varioIf you just have a look at the 2 pics of 054A above your post, you should see 071 in there, progressing well.
varioAny news on PV3?
I remember last month’s news said it would take first flight in 10-15 days, should be flying now.
varioIf nothing dramatically happens (well, things happened before), we may see J10 (possiblely that 06 one) publically in less than a month. But since nobody can guarantee, so we can only hope so.
varioSens, its definitely not an eastern way of thinking- at least not all of the east. In India, we have a saying – its the official Govt quotation come to think of it, the irony!- but anyways-its “Satyemeva Jayate”- “The Truth shall always be victorious”. But its equally true all large bureaucracies and powerful organizations try to limit the flow of information. In India we are currently having a huge debate on the momentous Right to information act, which allows anyone to see Govt correspondence/ decision making- as expected some paper pushers dont like it, but its still a really good start.
Its essential that faults be open and criticized, rather than left to fester and rot and cause problems. Thats my take on it anyways, and in fact I agree with you. I think the west has succeeded essentially because of this aspect- its unwavering commitment to seeking the best way forward rather than fixate on honor, loss of face or the like (not slamming any nation here), which can actually cause issues & lead to problems later on.
Just want to comment a little bit on this transparency issue.
As I said above, in general everybody loves transparency, but it’s really a political measure meant to handle general public’s political desire.
As my above example, evenif a fighter jet project is completely transparent, how many more general public people can really understand hence improve the project?, It’s not soccer in Brazil, everybody can be the national team coach. In fact, evenif you disclose everything, you still have the same group of known trained professionals who can really look into the details of the project and general public still has to listen to them. (But of course, the only additional professional opinions would come from a whole bunch of foreign experts who can access your information as well, although you may not want to believe their suggestions).
So, what does China do, ( and it’s the same thing done by all other nations), military project details only get declassified internally. Besides the general public medias, china’s defence industry has many internal magazines, and some newspapers. Those are the real source of information but they are only available to people working in the industry. Many of the J10 pictures (not including those obvious mil fan shots) were scanned from those magazines and newspapers. One of the early J10’s 3 D view drawing was from year 2000 version’s aviation uni text book.
In the last several years, China has been building an internal internet (physically disconnected from the general public internet) just for the defense industry. Professionals can freely (actually still very restricted) discuss tech issues with counterparts all over the country. That’s the kind of transparency that really matters.
For the general public, propaganda and speculations are good enough 🙂
Once it was said that quite a few years ago, a 611 senior engineer of J10 could not help himself and started to participate a disscussion on a chinese forum, but he was beaten away by “internet aviation experts” within 15 minutes, hands down completely. He later said to his friend now he knew why China’s aviation still lags behind US so much, it’s because all the best “experts” are working over internet rather than getting a real job in the aviation industry.
varioActually, same could be said about FC-1 vs. J-10 comparison. It is assumed that the domestic oriented J-10 would be superior than the jointly developed FC-1 (that may not be favored by PLAAF). FC-1 is probably “intended” to be the cheaper platform. But intention never guarantees the results. That’s why projects get cancelled or failed to meet the performance sometimes. A-12 sounded great as a concept, yet the cost and design problems ultimately led to its demise. YF-17 turned into F/A-18E/F by chance, not necessarily the best possible aircraft for USN. J-8 sounded less risky at conception, yet became outdated when it entered service in large number.
From J-10’s deployment news, there is no evidence that shows J-10 will be a failure or end up cancelled like A-12. However no one could truly say if J-10 has met all its requirements except PLAAF or J-10 designers. If J-10 and FC-1’s requirements are both unknown, and if it’s also unknown if they reached their design goals, it is not “obvious” which one is more “capable” in reality. Finally, J-10 and FC-1 are probably optimized differently and the costs are unknown, the word “capable” is a loaded word.
RD-33’s engine T/W ratio: 8300 kgf / 1055 kg = 7.86
AL-31’s engine T/W ratio: 12500 kgf / 1570 kg = 7.96AL-31 sounds better, but then where are the combat weights for J-10 and FC-1? Suppose normal combat takeoff weights are 13500 kg and 9000 kg respectively, then the total T/W ratio isn’t that different. Even if we suppose J-10 is more light-weight and has significant higher T/W ratio, where are the drag and lift factor?
