-15SG/F-15K/Su-30MK2/MKM. when these countries were poor they chose F-16/MIG-29 in previous era.

:rolleyes: Again, Korea will still be a mainly F-16 force for the remainder of the decade and a few years beyond even as the J-10s are being pumped out year after year. There will be literally just a handful of MKMs in Malaysia (which would be overwhelmed by Singapore’s F-16s if there were any possibility of a fight) and the MK2 was chosen by the PLAAF that is also using the J-10.

J-10 like F-16/MIG-29 belongs to previous era and are no longer in production for big airforces. and is unsuitable for kind of task of gaining airsuperiority over major adversory. (not some thirdworld country).

Hell, the Su-30 belongs to a previous era as of 2005 when the F-22 went into squadron service with the 27th. But the VVS is still full of Flankers and Fulcrums.

Large air forces? There is only the US who is moving to the F-22 and it won’t be getting rid of all of its 2000 F-16s until the F-35 finishes up its production run. So there will still be lots of F-16s in the next two decades.

U will never see USAF or Ruaf using F-16/MIG-29 for establishing airsuperiority or deep strike.

The F-16 was employed mainly as a strike craft by the USAF even though it was the most maneuverable plane in practically any inventory in the world. But of course why should that matter to whatever obscure point you’re trying to make? :rolleyes:

and it is not F-18 (which is naval) but thousands of tomhawks that are fired before that and rest of work is done by B-52/B-2/B-1

There are no thousands of Tomahawks. There were about 800 Tomahawks used in Gulf War II and less than half that in Gulf War I. The vast majority of the 15,000 “smart weapons” were dropped by aircraft, including most of the Navy’s.

That said, any other air force in the world is pretty much hopeless against the USAF and USN and that includes Russia. Saying China should discard the J-10 is like asking Russia to drop the Su-30 from its inventory. Both as just as desperately overmatched by the USAF.

But there are 200 other air arms in the world that these aircraft could match up with.

whole East Asia is now F-15/Su-30 even for very small countries.

The whole of East Asia is F-16/ F-16-class (with the exception of Japan — and the Japanese have F-16-derived F-2s) majority for the next decade at least while the J-10 are being pumped out. Both South Korea and Taiwan is F-16 heavy with Taiwan also having other F-16-sized aircraft in the M2K and the F-CK-1.

All of your statements are wildly inaccurate if not simply false.

Close air support by definition requires a slow speed, stable weapons platform that can allow identification of friends and foes along a muddled front line. The best possible platform therefore is an attack helo with prop-powered fixed-wings coming in a distant second.

But being slow and steady makes CAS in the modern age is a very iffy proposition with the widespread availability of MANPADS among front line troops of any standing army. The Apache had not worked out that well.

COIN or counterinsurgency operations might be more probably for CAS aircraft since one would hope that the sophisticated AA weaponry would not be as widespread among irregulars (though that is pretty much wishful thinking as well.)

What passes for CAS these days is fast jets using precision or area weapons.

In third world air forces, I don’t think CAS would be as important a role for aircraft as recon or artillery fire control. War in most of the world is decided by armies. Aircraft is used best to locate the enemy and to bring long-range indirect fire (from good old-fashion tube artillery) to bear.

You`re right. So it does. My mistake:o
But I hold my card on Sweden. Along with Japan, but maybe Japan is a bit
to large to fall into this tread? Such an imperium would be expected to have a
large and powerful airforce…

Meat meant the air forces that no one talks about in AFM since he included Israel as one of the large ones. There are a lot of very large and potent air forces not discussed often here and Japan would be one of them, the same with ROK and the ROC.

France, of course, would be on top of this lot.

We might want to separate aircraft and air forces. French aircraft is mentioned very often in the forum if not the French air force. In fact, French aircraft — Mirage 2000, Rafale and all the earlier Mirage versions — are discussed far more than British ones.

“Multi-mission” is usually reserved for long-loiter aircraft, not strike-fighters like the F-16, F-18, J-10, etc. :rolleyes:

Not even the heavyweights like F-15, Su-27. You never expect a F-15 to perform both CAP (combat air patrol) and a bombing run in the same mission run. Fighter aircraft could be expected to defend themselves after ordinance is drop on the route home. That is what the J-10 is capable of.

Multi-mission on the same strike package for fighters is not normal practice.

Maritime Patrol aircraft like the P-3 are usually where the multi-mission title applies. A P-3 can do surface search, anti-submarine hunting, electronic surveillance, etc. during the same flight cycle.