From http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/systems/mk-48.htm:

:rolleyes: Now why bring up the MK 48 or any conventional modern torpedo? The Mark 48 is not a super-cavitating torpedo. It’s fired from a submarine guided by passive sonar on the firing sub and then by passive or acoustic homing on the torpedo itself during the terminal phase.

A weapon like the shkval which basically creates a plume of blinding noise behind it that would mask the target you’re firing at and it won’t be able to accoustic acquire its target on its own either for the same reason of noise. The only way you can fire it with wire-guidance is with active pinging.

And subs would NEVER fire by pinging — active painting of the target with sonar — unless it was in extremely dire straits. Of course firing the weapon guarantees that your position is given away anyways.

Wire guiding a super cavitating torp in the direction of the target would be like trying to direct a rocket that’s blowing a blinding firestorm into your face. You can’t see the target.

The Bayi (8-1) badge.

August 1st of China. Their new J-7GBs.

I notice that there are lots of “HAHAH!!’s” and “Hehehehehe’s” in this thread.

Actually, far more than the F-22 were said to have supercruise. The Lightning was one of them and so was the F-4 when flying clean in the Israeli Kurnass upgrade. The EF and the Rafale are supposed to supercruise.

The Concorde, of course, supercruised. It didn’t cross the Atlantic in afterburners.

The key is the efficiency of the engines at high speeds. Very hard problem to solve because jet engines tend towards inefficiency at high speeds. With turbofans, the higher the bypass (for efficiency) the less speed. Transport planes have very high bypass ratios but far more efficiency.

But obviously, the L-15 would be very unlikely to supercruise.

That was also my idea …. I think its probable more a recent than an earlier picture ! It reminds to some pictures posted in a German forum from Manching, where the German Eurofighter is produced and You can see the newly produced aircraft making their “individual” first flights !

Cheers, Deino 😀

Very true. These are almost certainly production machines. Multiple prototypes always have have a time lag between them so that no more than one of them should be unpainted.

Here we have two J-10s queued up on the runway and a third on the apron, all in primer.

The only question is whether these belong to an initial (or limited) production series or the first large production series.

A link to a video of the test:

http://www.iranfocus.com/uploads/Videos/underwatermissile.wmv

Pretty cool. Anybody know if this is the same as the Russian one or a varient or a completely different design?

Actually pretty impressive. We could see it’s rocket operated like the Skval from the launch scene in the video. The principle is the same though it might not be the same missile.

The cavitation and speed of such a weapon makes sonar guidance pretty much impossible. A straight line weapon.

Thanks for the video!