Firstly, CM-400AKG hasn’t yet been qualified on the JF-17 Thunder. Secondly, claim of 180km-250km range is way off the mark, simply because those figures apply only to the SY-400 NLOS-BSM from which the CM-400AKG is derived. Thirdly, any long-range fire-and-forget air-to-ground PGM can only employ active radar for terminal guidance & not IIR, simply because no missile-based IIR sensor has the kind of target detection/lock-on range (of up to 26km). Such sensors exist only on board laser designator pods & therefore cannot be made to fit on-board a missile the size of CM-400AKG. Fourthly, if the missile has a digital scene-matching system, then it stands to reason that it cannot also have an on-board active radar for terminal guidance, a fact clearly borne out by external visual examination of the CM-400AKG’s airframe. Fifthly, therefore, re-targetting in mid-flight is an impossibility. Sixthly, the CM-400AKG’s impact velocity cannot be hypersonic if an IIR sensor is employed for the terminal flight-phase. It can be hypersonic ONLY if climbs to a high altitude & undertakes a high-speed dive on the target (i.e.top-attack mode by using an X-band synthetic aperture radar), MEANING that this performance data applies only to the SY-400 NLOS-BSM, & not an aircraft-launched PGM meant for targetting an aircraft carrier cruising at a speed of 30 Knots.
Bottomline: Either the JDW’s reporter was totally ignorant about the laws of physics, or it was the PAF unnamed officials who were ignorant about the laws of physics & were just engaged in unsubstantiated & delusional rants. The only genuine data pertains to the number of JF-17s presently in service, i.e.36, which doesn’t spell good for the aircraft’s series-production status to date, given the fact that first deliveries took place as far back as March 2007. By now, at least 90 JF-17s ought to have been in service, assuming an annual production run of just 12 aircraft.
