plawolf
Lieutenant General
CFTs are most beneficial for multirole strike oriented fighters, as they increase range without taking up valuable, heavy duty hard points most useful to for carrying bombs.
The downside with CFTs is that they cannot be ejected like conventional fuel tanks. That comes at the cost of agility if the fighter needs to get in a dogfight.
Since the first and most challenging mission the PLAAF expects to perform is air superiority, they are much less inclined to take the permanent performance hit CFT could convey to their fighters' air combat capabilities, compared to western air forces, who expect to achieve air superiority almost as a matter of course, and is far more strike oriented.
An updated J10S, taking onboard the DSI and other airframe refinements of the J10B/C as well as AESA radar and improved avionics would certainly be a reasonable next step for the J10 line.
An updated twin seater naturally lends itself for more dynamic roles compared to the single seat J10s, in which case, CFTs may make more sense.
To sum up, if the J10D is real, I expect it to be an updated twin seater J10, in which case CFTs could certainly be on the cards for it.
However, I would be surprised if CFTs make their way onto single seat J10s. Certainly not until J20s are operationally deployed in significant numbers, in which case the air superiority burden would be much less for the J10 fleet, and the PLAAF might start looking at how best to utilities air superiority now that they are expecting to win it.
So, CFTs and strike oriented MLU package for singe seat J10s may be a good bet, but that's probably 10 years away at this point.
The downside with CFTs is that they cannot be ejected like conventional fuel tanks. That comes at the cost of agility if the fighter needs to get in a dogfight.
Since the first and most challenging mission the PLAAF expects to perform is air superiority, they are much less inclined to take the permanent performance hit CFT could convey to their fighters' air combat capabilities, compared to western air forces, who expect to achieve air superiority almost as a matter of course, and is far more strike oriented.
An updated J10S, taking onboard the DSI and other airframe refinements of the J10B/C as well as AESA radar and improved avionics would certainly be a reasonable next step for the J10 line.
An updated twin seater naturally lends itself for more dynamic roles compared to the single seat J10s, in which case, CFTs may make more sense.
To sum up, if the J10D is real, I expect it to be an updated twin seater J10, in which case CFTs could certainly be on the cards for it.
However, I would be surprised if CFTs make their way onto single seat J10s. Certainly not until J20s are operationally deployed in significant numbers, in which case the air superiority burden would be much less for the J10 fleet, and the PLAAF might start looking at how best to utilities air superiority now that they are expecting to win it.
So, CFTs and strike oriented MLU package for singe seat J10s may be a good bet, but that's probably 10 years away at this point.
