J-10 Thread IV

[by78]

Does J-10 have conformal fuel tanks? I notice that they don't have much range and pretty much always carry external tanks. Conformal fuel tanks should help.

I doesn't and likely never will. I read an interview with a Chengdu designer where this question was posed, and he said the canards make the addition of F-16 style conformal fuel tanks very tricky aerodynamically. Drop tanks will have to do, and that's why you see so many J-10s carry them.

FWIW, here's a screen capture from an old TV report. You can see they've done wind tunnel studies on conformal fuel tanks.

 

[Akame]

J-10C

 

[Strangelove]

 

[para80]

New image of the supposed J-10D variant.'

Via

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1548870102611030017

 

[Schwerter_]

New image of the supposed J-10D variant.'

Via

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1548870102611030017

View attachment 93427

Actually decently good-looking from this angle, nice. Plus I see they’ve moved the antennas to the top of the added structure

 

[ougoah]

D for dianzhi electronic warfare j-10 or just the newest distinct block for the new assembly line.

 

[Schwerter_]

D for dianzhi electronic warfare j-10 or just the newest distinct block for the new assembly line.

I guess D because it’s later than C. There’s no reason to build a dedicated J-10 electronic warfare version.

 

[Schwerter_]

Also I saw an interesting but most likely wrong guess that this new J-10 is an unmanned test platform for whatever drone the J-20S is supposed to work with.

from certain angles it seems to make some sense (enlarged spine possibly for extra electronics to drone-ify it, and they’re refitting an existing airframe instead of building something entirely new) But at the same time I don’t see why they should use a J-10 platform to test drone tech. All in all, this is probably just a wild guess, but since it is an interesting one I thought I’d post this here.

 

[no_name]

Is the nozzle actually pointing slightly downwards or is it just constricted in the photo?

 

[by78]

Is the nozzle actually pointing slightly downwards or is it just constricted in the photo?

Part of the nozzle is blocked from view by the left ventral fin.