TheImmortal
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Rd-33 is much but Al-31 series tops even that.
It starts to become questionable.
China was dreaming for 25 years to create something in that class. They skipped a RD-33/EJ-200 class engine to concentrate their resources on a 15 ton thrust class engine and still only managed to do it in this decade.
So alone a RD-33 copy is not significantly easier than a Al-31, otherwise Chinese would have done it for the JF-17 and J-31.
The difference is that the Chinese saw no solution in "just" coping the Al-31, maybe deemed an impossible task at that time, so they went for a own design, hoping to "understand" it.
What an Iranian Al-41 would mean is hence this: Soviets started the Chinese jet engine program in the 60's and by at least 2010, China, after 50+ years of experience and vast resources, had not managed to serial produce a 13-15ton class turbofan.
Iran with jet engine parts manufacture starting at earliest in the 80's and prototyping of simple designs in the 2000's, would create a prototype of a direct copy of a 15ton class turbofan in ~2020. That would create a effective gap of only 5-10 years to Chinese veterans.
I have problems to believe such a technological miracle is possible.
Iran had miracles in the past on radars and has a company like MAPNA active in related fields, but alone a RD-33 copy would be a unbelievable feat 2020:
I said it in the past: reverse engineering an as complex mechanical machine like the RD-33 and beyond, maybe deemed as impossible by many and certainly Chinese just wanted to avoid getting into the mess of a non-functional copy when developing their WS-10.
I hope that Iranians managed to copy it via most modern computer aided methods and got input from the materials side from MAPNA in order to skip the nightmare Chinese went trough... whether RD-33 or Al-31.
Iran is still importing rotary engine for S-129 and we have people on this board talking about Iran cloning AL-31 basically Iran jumping ahead of China and India in technology.
I mean come on people. Be realistic.