I concur with Harry, even F-16, MiG-29 or Mirage-2000 details are hard to come by. And those comparisons could at least be supplemented by some actual (if incomplete) specification, user experiences, and exercise results. There are far less data about J-10 and it’s not “obvious” why J-10 must be superior to same generation aircraft XYZ. Anything that steer away from general impression and held as “obvious” truth because of personal guesses are simply over doing it.
I welcome these more calmed down comments.
I agree your speculations are possible. But the reason why I choose to believe the other way around is because there are more info supporting it.
For example, about FC1 and J10, although we don’t know details about J10, but we, (no, I should say I) do know, china is ordering engines for J10, batches after batches of PLAAF pilots are been selected and sent to CAC and other training bases to learn how to fly or maintain J10. Although CAC and other parties have been trying to get export permission for J10, PLAAF has been constantly opposing it (In one month time, the ZhuHai Airshow will tell us whether that stance has changed or not).
Whereas for FC1, besides some verbal promises, PLAAF has not shown any concrete move on acquiring FC1, although everybody knows PLA needs an affordable light fighter to replace all those old planes. It’s only recently that PLAAF sent some pilots to CAC to try FC1. Whereas for J10, PLAAF’s representitives checks daily progress during the development period. During testing period, PLAAF chief representitive called daily meeting at 7AM, engineers from each supplier and manufacturer got to stand up and tell everybody whether his part is OK to go or not. In other words, PLAAF drove the J10 project especially in the later stage. But for FC1, as far as I know, they have not arranged the date to send prototypes to the national flight test centre yet. FC1 currently is still strictly CAVITC1’s commercial activity. Whenever FC1 got a formal PLAAF project number and shows up in the national flight test centre, I’ll start to believe it’s going into PLAAF’s service.
As of the T/W ratio, I think it’s too simple to be used as an argument. Like a joke I heard before, a street corner shop’s profit margin can be higher than Microsoft, but you don’t use that figure alone to measure their capabilities.
To me, which plane PLAAF prefers is very obvious.
But let me state one thing clear, I, and many other chinese forumers, have a realistic view about J10. There are naive (my personal feeling) expectations from quite a few chinese forumers, but that does not represent all of us. Just like all those naive comments about LCA that you can find on various Indian forums, those are not the main stream opinion.
Anyway, I think both LCA and J10 are entering new phase. I do wish LCA will bring more exciting news to us and I hope China allows more propaganda about J10, so that in the future LCA vs J10 saga (like it or not, I don’t think it will end 🙂 ) can have more substances rather than paper spec against internet rumors.
Cheers, China’s long holiday week!
varioOK, I think I’ve made my points clear and seems that Harry and Nick got them to some degree. We don’t need to agree on any of them.
But if we can at least listen to what other people think and say, that’s good enough. Different countries do have different situations and way of doing things. I believe it’s not right to use your own standard to judge a country you only heard about. For example, to most chinese forumers, LCA is a failure, that’s the general opinion. But I think we shouldn’t make a judgement on LCA so easily because we knew far less about LCA. I wish our Indian forumers can do better in regard to J10, but the truth is they are doing the same thing.
In summary, we all should at least be cautious about commenting something not familiar. I’ve seen all these years’ flame war, we are all responsible for that. Hope we can do better in the future. :p
BTW, I hope J10 can show up on this years ZhuHai AirShow, so at least we can have some official information.
varioJ10’s IFR is not retractable. It’s removable. In other words, it can be installed easily if needed, just like J8IID and F.
varioThe question was and is of program transparency. If someone wants to take a dig and say : ” Aha my bird is better, its got more pictures on it”, then please face the other side of the coin as well & not shift the goalposts!
Your contention would also ensure that programs like the JSF (how many times overbudget already?) or the EF (how many delays did it have?) or many others would also be classified as rumours or whatever.
The issue of open informatin has pros and cons. Every tiny defect is catalogued, mistakes are sensationalized – but it does serve as a check on the developers.
Besides the above is exactly why the oversight mechanism is necessary.
Lets take two hypothetical examples.
Paper A says that the LCA sucks, and IAF has ordered 40 Mirage 2000s instead. But the papers available at the parliamentofindia.nic.in website clearly show the opposite & then you know the report is BS.
