J-10 Thread III (Closed to posting)

[plawolf]

That J10B sure does look sexy with that green wide angle holographic HUD! However, I think you guys might want to hold back the celebrations until we actually see a batch of them before thinking that this is a production bird.

The detail that is giving me pause is the fact that it appears to be fully painted. None of the production J10As we have seen had been fully painted up until just before delivery to units, and they were lined up in shelters in primer and test flown before that.

We have not seen any of that with J10Bs, which makes me doubt that this is the first of the long awaited production aircraft.

My guess would be that this is one of the earlier prototypes fitted with radar and full mission avionics, or a pre-production aircraft.

 

[duncanidaho]

That J10B sure does look sexy with that green wide angle holographic HUD! However, I think you guys might want to hold back the celebrations until we actually see a batch of them before thinking that this is a production bird.

The detail that is giving me pause is the fact that it appears to be fully painted. None of the production J10As we have seen had been fully painted up until just before delivery to units, and they were lined up in shelters in primer and test flown before that.

We have not seen any of that with J10Bs, which makes me doubt that this is the first of the long awaited production aircraft.

My guess would be that this is one of the earlier prototypes fitted with radar and full mission avionics, or a pre-production aircraft.

But the one from #3378 is in yellow primer.

 

[plawolf]

But the one from #3378 is in yellow primer.

Yes it was, but if this painted J10B turns out to be that same plane, then past precedent would suggest that it is not the first of the production aircraft. If that bird with the yellow primer is seen again, or better yet, with friends, then that can be taken as good evidence that production has started for the J10B.

 

[hardware]

J-10B with conformal fuel tank.

 

[SteelBird]

View attachment 7181View attachment 7182
J-10B with conformal fuel tank.

Hey Guy, do you take this as formal information?

 

[Deino]

What are they doing here ?? ... RCS testing ... ??

Deino

 

[hardware]

 

[plawolf]

What are they doing here ?? ... RCS testing ... ??

Deino

That is surely far too close to the ground for RCS testing, they looked to have only raised it around a meter higher than if the plane was just sitting on its own landing gear. And even if it wasn't too low, there is no way they would do RCS testing there.

You will never get a clean reading with all those buildings and other structures around, and there are habited buildings all over the place and you would cause all sorts of health problems if you started emitting powerful microwaves at them.

The whole set up looks very jury-rigged, which would also point away from RCS testing as there are far too many supports, which will interact with the RCS readings.

What more, it is pretty late in the day to be doing RCS testing now, after years of flight testing and with the model just about ready for production. I would be amazed if proper RCS testing had not been done years ago in a remote desert range or in a specialist chamber as is standard practice.

My guess is that they needed additional clearance than what the undercarriage would allow. But whatever they are doing, it mustn't be planned or expected to take that long, because otherwise they would have done it indoors, and also very likely before they finished assembling the plane itself.

I do wonder if there might not be something wrong with the undercarriage itself that obliged them to jack it up to fix or replace something. The crews do seem to be clustered around the undercarriage, though that could just be a co-incidence, but that seems the most likely explanation to me based just on that picture. Would be interesting to see if there are other shots, maybe from a slightly different angle, or even several shots at the same angle to see the movements of the crews and where they linger to get a better idea of what is going on.

 

[Totoro]

while rcs testing does seem weird, there is one sort of rcs testing that might work even in these conditions. If they are testing short cm wave, Ku band and high X band wavelengths, radar returns. For one, those are less likely to be interfered with from the city, as the most of Ku/X civilian usage is either very low power and thus probably not present over large open spaces like the airfield, or is used for satellite communication, which is something that would be present in any sort of war scenario and must always be counted on.

Other reason might be that only such short wavelengths (used basically by missile seekers at usual missile seeker power) are practical to fight against with Radar Absorbing coatings. That is one part of the RA package that could more easely be worked on and replaced during the entire lifespan of a plane, as opposed to RA materials meant for lower frequencies, built into the plane at strategic places. While I am sure tests like these were already done year or more ago, perhaps they weren't quite satisfactory. And now someone came up with a new coating which was deemed good enough to try, even this late in the production process, because it is still cheaper to coat planes now, before serial production starts, then recoat them several years into their life cycle.

Yes, i am just guessing, this is all just for fun.

 

[Deino]

What are they doing here ?? ... RCS testing ... ??

Hey look, what'S just opposite to the J-10B !!!

Besides that is that yet another J-10B or an older image of the one in primer we've seen a few days ago ??

Deino