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Isn’t that a 5-6 year old pic ?
In this pic JF-17B is getting refueled mid air, the pic you are referring was the pic of JF-17 blk-II single seatIsn’t that a 5-6 year old pic ?
You just need to search and read on the forum.Are the "B"s still grounded or cleared for flight again?
You just need to search and read on the forum.
''Sharpshooters'' Convert To Thunder Bravos Move To Bholari
Getting information that PAF's No 18 Squadron, previously equipped with F-7P aircraft call sign ''Sharpshooters'' has converted to JF-17 Thunder Bravo jets and has moved to Bholari airbase to be co-located with the No-19 F-16 Unit. Suffice to say that the No-18 will act as the Thunder OCU.defence.pk
Just to add some more (possibly unnecessary) detail to @The Raven's excellent post:
Things get even more complicated for fighter jets, which have to fly both subsonic and supersonic. Basically the center of lift shifts significantly (moves aft) as you transition to supersonic flight.
View attachment 753916
If you want to be stable throughout the envelope (as I suspect JF-17 is) you have to design the subsonic center of lift to be just behind CG but this means supersonically the center of lift moves quite a lot futher back. The moment generated by the lift (about the CG) must be balanced by a tail. Of course the tail must be designed for the worst case (supersonic). Notice tail generates downforce (not lift) so it's wasting energy in cruise.
As you can probably imagine, you can have the situation where your jet is stable supersonic but unstable subsonic.
View attachment 753917
Here your tail can be smaller and actually produces lift subsonically. BUT now you require active stabilization in subsonic flight.
Finally you can have
View attachment 753918
This is the kind of situation you have in aircraft like X-29 (nevermind that it has a canard instead of a horizontal tail). In this design you are always unstable but you never produce unecessary downforce so you are aerodynamically efficient.
So in addition to the advantage in turn rate, being unstable makes you cruise more efficiently (that is you can fly further on less fuel) because you don't produce downforce and your tail can be smaller sometimes.
So why aren't all jets unstable then?
1. You require active stabilization through FBW system - this can be expensive and/or heavy and/or out of your technological ability.
2. Being unstable imposes fundamental limitations on robustness to off-nominal behaviour. So an unstable design stabilized by a control system is more sensitive to changes in weight distribution etc than a stable design, and might be less versatile.
Sorry if this is too much detail lol.