No problem, and nice to see you being so gracious in taking my suggestions onboard. Not every writer can take criticism of their work well, and it's to your credit that you are willing to consider a different POV.
Captain Kang's J31 taking damage would be a lot more realistic in forcing him to ditch. And going into a cobra would certainly have made Kang's plane a far easier target to hit with cannon fire.
So, you can write it as Ctp Kang pulling a cobra, getting a kill and then getting nailed himself because he sacrificed all his remaining airspeed in performing the cobra, thus allowing a easy posthumous gun kill for the F35. But since it looks like you are trying to portray Cpt Kang as a competent pilot, I might reconsider that as it does make Kang look a bit noobish to get shot down like that.
I would have been tempted to extend the fight scene a little, as it was over very quickly. Maybe that was precisely what you were going for to emphasis the deadliness and efficiency of modern air combat, but with this being the opening fight scene, it might be worth while to pack in a little more action to hook the reader's interest.
A longer fight scene would also allow you to show that both pilots were good and knew what they were doing, whereas a very brief fight makes one doubt just how good one or both pilots are.
First of all, diving down to the rocks to use clutter to help fool the radar seekers is very clever, but the rocks being in exactly the right place to help him out is a little too convenient for my liking.
I would have actually had Cpt Kang turn into the incoming missiles while popping chaff and flares. Against radar seekers, the front of the J31 would have offered the smallest RCS, thus the greatest chance of fooling the incoming missiles with the chaff. Turning into the missiles also gives Kang the opportunity for an instant reply. That way, the F35 is busy dodging his missiles as well instead of lining him up to finish him off even if he did manage to evade the initial missile attack.
Cpt Kang doesn't know exactly where the F35 is, so he fires off a heat seeker into the incoming missile contrails while doing his level best to evade the incoming missiles. The small RCS, active EW suit on the J31 and chaff spoof one missile, but the other's proximity fuse sets it off close enough to the J31 to cause some damage.
In the meantime, the F35 is busy popping flares and shakes off the J31's missile, but the flares give away the F35's location, Kang adjusts and shoots off a volley of three missiles, a pair of radar seekers and the other a heat seeker.
The F35 pop chaff and shakes the radar homing missiles but gets nailed by the heat seeker because the F35 pilot never realized there was a third missile.
As the age old truism of air combat goes, it's what you don't see that kills you. Cpt Kang mutters 'chaff and flares, always chaff and flares, never just one or the other', he finally heeds the warning that has been flashing on his HMD since he took that glancing hit from the AMRAAM and looks down into his MFDs for the first time since the start of the dogfight and cruses at the rash of warning symbols crowding his screens. He glances behind him to get a visual on the damage and curses some more as he sees that his plane is on fire. Nothing more he can do, no time to think, training kicks in and it was only as he is drifting down towards the vast blue ocean that Cpt Kang considers that he might still be in disputed waters.
That's how I would have written it anyways, feel free to take as much or as little of it as you want for your story.
Okay. Here goes, I've rewritten the first part. Let me know if this works:
Captain Kang Zongqi saw the F-35 disintegrate behind him and gasped with shock. He had never meant for that to happen--to him and his wingman, the job was just a dance to keep the netizens placated, to fill the weekly helmet-cam videos the Nanjing Military Region released on the internet showing how the Air Force was "defending the motherland's inviolable territorial integrity."
His wingman spoke immediately. "Flight leader, what happened down there? My dance partner just started screaming at me."
Zongqi dialed up the volume on the international comms channel. A sea of static, then the unmistakeable sound of angry Japanese cursing. Then his wingman cut back in. "Wait a sec, he's climbing and slowing down. He's on my six now, six o'clock high. What the fuck is going on?"
Kang Zongqi responded guiltily. "My bogey crashed. I don't think his wingman saw it through the clouds, though."
Zongqi's wingman responded brusquely. "Great. That's just fuckin' great. He probably thinks you brought him down on purpose. What are we gonna do?"
Zongqi fought to remember the vague and poorly-delivered lessons on incident management. "We need to contact higher to get a translator on the channel, and immediately disengage from the mission area."
Just as Zongqi finished his phrase, the cursing stopped and became a phrase which Zongqi half-remembered from old Chinese propaganda films.
"Tenno Heika, BANZAI!"
Oh shit, Zongqi thought. "Watch out, watch out, I think he's about to--"
The radio suddenly filled with hard thumps and screaming, then cut to silence.
