Chinese purchase of Su-35

Gloire_bb said:

They actually are.
Going high supersonic(as well as doing radical maneuvering) is heavily restricted with drop tanks, you've to drop them. Also, afterburner eats fuel extremely fast, I mean literally minutes, and yoi're already near line of no return. If your enemy(which hadn't afterburned, did it to lesser degree) will catch you at this moment - consider yourself screwed.
It's extreme oversimplification, but nevertheless it's how it is for medium range missile fight.

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See, the problem is that having a supersonic cruise speed is irrelevant once the aircraft hit the burners during A2A engagements.

The news that China was involved in Syria started from the Russian media. The Russian media has done this before and they seem to keep announcing a deal has been signed that China should have over a hundred Su-35s by now if each report were accurate.

AssassinsMace said:

The news that China was involved in Syria started from the Russian media. The Russian media has done this before and they seem to keep announcing a deal has been signed that China should have over a hundred Su-35s by now if each report were accurate.

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And the same Russian news that refuses to believe at first that their recent downing of one of their airlines over in Egypt was caused by a bomb supposedly disguise in a soda can from ISIS.

Broccoli said:

We don't live in 1960s anymore. Modern IR missiles can easily pull 30g and more maneuvers.

TVC is nice in air shows but in combat more or less useless... killed by the helmet mounted displays & DAS like systems.

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TVC helps a lot for stealth fighters. China gets 24 Su-35 and 117S TVC engine. Then Chinese can apply this tech onto WS-10 and WS-15 engine. J-20 using TVC WS-15 has an edge even over the F-22!!

SinoSoldier said:

Why do you think the Su-35 is "faster"? As I understand, speed hinges mostly on aerodynamic layout, which should be same between for the Su-35 and J-11B/D.

Any air-to-air missile will outrun a fighter jet; the minute discrepancies between the speeds amongst varying aircraft is insignificant. Please provide evidence that TVC is helpful in "dodging missiles"; no air force besides Russia's believes so.

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Extract from interview to Deputy General Director of "UEC" Ilya Fedorov, the rest i leave to your imagination

- They say that the most important feature is the engine of the fifth generation supersonic cruising flight.

- I must say, our engine, I mean 117C, already provides such a regime. The main task for the fifth-generation engine - to provide quality higher performance on fuel consumption and driving performance as well as the thermal signature.

- At MAKS-2009 a contract was signed for the supply of the Russian Air Force 48 Su-35 117C engines. Will the the boot order of military production "Saturn" before the engine will be the fifth generation?

- Of course, we are very pleased that the Russian Air Force finally began buying modern aircraft, also equipped with our engines. But I must say that the download so many engines nor for "Saturn", nor to Ufa Engine Industrial Association is not decisive. She does not give a lot of money, though, of course, to support some part of the production, employment issue combat engine.

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SinoSoldier said:

The J-11D likely operates more powerful AESAs than the ones aboard the J-16 (which has 1760 T/R modules and can detect a 1 m^2 target at 450 km), while the J-16 has those as well. Please post the specifications of the F-15J/K's radars if you wish to draw a fair comparison.

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Do you understand that in order to generate an electromagnetic wave (radar impulse) you need to generate electricity? any radar in order to have a long range detection it needs to use the square root law, to do that the power source is developed by the engine, if China has already such engine why buy 2 billion worth just to buy 117s?

In my opinion no Chinese radar even AESA can have such range without the proper power source aka engine, Su-35 has 400 km detection range because the engines develop enough electricity to do it

siegecrossbow said:

Confirmed at this point.

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"Confirmed", like how Russians confirmed a contract was signed last year, as did the year before, and the year before that... If Russian confirmation was true back then, there would be no need for confirmation this week. This goes to show there is zero credibility in what the Russian said regarding the Su-35 sales to China.

I think that despite all the false starts in the last few years, what cannot be denied is that talks for Su-35s did occur into some advanced stages...

Whether this latest round of "confirmation" actually produces anything is another matter, but I think we shouldn't immediately write it off. Let's wait and see if any end up getting delivered.

The question is what's holding up the deal from being finalized? The overall message conveyed which is also why the Western media has grabbed on to it is believing Chinese domestic fighters aren't up to par and China desperately need this fighter. When this deal was first put out by Pinkov, it was 36 Su-35s. Now it's been reduced to 24. Why is that if China needs this fighter? What's holding up the deal if China is desperate? If it were all about the engines, that would be more believable, so why don't the Russians just sell the engines if they weren't worried about China getting them with Su-35? The whole point is Russia needs to get the Su-35 sold to a foreign buyer to get the ball rolling. On top of that they're probably going to sell China an export version that is lesser to get others scared into buying the better export version. Just like with the Su-30. And didn't China get a horrible price for Su-30s? Others will need a better Su-35 to beat China's. If this is the sticking point, you can see how China is dragging this along on a fighter they don't need in order to just get the engines.

b787 said:

Su-35 has 400 km detection range because the engines develop enough electricity to do it

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From what I have gathered, achieving the 400 km detection range requires one to know exactly where the target is BEFORE the radar is used for detection.

Strictly speaking, leaving the radar on for an hour or even an entire day, averaging out the background noise while accumulating the target's signal until some statistically significant level is reached, that too can be qualified as a detection. Technically, the Russians didn't lie. How that translates to usefulness in a battle situation is an entirely different matter.

Note how the Russians don't market the number as the search range.