Here someones mentions J-10 and there my heart begin to ache... So just commenting out of this pain and not for the sake of argument.
Here I will post an old but now coming true almost every bit article , perfectly showing the mentality of our clueless decision makers and that of those "pied pipers's rats" who think of justifying and more ironically glorifying every shit of those decision makers as their sacred duty and their part of "adding in the defense of this country".
http://www.asian-defence.net/2011/04/pakistani-jf-17-thunder-or-blunder.html
Pakistan has witnessed new defense acquisitions in this decade than any other, and in the center of it all is the new fighter which was designed by China with partial funding from Pakistan. It is formally known as JF-17 Thunder. When the fighter was in development, Pakistani online communities were jumping with excitement comparing it with its arch rival India’s modern combatants Su-30MKI, Mig-29S & Mirage-2000H. There were claims of it featuring western Radars and long range missiles, & Chinese ordering some due to its superior capabilities. But the reality is far from it.
Pardon me, when I went to the site you have mentioned it looks to be a blog run by some indians. I do not mean that it is incorrect to read or refer indian articles/content, outside views/perspectives may result in a breath of fresh air. But I do feel, after reading most posts by indians on this forum, that they have a sort of injured ego syndrome. Their 'indigenous' fighter is still getting towed on a trailer most of time while ours is inducted and operational.
Now about what was mentioned in that article:
Even in close combat JF-17 lacks what it takes to win the fight. Its spine, & wings bearing resemblance(in wing twist & wing area) to a fighter which china knows inside out, the J-7, doesn’t have wing twist nor does it have enough area to provide a low wing loading. Its performance during low speeds and high alphas would be very dangerous for the pilot indeed. It has a Maximum G loading of only 8, as claimed by PAC. Its thrust to weight ratio is another negative point. When its arch rival, the Indian Air Force(IAF), was overtly critical of Tejas for having a low Thrust to Weight ratio, maybe they should have compared it with JF-17 which has even less, even with Emergency Thrust. Pakistan Aeronautical Complex(PAC) proudly displays the RD-93’s “Combat thrust with afterburner” as 19,200lbf, while the whole defense community knows RD-93’s thrust is 18,300lbf and the only real thrust increase was achieved with its new re-designed Sea Wasp RD-33MK engines- which has been explicitly stated by Klimov. However, Klimov’s RD-33 series 3(or series 2?), whose avatar is RD-93 with re-positioned Gear boxes, has a provision for emergency thrust which Klimov says can produce 8700kgf(~19200lbf) in their officially released document. They further state that as “Take-off emergency mode”. So the mentioned thrust can only be used during take-off where the Air is denser, and also only during emergency situations since it would seriously lower the engine’s lifespan. This is a far cry from PAC's “Combat thrust” claim. Why this is being stated is because, the engines(bought by the Chinese after pressurizing the Russians) are the only non-Chinese & non-Pakistani component, and even there they have lied about its capabilities. Hence the true, lower than published, specifications of Chinese and Pakistani components are open to any one’s guesses. In any case, the close combat capabilities of JF-17 is below average or average at best.
low wing loading, come on..
Even if you do not account for large LERX providing additional lift it is still better than two of three fighters in IAF you mentioned and is lower than F-16 (on basis of raw wing only calculations mostly used in public sources). But if you know well, fuselage does generate lift and in case of F-16 significant lift, lets not talk about JF-17 and stick to publicly calculated figures. Also all design decisions are a compromise, lower wing loading enhances lift but increases drag and especially in turns. That is why tail-less alphas prefer to try dog fighting at higher altitude and faster super sonic speeds, they have much more room available in energy department because having higher lift and much larger wings they lose energy much faster in turns. Having some wing loading with a less draggy airframe does help a lot in conserving your energy during turns, it is a balancing act.
8G limit is a software based limit which was on earliest models, what makes you think that it has not been changed now. Also of three IAF fighters you mentioned, mirage 2000 is 7G limited while germans had a strict limit of not even doing a double barrel roll above 6G on their Mig-29s, may be issues with air-frames they had, may be a deeper issue. The writer of this article I think was ready to hang with any straw available..
About the engine and its thrust, again shows how much the writer actually knows about jet fighters and how much ready he is to hang with any straw he can find. Especially with Indian's posts on this forum I have seen that they are simply not ready to believe even the information released and displayed at air shows by Klimov. You cannot do anything about such mindsets. now about what he mentioned:
What he called 'Take-off emergency mode", I have never read a more idiotic statement about AB thrust. How will burning more gasoline in your engine's tail pipe will lower engine life, it will at best lower the utility of more gasoline you are burning. For thrust static sea level is used as measurement but why the hell is that thrust unusable at altitude especially if it is AB thrust. Thrust for all engines is lower at altitude than their sea level measurements but its performance is better. And having three modes setting is usually standard and there are jets with four AB thrust settings. You have different settings so that you can control how much gasoline you want to throw in AB. In dog fights you will certainly want to have as much room as possible.
The next Achilles heal is JF-17’s speed. For a good interception, speed is an important criteria. However JF-17’s max speed is Mach 1.6 which is claimed by PAC. This indicates that JF-17 is draggier. When compared, their F-7s(Reverse engineered Mig-21s) have higher speed of mach 2+ with a lower thrust engine. The IAF fighters which it is going to face, all have speeds greater than the Thunder.
Now look at this argument this guy gave..stupidity at its best.
Jf-17's speed is limited by DSI not because it is draggy. Also with certain payloads having a higher dry thrust setting can do wonders, look at the case of F-16N. That is why we really need CFTs and hopefully will get them sooner or later. Without drop tanks and far less drag on payloads, enemies may start shitting in pants.
About higher max speeds that guy mentioned, they are not that much important. It is very rare and for a very limited time with great expense in fuel that most fighters can do this and is useless in operational terms. Pilots do get sometime a chance in trainings if you have the fuel to push full to try getting near to maximums for fleeting seconds. Mostly most fighters need to turn on AB just to get supersonic..
Most of what he wrote later is just crap.
Present J-10 uses Al-31 or its derivatives which are frankly not still as reliable as RD-93. And reliability matters a lot in a single engine design. Secondly, it increases thrust slower (and Ws-10 even slower) which can decrease acceleration and acceleration is important in WVR and BVR. RD-93 is not as good as PWs but it is still a sort of 'instantaneous' acceleration.
J-10 is a good and decent fighter jet and may be with F-16 fiasco going on may become an alternative but only in distant future. We must be patient and wait for a later version to see if it can be of use to us. If WS-10G becomes reliable and gets available than I think it can be very useful for future plans, before that we should have patience.
Unless the difference in performance and technology is not severe an indigenous platform gives you lots and lots of more freedom than off the shelf solutions.
