SinoSoldier
Colonel
Yes; that would be the ideal. My post was assuming that the J-15D is a dedicated EW aircraft and that there would be no strike variant.
J-15 carrier fighter thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
Yes; that would be the ideal. My post was assuming that the J-15D is a dedicated EW aircraft and that there would be no strike variant.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Dingybvs just posted on CDF. Any confirmation
Latest rumor from 草根 seem to indicate that the J-15 was successfully tested on the EMALS.
Latest rumor from 草根 seem to indicate that the J-15 was successfully tested on the EMALS.
He's quite credible, definitely.
Unfortunately we probably won't have confirmation for a long time, if ever, because that would require footage or photo of the actual launch itself which is obviously at Huangdicun NATF, so no wallclimber footage.
What we can hope for is a satellite image of Huangdicun NATF hopefully taken sometime around today (or a little bit after), and if it shows the catapults (or at least the EM catapult) at Huangdicun NATF as looking fully complete, then it would at least make the claim very plausible, though of course it wouldn't be confirmation of the even itself occurring.
Intrepid
Major
When the catapult is ready, it will be used with deadweights for calibration hundreds of times or let me say several month before the first aircraft is shot.
The catapults built at Huangdicun should not be prototypes; there should be models of these same catapults that have already been tested at length at other sites in the country before having additional models built at Huangdicun which is a naval air training facility for this competition.
I imagine after completion of construction of the two catapults they would've undergone initial test launches with deadweights to verify their uses, but relatively brief just to confirm everything is working as their previous models had worked, and then proceeded to potentially launch a fighter.
But all the above is irrelevant anyway -- you are thinking about this backwards.
The point is not to try and prove whether a rumour has occurred, that is the worst way of going about Chinese military watching when we depend on credible rumours as our life source, because we rarely get definitive confirmation.
Instead, the way about it is to see if there is ever any evidence that can disprove a rumour could've occurred, and in this case, one way of disproving cao gen's statement that a J-15 has undergone a launch at the EM catapult is by having satellite photos of Huangdicun NATF which do not show the catapults (or at least the EM catapult) looking like a state of completion within the last few days. OTOH if we happen to get photos that show the catapults are complete, then that would make the rumour plausible, which is an important step forwards in feeding us knowledge.
Maybe one year, maybe three years, maybe five or more.
Please re-read my last post.
I literally said in my last few posts that the point of satellite photos is not to prove the rumour, rather it is to attempt to disprove it. If we are unable to disprove the rumour then it means the rumour could be plausible, and for the PLA watching rumour cycle, the ability or inability to disprove a rumour is the key first step!