The Sun claims that the EF is a flop because xyz weapon is not integrated. Questions in the Hansard (& the replies) rubbish that and say the opposite.
The PRC has its own way to deal with the issue & I am not mocking it, but to insist that one system is better than the other – well I disagree.
My reply was to Victor’s: he said news about LCA is genuine …. But my view is no matter where the news comes from, internet, newspaper or horse mouth, you got to use your brain, otherwise, just take a look at all the LCA news for all these years.
Now, you are talking about another point: program transparency. I absolutely agree LCA, India enjoys much better transparency compared to J10, China.
But, Let’s have a closer look at transparenc issue. First it’s for the general public. I do believe no matter in which country, military projects transparency is very limited in this regard. Compared to the whole project criteria, no matter it’s LCA or F22, the amount of information available for public consumption is only enough for propaganda purpose. It’s not enough for any external org. or person to do a serious technical assessment. In other words, you are only fed with what they want you to believe. And that’s why general public are always getting surprise after surprise and has to agree with budget rise again and again. Face it, ordinary Joe on the street is not capable to monitor any military project.
And this leads to the second layer of transparency: Auditing. Believe me, China has General Auditing Committee as well. And couple of years ago, there’s a news report picture showing the director of the General Auditing Committee visiting China’s No1 Aviation Corp, (which is the holding company of most chinese fighter manufacturers), what the director was looking at was a board showing the major projects: J10, J11A, J11B and KJ2000.
But, would you then give china credits on J10 because they do have internal audits? No chinese forumers gave a damn about it. Audit is only to make sure the whole project is not falling out of control dramatically, especially in financial terms, it’s not to gurantee J10 is able to handle a particular rival. If you take your LCA as an example you should see your CAG did not help much either.
This topic reminded me a real joke happened in HongKong. After 1997 when the new airport was in use, once the new computer system for lugage management was down for a day or something, and the democratic party immediately requests the HK government to allow the elected legislative members (although only few, because others were all appointed by China) to form an investigation committee so that the “real” peopleo of HK could monitor and know what happened, but after several hours of initial meeting, they had to delegate the investigation to a professional committee because none of those elected politicians knew computer softwares. And the funny thing is, before 1997, the Queen appointed HK governor would ask the same professional guys to do the investigation, directly.
So, my point is, all these transparency, democrocy, auditing are good to have. I am not against them. But, you have to remember, building a fighter jet is building a fighter jet, essentially it’s a science activity, all those good things are not the critical parts of a fighter project, especially the technical area. Those are political good things and they are meant to handle political issues. Don’t expect those good things to magically increase or decrease some technical capability.
varioComparing LCA and J10 is indeed meaningless. I agree completely.
But, from an observor’s point of view, no matter who delievers the news, I always use my brain to analyse the news itself, rather than blindly believe it.
Sorry to say this, but Indian printed media’s news about LCA is not much more trust worthy than annonymous chinese internet rumors. Were those indian’s news correct, LCA should’ve been in service last decade, or atleast the LSP production should’ve started in 2004, or the order of 20 LCA should’ve been placed 2 years ago, or at the very least PV3 should’ve been flying in Feb 2006.
Just take a look at the recent LCA news as an example, “28 LCA will be inducted by 2007”, sorry, I would rather believe a rumor like “by Feb 2006 China produced 100 J10”.
varioJ10 has IFR probe. There was a chinese news report about J10’s IFR test, which is arguablely the most detailed report about J10’s flight tests.
Jh7 also had a plan for IFR but it’s sort of a dodge solution. Given that the Jh7 has been deployed to HaiNan island, roughly 70% (if not more) of south china sea is covered.
Also, current version of JH7/A may not worth the effort to have a real IFR capability. I guess making a decision between JH7A and J11BS is far more important and needs to be sorted out first.
varioHarry
….
You have possible proof of the J-10 being operational. What you do not have is certain and indisputable proof. What would the latter perhaps constitue?– Official acknowledgement of service (trials, IOC or FOC?). They released PR pics didn’t they?
– Details and dates of milestones crossed. A fighter project is huge, expensive and complex. You don’t jump from point x to point x+1000 in one go.
