Ok folks we've strayed from topic far enough. Let's rein it in.
J-10 Thread IV
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
But its BVR capability is also boosted by Meteor which has no peer anywhere including China, US, and Russia. All three have long range AAMs dedicated to large and slow targets. They outrange Meteor but aren't intended for the same types of targets. I would say Rafale with AESA is still going to be better than non-AESA fighters and since it has the Meteor, excellent range and payload, it is still one of the best 4th gen BVR fighters along with J-16, Su-35, and modern F-15s F-16s and F-18s. J-10C loses marks for limited payload and range and Eurofighter may as well not play until it gets AESA in service for long enough so that pilots can develop proper training, familiarity and tactics.
One last off topic post before I rein the thread in.
Yes, Meteor has a very long range due to its use of a ramjet engine, but the fact that it is a ramjet also puts limitations on the missile because it requires an inflow of air to function. It does not have the similar maneuverability as the AIM-120D/PL-15 missile on the terminal phase.
Off topic over. Let's talk about J-10 like we are supposed to.
Electronics wise, the J-10C and F-16V are both comparable, both sporting a late generation AESA. Engine-wise, earlier F-sport 132 kN engines. Al-31 derivatives can hit 142-145 kN, and if the WS-10 on the J-10 has comparable performance, the J-10 might be better engined.
The F-16V, likewise, has gained a lot of weight during its production process, and its wing-loading is crap compared to the J-10.
J-10CE can be export competitive with the F-16V if Chengdu wishes to make it so. It'd be a cheaper, more A2A optimized platform. The J-10, however, has about 13% less payload than the F-16V (with the A variant) so it'd be worse on strike.
You're correct actually. I was mistakenly thinking the F-16V is a 2018 onwards development but has actually been finalised before that. Lockheed Martin have have upgraded certain features since then. The J-10C is similarly dated/modern.
This is actually a pretty good video on these sorts of discussions and describes the basic reasons why it's so hard to compare platforms.
Having said that, since this happens in these sorts of forums, we can only go with what we expect and that would be nations like China and the US put a lot of funding and effort to stay on top of the suggested domains. Part of these efforts from China include espionage. I'm sure it isn't one way though and the US have plenty of hacking and espionage efforts to ascertain details on adversary platforms as well.
It's reasonable to assume the best available tech and development go into PLAAF's frontline fighters so whatever was the best during the J-10C's development and F-16V's, would have made their way onto these aircrafts. Since those details are almost never even mentioned on the internet, we can only go with what we know... China isn't too far behind the US on electronics or computing and understands this field is one major area where a war is won and lost. Both are equally modern/dated but we know the F110 is superior to the WS-10B and Al-31FN series.
how can you tell?
MTBO figures that are public. Public figures may be incorrect or measured in different ways though.
Yes and no. Nothing official but I recall from distant memory on reading Chinese sources (many years ago now) that the original WS-10 prototypes (2000s era) had only hundreds of hours for MBTO and these were the first gen WS-10 that had issues with MTBO and various other performance areas that required correcting. They were not used in fact the engine was heavily redesigned to improve performance and MTBO. The WS-10 and WS-10A that went onto J-11B fighters around 10 years ago then achieved over 1000 hours MTBO... I think the later variants eventually got above 2000 hours. Poor in comparison to American and British engines but vast improvement over the first gen developments.
Maybe other members have the info and don't need to rely on memory. I recall the benchmark was Russian engines of the Al-31 class and the WS-10 eventually met or surpassed it in MBTO but was still rumoured to require more time to spool up and had slightly more frequent shut downs which required mid air restarting. Fixing that problem was a minimum to be applied onto single engine fighter like J-10 and since WS-10B went onto J-10 we could assume at least that stopping problem has been overcome since 2017 I would imagine since they'd need time to retool and change production aspects to suit WS-10B.
Overall it's pretty obvious no matter how the numbers were measured, that the WS-10B or whatever variant cannot match F110 in MBTO. We don't know enough about fuel and thermodynamic efficiency or engine's power to weight and dry thrust figures. Just like for car engines, simple spec measurements don't show anywhere near the whole picture since even those performance parameters alone are extremely non-linear. WS-10 is a great and useful engine for PLAAF no doubt but it was a first step for China as opposed to the US where the F110 at least represents a second gen of heavy thrust LBT plus over a decade more experience and service.
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I kept on looking it up, but couldn't find it. There is a F110-GE-132 variant with 142 kN thrust, but it's an optional upgrade for the F-16 platform. There's also an EEP engine for F100, but we don't know the details. It, too, is an upgrade. But the J-10 certainly can receive WS-10X on the J-20, so there's nothing fundamentally keeping the J-10 down in fourth gen land.