J-15 carrier fighter thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
Lethe
Captain
For sure. J-15T may not be as transformative as KJ-600 or J-35, but there's something very romantic about it. Looking back, the F-14 Tomcat was the definitive carrier-based air combat platform of its era. Yet with the end of the Cold War, further improvements to the F-14 were foregone in favour of the more modest and manageable Super Hornet. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union and Sukhoi had birthed the mighty T-10/Flanker design that must surely be amongst the most definitive combat aircraft of the late 20th century. Remarkably, it also spawned a credible carrier-based variant, but the Soviet Union and later Russian Federation never had the opportunity to realise that aircraft's full potential via catapult operation. SAC and PLAN picked up the torch and have carried it forward, from those initial J-15 airframes on Liaoning ex-Varyag, through to the latest J-15T on Fujian. In doing so, they have arrived at something resembling the F-14E Super Tomcat that never was: the apex predator of an era that is now rapidly passing.
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simply since they are prototypes
kwaigonegin
Colonel
Yes, all naval aviators are trained to hold on to the grab handles during launch. This is to prevent grabbing the stick by reflex or accident likely causing a crash. It's to mitigate PIO or Pilot-Induced Oscillation.