plawolf
Lieutenant General
Lol, I cannot believe the Pakistanis really gave the PLAAF J11s a call sign of ‘thug’.
The documentary gave a surprising amount of detail about the exercise.
Some stand out points for me.
1) The PAF pilots managed to very accurately assess the radar characteristics of the PLAAF J11Bs, so when they approached, they employed a very tight formation such that the 4 F7PGs were only showing up as a single target on the Chinese radars.
In the exercise, this meant the PLAAF Flankers could only engage one of the 4 in BVR. The PLAAF pilots also guessed that the PAF were using close formation.
This is an interesting target denial tactic to mitigate the F7’s lack of BVR. Although I have some reservations about just how effective this would be in real combat.
Would the F7s still maintain their close formation once their RWR start screaming radar lock? If they break too early, they give the game away and allow the enemy to target them all at BVR. But break too late and a single enemy BVRAAM might take out the whole flight.
I am not sure if the programme edited out some steps and/or got things jumbled up, because going by it’s narrative, the PLAAF Flankers didn’t take a BVR shot (no reason given as to why). Also, the commentary sometimes didn’t really fit with the flight display at times. My guess is that they edited out/censored a lot of the tactically relevant parts for opsec, and stitched what they were allowed to broadcast into a story good enough for the average casual viewer.
Others can give a true translation of how the programme narrated the encounter, but below is my own take based mostly on the flight display and common sense.
The PLAAF pilots guessed the PAF planes were employing close formation, so the PLAAF lead pushed ahead to trigger the break while his wingman hung back.
The plan was most likely for lead to break the pack and immediately double back before anyone could engage them (by taking advantage of both the Flankers superior fuel load and the F7s lack of BVR); this would then allow for the wingman to lock onto and engage multiple targets at once at BVR after the PAF birds broke formation.
The first part of the plan seemed to have worked, but after the PAF F7s broke formation, they split wildly to deny multiple simultaneous BVR shots, thereby presenting a ‘targeting dilemma’ for the PLAAF wingman.
The PLAAF wingman only managed to get one missile off at <40 km (no word on if that achieved a ‘kill’ or not) before he get engaged by the F7(s).
But by then, the PLAAF lead had re-engaged, and killed a PAF F7 threatening his wingman. At which point the exercise timed out as a draw.
2) Both sides were on the same radio frequency in case of emergencies. The Chinese ground controllers were mostly only observing, but the PAF pilots were getting and giving a lot of messages from their ground controllers to the point where the Chinese pilots couldn’t hear each other for a time (the part with the garbled static noise was probably an extract recording of what the radio waves were like).
Although that is hardly surprising given the vast capabilities difference before the J11B and the F7.
The J11B had the radar and avionics to allow their pilots to get a good enough tactical view to make their own, informed decisions. The F7’s radar and avionics could not come close to offering the same level of situational awareness, so their needed more ground support until they can get to WVR.
