aerospacetechAL-41F was a brand new engine for the Mikoyan MFI. It wasn’t designed to be backwardly compatible with the AL-31F and so wouldn’t easily fit in a Flanker.
AL-41F1, which is what we are discussing here, is a different thing. Its an upgrade of the AL-31F series with some AL-41F derived technology.
aerospacetechSOC, I bet the primary reason why only 4 R-33s were supported was limitations of the radar.
aerospacetechChing-Kuo
http://www.taiwanairpower.org/af/idf.html
The Aero Industry Development Center (AIDC) under ROCAF was in charge of the program formlly launched in 1983, which was codenamed “An Hsiang” (Safe Flight). An Hsiang consisted of the following four development projects:
* “Ying Yang” (Soaring Eagle): airframe development,
* “Yun Han” (Cloud Han): engine development,
* “Tien Lei” (Sky Thunder): avionics development, and
* “Tien Chien” (Sky Sword): air-to-air missile development.Though an indigenous program, development of IDF involved considerable assistance from the following U.S. companies: General Dynamics (airframe), Garrett (engine), and General Electric (radar).
http://www.vectorsite.net/avf16_4.html
The design was formalized in 1985, with major assistance from a team of General Dynamics engineers working under a $50 million USD contract. AIDC also received assistance from other US aerospace firms, including Menasco, Garrett, Westinghouse, Bendix/King, and Lear Astronics
aerospacetechA totally different wing, a totally different rudder, and a totally different fuselage is not just a detail change, boy.
You have SEEN the T-10 I presume? One Sukhoi employee said the only thing they kept from it was the ejection seat, and he was hardly exaggerating.
Nice to see your true colors coming out Paul.
What precisely is that supposed to mean?
aerospacetechI give in. J-10 is completely indigenous, even the bits of it that are Russian 😉
aerospacetechBecause the Israeli government never lied about anything?
And who said it was official? Maybe some ex-Lavi designers went to China on their own steam. Do you know the racial origin of every Chengdu employee from 1987 to date? Do you know how many US and British engineers and designers have worked overseas?
Jeeeez……
aerospacetechHmmm. It seems we have an impasse here. In Crobato-land one design can only have a connection to another design if it is 100% identical down to the rivets.
Look it it from another angle. I’m head of preliminary design at Chengdu circa 1987 (or whenever J-10 really started). I want to design a new, reasonably lightweight plane to replace the J-7. I get out a plain sheet of paper, get out my pen and draw a shape. I have total freedom of choice. Should I choose
2 vertical fins or 1 (or none!)
Ventral fins or not- if so, located where
Canard delta (close coupled or not)
Mid mounted, low mounted, high mounted wing
Tailed or tailless design
Side inlets or chin inlets (or even top mounted like one of the JAS-39 studies)
Landing gear location
If we restrict our choice to lightweight designs only, we could still choose F-16, Lavi, BAe P.106 and P110, Northrop/Dornier ND-102, Dornier Rautenflugel, not to mention dozens of lightweight ATF designs from the USA.
Yet what I choose in each of these situations is exactly the same choice IAI made in designing the Lavi. Why? Was the Lavi the perfect design, the epitome of Western technology? Hardly!
There are only two logical explanations. Either Chengdu simply stole the Lavi layout from studying available literature, or there was some kind of direct Israeli input. Either way, the J-10 layout IS based on the Lavi layout.
Either way, the details of the design that matured as the J-10 differ in many ways from the Lavi, as Crobato likes to mention. This doesn’t IN ANY WAY preclude the J-10 being derived from the Lavi configuration.
Remember the Su-27? How the first version, T-10, wasn’t up to scratch, and it went through a total redesign? By Crobato’s logic, the Su-27 can’t have any connection to the T-10 because of the various differences in detail design.
aerospacetechI seem to have opened a can of worms!
J-10 clearly ISN’T Lavi. It seems you can’t have a sensible debate on this issue…
aerospacetechEuropean part of the Soviet Union had received 367 Su-27 fighters (138 for the Air Force and 229 for the ADF fighter regiments).
Thats the total in the EUROPEAN theatre according to CFE treaty disclosures. There will have been some additional units in the Far East.
aerospacetechAs far as I can see, the article seems to confirm that Israel was involved at the preliminary design (PD) stage, helping out with early windtunnel tests etc. Already by 1995 their involvement had been stepped down for three years.
