China Flanker Thread III (land based, exclude J-15)
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
Are these from this year's show? I've asked my friends that are currently there, and they've all told me they haven't done any flares so far.
From the video posted recently, not sure if screenshots or pictures.
by78
General
It's possible. Many aviation photographers on Weibo are sharing a bunch of images, some current, some old, but not all of them clearly labelled. I was doing my best to sort out which is which, but these particular ones could well be from previous shows.
The Flanker really dwarfs even a larger missile like the PL-15. Makes you realise how large the J-20 is and therefore how large the J-36 and J-XDS/50 are.
We've never seen the J-16 carry wingtip missiles like Russian flankers often do. It probably can carry wingtip PL-10, freeing up two more pylons for PL-15s.
Max PL-15 capacity for J-16 I suspect is 10. 2x in the fuselage tunnel, 1x under each intake making 2 total, 3x under each wing making 6 total. Complete PL-15 loadout maxes out at 10. Plus 2x wingtip PL-10s. This would be absolute usable (read flyable) beast mode unlike that bullshit about F-15EX carrying 20 missiles but barely getting enough speed to get decent forward acceleration, forget about climbing.
I wonder which pylons are PL-17 capable. Could be intake pylons and the two inner wing pylons given the slenderness of PL-17. Could potentially be 6x PL-17 + 4x PL-15 and forgo the PL-10s. Networked, this would be absolutely devastating air dominance. The Russians do the something similar with R-37M and Su-35. Outside of Su-35 vs J-16 which is like a Pentium 3 vs an early 2020s Core i5, the difference there is R-37M probably isn't a match for PL-17 (certainly is a much older missile) and the R-77s have less than half the range of PL-15.
Is there a <5th gen fighter that could be considered the King? I honestly think J-16 + its weapons > all other 4.5 gens. If J-10CE can match and exceed Rafale F4 (I'm giving Rafale a bit more leeway given IAF may be considerably worse than PAF), Typhoon has even less upgrades and modernisation over the years it's basically similar to Su-35 at this point, F-15EX is honestly the only thing that would be a J-16 equal or superior.
There are around 400 J-16s in PLAAF service.