I'm just referring to overall aircraft count. So a large part of the count is inflated by aircrafts such as helos?
My bad, I was skim reading. It's indeed the procuring plan.
Ask anything Thread (Air Force)
- Thread starter Jeff Head
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My bad, I was skim reading. It's indeed the procuring plan.
Fine. If we are being pedantic I should have said fighter aircraft. Not aircraft. If we count USN including the USMC there are also more fighter aircraft than China has J-10s.
However many of the USMC fighter aircraft are of questionable performance. A USMC Harrier is about as obsolete as a J-7.
98 USMC Hornet aircraft are supposed to get an AESA radar.
They currently use obsolete radars.
But since the first one only flew like two years ago I doubt all have been upgraded yet.
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I mean, the onus isn't on us, it is asking alfa particle what he meant to ask. As he clarified, he did indeed mean overall aircraft fleet size, not just fighters.
That said, if we are talking about only fighter size, I'm not sure that there are more J-10s in service with the PLA than the USN has fighters overall -- if we count USN Super Hornets, Growlers, and F-35Cs, I think they may be ahead by some 50-100 aircraft.
I don't want to belabour this too much, but the USMC Harriers are actually quite capable -- they are able to fire relatively modern AMRAAM variants, as well as most of the US PGM suite.
Harriers certainly have their issues, but technologically obsolete as a J-7, no they are not.
USMC Hornets using existing mechanically scanned radars (i.e.: not the new APG-79V4) are no more obsolete than PLA J-10As with their own existing mechanically scanned radars.
I don't usually recommend wikipedia, but the wikipedia page for "USN active aircraft" and "USMC active aircraft" are not a terrible place to start to get an approximate (albeit not really up to date) picture of the air fleet distribution by types.
^^ USMCA, according to Wiki, already has 127 F-35 B/C
The bulk of those are the B VSTOL variant, which should be fairly obvious.
In any case it doesn't change the overall thrust of the above discussion which is about overall aircraft fleet size across all types.
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.... and that is why comparing the PLAAF with USN or USMC aviation isn't really logical given they have very different distribution of aircraft types.
After all a Y-20 counts as "one aircraft" in the same way that a MH-60R counts as "one aircraft".
In fact I would argue that overall aircraft fleet size for any air force or military arm is not a very useful metric to begin with.
That is what I get for assuming the Chinese J-7s would be of similar standard to the upgraded MiG-21UPG that India has.
The MiG-21UPG has HOTAS, Kopyo radar, and can fire the R-73 and R-77.
I know that the MiG-21 does not have that great of an engine life. And like I guessed the Chinese J-7s still in service are of relatively recent make. Like early 2000s. J-7E and J-7G. The J-7G seems to have HOTAS, improved wing, and a radar. But it seems to have a worse radar than the MiG-21UPG. It has more modern IR missiles than the MiG-21 but no radar guided ones. In that case yes it is inferior to the USMC Harriers.
The MiG-21UPG has HOTAS, Kopyo radar, and can fire the R-73 and R-77.
I know that the MiG-21 does not have that great of an engine life. And like I guessed the Chinese J-7s still in service are of relatively recent make. Like early 2000s. J-7E and J-7G. The J-7G seems to have HOTAS, improved wing, and a radar. But it seems to have a worse radar than the MiG-21UPG. It has more modern IR missiles than the MiG-21 but no radar guided ones. In that case yes it is inferior to the USMC Harriers.
Roughly how many J-7s are still in service? Aren't they actively being retired and/or converted to unmanned platforms?
This (horizontal?) stabilizer on the J-10, does it move or is it fixed?
Unclear which part you are referring to.