– IFR and Weapons firing trial information.
– Sub-projects and sub-contracting.
…
thanks for outlining some concrete points. By your definition, there’s no proof that J10 is operational. I agree with that.
But,
can you show us proof, according to your definition, that Flankers are operational in China?
can you show us any proof that J8II is operational, except the export oriented J8IIM?
Actually, can you show us any proof that PLAAF has any operational fiighter jets using your definition?
varioGolly, I think you misunderstand PLAN’s ship classes.
PLAN’s destroyer and frigates are all of Type 05X. 051: Steam Engine Destroyer, 052: Gas Turbine Engine Destroyer, 053 and 054 are frigates.
The important thing to remember is that, PLAN does use engine type to differentiate the destoyer family lines. All 051 line destroyers are steam engine. All 052 line destroyers are gas turbine engined. For the foreseable future, new destroyers will still grow on the 051 and 052 family lines, in other words, the next new generation of PLAN’s destroyers will be 051D and 052D. Unless there is a brand new engine type is introduced into service, and PLAN still uses the current designation system, you won’t see 055 in decades, but you will see 051D, 052D fairly soon.
The reason why I want to point this out to you is because you seem to believe 051 line of destroyers were forced to use steam engine, which is not true. 051 is supposed to be steam engine powered. This is a very common misunderstanding though, recently I noticed Taiwan’s military magazines started to realised this issue. An article was written about it as well.
And the second point (a minor one) is PLAN assign new class along the same line, so it’s 052B, 052C, 052D, 052E, rather than 055, 056, 057.
BTW, I noticed other people already asked you to share those rumors about 052C’s alleged engine problems. Can you please tell us anyway?
Personally I heard 2 rumors: one was saying radar and HHQ9 had some integration glitches. That was during the sea trial period. Second one was more recent, it said all 052B and 052C ships’ turbine engines failed, and all of them were to sail back to ShangHai to get fixed. But that was quickly dismissed, because A, none of those 6000 ton ships could sail 2000+ KMs without main engine working. B, the 2 052B ships sailed back to the shipyard by themselves and it’s for their one year free warranty check. After 2-3 weeks of checking, they all sailed back to their base already.
So, I am really interested in the rumors you heard
varioGuess what? The chinese article I provided (I just chose it from the google result), the author currently(24 hours ago) is arguing with other people because he claimed he wrote it in 2003’s summer shool/Uni holiday and he appologised that he made many wrong guesses when he was a student only. But, many people recon he simply cut and pasted most of his article from internet sites, (that’s my original feeling years ago). Not only that, some people recon he only did one cut & paste from another guy’s article. The other guy did the hard works suffering around the internet.
Very funny, still they are argueing at this minute.
varioOh, BTW, in the next couple years, if you see some chinese projects like “9958”, “9605” etc… Be careful, I’ve warned you guys.
varioWow, aerospacetech, that’s really a hard to read article. Is there anyway you can tidy it up a bit? Thanks.
I am still trying to understand it cause I am interested in what Russians said about J10.
But, from the sentences I can understand, this article is very doubtful.
First thing jumped into my eye is that “8810” project for J10. Man, that’s a internet story writen by a chinese poster quite a few years ago, he invented this “8810” name in his lengthy article which basically gathered all the internet information (some were even contradicting to each other) about J10 up to 2000-2001 (If I remembered correctly about the time his article’s apearance). His article was regarded as entertaining and I believe it did showup on some cheap chinese magazines but we all forgot about it quickly. Having said that, that article was arguablely the first attempt to collect all the internet news/rumors, plus his own imagination and guesses. At that time, it’s a fun to read it but most people at that time knew, it’s not an official article, even with a fake project name.
(deleted several paragraphs I ‘ve typed in, because I think it’s meanlingless now)
Now, the more I read it , the more I believe this Russian article is a bubble fish translated verion from the chinese article. Quite a few strange sentences, if you just compare with the chinese article, you will understand why it’s so funny. Man, computer translation is fun!
Anyway, just do a google of 8810+歼10, you should find a whole heaps of chinese websites with the same article, (internet reproduction 😀 )
Here’s a link to the chinese article(I think it’s a new revision, even with well formated pictures)
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