Ask anything Thread (Air Force)

iBBz

Junior Member
Registered Member
Per ficker22, those are ventral vanes, aka ventral strakes, or entral fins. They don't move or actuate and is there for increasing aerodynamic lift.

The F-16 also has them:View attachment 128377
Well Killuminati said the part they were referring to was horizontal, and that made me wonder if they were referring to something else, but your explanation regarding the ventral fins is incorrect.

These fins are there to provide yawing stability under high angles of attack. When pitching up aggressively, some vertical stabilizer designs aren't enough to keep the plane directionally stable, because of pressure loss and flow separation due to the proximity of the wing with respect to the vertical stabilizer. The bottom part of the plane would still have good air flow and very high pressure, so these fins take over from the vertical stabilizer to prevent the plane from yawing uncontrollably.

The designers could make the vertical stabilizer larger to overcome this issue, but this would introduce other issues such as alter the aerodynamic center, become too elastic, negatively impact rolling performance or even prevent the plane from being usable in certain storage facilities such as storage decks inside carriers. The J-8 has a single but larger fin in the center of the fuselage, but that one is large enough to make contact with the runway, so it has to fold during landing and take off, so having two smaller ones is a better choice.

EDIT: There are other ways these fins help increase stability, but that would turn my reply into an essay, so just do more research on its effects if you are interested. It has benefits for supersonic regimes as well as other effects regarding alteration of flight dynamics.
 
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TaskDakota

New Member
Registered Member
Is the J-7 capable of carrying an AShM? At first glance It doesn't seem like it's capable of that and is mainly relegated to A2A and some A2G munitions. Just want to confirm if this is really the case.
 

Deino

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
Is the J-7 capable of carrying an AShM? At first glance It doesn't seem like it's capable of that and is mainly relegated to A2A and some A2G munitions. Just want to confirm if this is really the case.


From all I know it is not
 

gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
It is much superior. For your information it won the competition for the Turkish air defense system. Until the US forced Turkey to cancel the contract. The Turks refused to get the Patriot and eventually bought the S-400 from Russia.

The latest variants have longer range missiles, have more advanced radar and electronics than the Patriot, and they don't have dead zones of coverage like the Patriot.
 

doggydogdo

Junior Member
Registered Member
It is much superior. For your information it won the competition for the Turkish air defense system. Until the US forced Turkey to cancel the contract. The Turks refused to get the Patriot and eventually bought the S-400 from Russia.

The latest variants have longer range missiles, have more advanced radar and electronics than the Patriot, and they don't have dead zones of coverage like the Patriot.
How about SM6?
 

gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
In theory it is a good missile family for its time. But you have to see it together with the AEGIS system and Mk41 VLS.
It is basically a naval system at heart and thus far there is no proper mobile land based system using it.
You can use either the SM-6 or quad pack the ESSM in Mk41 VLS. This gives the system some flexibility.

I would say the main weakness of the SM-6 missile is that its top speed is Mach 3.5. So it won't intercept hypersonic targets. It is a product of its time. It was designed in the late Cold War Era when such things were not available.
S-300, S-400, and HQ-9 have missiles capable of intercepting hypersonic weapons. They have missiles which can go to Mach 5.9.
 
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