Zongqi was momentarily stunned, then awakened from his state of reverie by the triple beeps of his radar warning receiver. A cold sweat broke out across Zongqi's shoulders. At such close ranges, the relative intensity of radar illumination nullified the stealth shaping of both planes, and worse yet, the bogey was somewhere
above him, giving his missiles a normally inescapable energy advantage.
The expected pair of short-range missiles poked through the clouds, like the fingers of God. Zongqi popped chaff, then flares, then quickly wrenched the black stealth jet into a hard turn directly towards the bright, modern arrows. His twin engines whined with the redlined abuse. Fighting his instincts to run, he counted on the knowledge that against radar seekers, the front of his stealth jet offered the smallest radar cross-section, and thus the greatest chance to fool them with chaff. Turning into the missiles also gave Zongqi the opportunity for an instant reply instead of waiting around for the F35 to finish him off after the initial attack.
In spite of his thousands of hours in the simulator and cockpit, Zongqi found real combat wildly disorienting. Sweat broke out from a thousand hidden pores all over his skin. His neck jerked left, right, upward, but the F35 was nowhere to be found. A sticky wetness at his crotch told him he would need new underwear--if he could make it back to base. Going off a blind, caveman, instinct to fight back, he popped off a heat seeker into the incoming missile contrails while slamming the active jamming suite to full power, cracking his LCD screen with the force of an outstretched, panicked, palm. Zongqi could almost feel the circuits dance their strange twinkle across the electromagnetic spectrum. At the last possible second, Zongqi dove hard to his right, the negative G forces forcing thirty percent more than the normal volume of blood into his eyeballs and forehead for a brief second. Zongqi felt as though his world was being crushed by a vise, but didn't know why.
A roar, sudden, to his left. One missile slid harmlessly past Zongqi's aircraft. Zongqi silently exhaled, but was cut mid-breath by a blast wave that tossed his plane about like a champagne cork, followed by a sickening shredding sound from his port side. The second missile's proximity fuse had set it off about fifteen meters from his left wing.
Beep beep beep.
The Japanese jet, too, had been busy--cutting afterburners to decrease its heat signature and popping flares like a madman. This kid must be new, Zongqi thought, as his maneuver rendered the F35 a slow-moving target marked by the classic, smoky, angel-shaped bullseye of burned-out flares caught in wing vortices.
The radar reciever was now silent. His radar locked on to the fat tail section of the F-35. "My turn," Zongqi muttered, then launched everything he had--two radar missiles and a heat seeker--straight for the F35.
Beep beep beep. Beep beep beep.
The F35 waggled its tail and popped chaff immediately, then engaged afterburners. But the heat-seeker was not so easily fooled. It homed in on the afterburning trail perfectly, then dove into the F35's engine like a rabbit into its burrow. A split-second later, the F35 disintegrated in a fifty-meter wide fireball.
The age-old truism of air combat: tt's always what you don't see that kills you. "Chaff and flares, always chaff and flares, never just one or the other," Zongqi muttered.
Beep beep beep. Beep beep beep. BEEEEEP.
"What's that sound?" Zongqi fumbled at his plane, then his helmet, before realizing one side of his helmet mounted display was completely dark.
"That's strange," Zongqi thought. Shifting his helmet around, he realized with a sickening finality that one of his eyes was completely blinded. A redout. A negative-g-force induced redout. Zongqi thought back to the dive. "Fuck!" He'd always treasured his eyes growing up, jealously guarding them from books and computer screens, all so he could eventually become a pilot.
BEEEEP. BEEEEP. BEEEEP.
Zongqi felt a violent death rattle coming from his left engine. Adjusting his helmet, his right eye finally caught a wall of warning symbols down the left side of the helmet-mounted display. Turn around to get a visual on the damage--more curses. The port wing was completely shredded. The left engine was on holed and spitting pieces of flaming scrap sideways and upwards.
Nothing more to do, no time to think. Zongqi's training kicked in. When he awoke from the knockout blow of the ejection seat, he was already peacefully drifting into the East China Sea. Directly below him, an emerald island jutted proudly from concentric rings of white froth.
A final wave of sweat coursed over Zongqi's body. He was still in disputed waters. Fighting the urge to carpet bomb the island below with his vomit, Zongqi dialed home base on his emergency radio.
