A lot of Chinese ground attack weapons don't have publicly disclosed specs. But yes the Rafale has 14 hardpoints while the J-10 has 11.
Is that even significant when the Rafale costs over twice as much? Just buy more J-10 aircraft.
It's quite significant when one aircraft does the job, another one doesn't. Flying far enough, or with necessary weapons, or with necessary mission pods - all of it matters. It isn't China's problem how other nations do this stuff, as China has J-16s, H-6s, PLARF and support aircraft fleet.
For China, J-10c is for a while really PD interceptor and tactical ASF. Yes, it can bomb/strike reasonably when/if necessary. They aren't developed by PLAAF in this direction anymore.
French airfract is attractive precisely because AdAE(as well as the navy) is forced to do everything single stop, and you can buy the same do-it-all.
Rafale often does very spectacular demonstrations of its range/payload metrics - be it on combat missions to Africa, or in regular FdF exercises simulating strikes on Moscow, or their deployments acrolss French
colonial holdingsFrance d'outre-mer across the globe - they're in fact
more stretched, than russian fighter aircraft doing east-west transfers and long range patrols.
In Indonesian case, range does in fact matter for a strike aircraft - it's a huge contry, which won't have much tanker support. Gauss Kruger and other projections sometimes hide just how big it is. As such, Rafale with its ability to combine impressive fuel loads with significant payloads (including those further adding stand off) is sort of unique.
SU-30mki/brahmos-xr isn't really on the market, but comes with CAATSA. Su-57e is nice, but it only enters the market, and comes with CAATSA too. J-16 isn't for sale; normal flankers, till this moment, come with very dated stand off options. Eurofighter is just worse than Rafale in almost everything strike, exception being ironically being dumb GNSS truck. As such, the only direct competition is F-15E/JASSM, which costs even more(waaay more in fact), comes with american leash and BDSM collar(with spikes and obligation to bark before command even comes), and they won't sell you JASSM for
reasons anyway.
Whatever the case - J-10 is most certainly
not an aircraft you buy when you want a long range strike option. And not really an aircraft you buy to bomb anyway - things just don't fit there together. There was a notional "J-10D" prototype which
maybe could've solved at least the desperate need for volume inside, but it didn't go anywhere as we know.
The Flanker carries fuel internally because that keeps drag down. That simple.
Don't think you can fly at the same max velocity clean as with three external fuel tanks.
As a net result, flanker reaches same ranges (and in commercially available russian package doesn't carry equal strike weapons - remember that chinese flankers aren't sold) at twice the size, maintenance and per hour cost. Indonesia has them, note that they're effectively replacing strike flankers with those (and cancelled Su-35s deal was for essentially loitering ASFs with at most secondary strike capability).
Yes, it can reach Vmax fully tanked. It doesn't matter for a strike mission. Also, it's completely irrelevant in J-10 topic - J-10 can bomb something beyond the edge of the airfield only with heavy tanks, and with a lot of additional drag (EW pod? Datalink pod?) weighting down on the originally very streamlined platform.