This is precisely what I’ve always said. The Lavi connection is not at the level of blueprints but in general layout, the basics of where to put the wing, tail configuration, engine inlet location, landing gear configuration. There are many areas where the J-10 follows the Lavi layout and not, say, Eurofighter, Rafale, MFI or Gripen which are all canard deltas. There are also areas of difference; thus J-10 is by no means a “Lavi-clone” or anything. Probably no single part is common between them (outside of the avionics, at least). But it is equally clear that the Chinese sat down to work with a preliminary design that looked remarkably like a Lavi, and that Israel was involved in the early stages of the program.
We may never get official confirmation of the exact nature of Israeli input into the J-10. I don’t think Chinese people are unable to design their own aircraft; that is clearly nonsense. Designing a high performance fighter when your existing technical base is reverse-engineered MiG-21 level machines was clearly going to be a big learning experience for Chengdu and they probably needed some help in certain areas. Just like SAAB got BAe to help with the carbon-fibre wings of the Gripen (BAe having experience of this through the AV-8B program), or HAL consulted with Dassault on the LCA design. Hell, IAI got major assistance from Grumman in designing the Lavi!
aerospacetechMy take on J-10 has always been the same. There are certain similarities of configuration which make me believe that J-10 is descended from a design very like the Lavi. Now, whether this stems from using the Lavi as inspiration from afar, or as a result of actual technology transfer, isn’t yet certain. There was subsequently a redesign of the J-10, probably due to poor performance of the original (Lavi-inspired) design and the need to accommodate the AL-31F engine, which has resulted in a much better aircraft than the Lavi would ever have been. The J-10 as it stands today has little in common with Lavi other than a basic family resemblance. Nevertheless, many design decisions are common between the two.
Its not a slight on the Chinese ability to build aircraft. Russian OKBs often used NASA (and TSAGI) researched general configurations as starting points for their own designs. The Su-27 designs (both the integral and conventional backup versions) owe a debt to Rockwell and NASA respectively.
aerospacetechI posted this image before but without the information, and Crobato in particular refused to believe it was a US Intelligence CGI image. This article proves that I was right about that.
Its alleged timing (1994) makes it too early to be the final J-10 design, but some Chinese reports suggest there was an initial mockup made in 1993 which differed in many respects from the final J-10.
Other aspects of the article chime well with information from other sources. The report says IAI involvement was “late 1980s”, and had been scaled down in the last three years. From 1995 (article date), that takes us back to 1992 or thereabouts. Given that the US knew about the China-Israel Lavi / J-10 connection several years before 1994, it could well be US pressure on Israel had already been applied.
The J-10 is said to have been started in 1984 or 1988 depending on source. Perhaps initial work started in 1984, but 1988 clearly marked a watershed of some kind. Is it too much to wonder if it was the injection of certain Israeli assistance, after the 1987 cancellation of the Lavi?
Several articles have mentioned a redesign around the AL-31 engine sometime after 1992, possibly with Russian assistance.
The Flight Intl. article mentions IAI engineers actually working at Chengdu, but only 20 out of 1500 who worked on Lavi (and many of whom tried to emigrate!). It doesn’t mention transfer of one of the Lavi’s, for example. It is possible that those 20 engineers were all associated with the FBW system, for example. It doesn’t mean that the J-10 is the Lavi. It clearly isn’t.
I’m just presenting an article I find interesting. You don’t have to agree with the article, but you can’t deny it has specific claims which haven’t been aired here before.
aerospacetechNote that according to “Flight of the Lavi: Inside a U.S. Israeli Crisis” 1,500 engineers were assigned to the Lavi program. It also notes after cancellation
“hundreds of engineers had lined the streets in front of the American and Canadian embassies seeking immigration visas”.
aerospacetechHere’s a drawing from a TSAGI bulletin. Look familiar?
Its a NASA Langley study that reminds me somewhat of the Mikoyan 701 layout…
aerospacetechThe NASA study was looking at various configurations for an advanced fighter just after “Foxbatgate” in 1967. The “MiG-25ski” layout was directly taken from the MiG-25 and studied in some detail. Lots of other configurations were tested, but these 4 were studied in most detail as potentially most promising. Note that Fairchild’s FX had podded engines like the third NASA configuration. NASA Langley subsequently did extensive windtunnel tests for the various FX competitors.
I have always believed that the F-15 was a relatively low-risk project. The US had a lot of research going in unstable FBW airframes, composites, and high-alpha configurations as later seen in the F-16 and FA-18, not to mention seriously sophisticated avionics like AWG-9. The F-15 airframe is remarkably conventional by comparison, and came together very quickly. Partly this is due to McDonnell-Douglas’ existing work on F-4 replacements, but is also due to the work done by NASA, just as the USSR’s OKBs relied on TSAGI.
TSAGI also released constant “technical bulletins” which documented the latest western designs and technology, so its not a stretch to think that these NASA designs made their way to Yakovlev and the other OKBs.
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