hardpoints

Well the question is, why does china design aircraft with little hard points compare to the western planes??? Is it because of the engine problem where it can't take too much weight???

Just wondering are hardpoints and pylon the same thing??? the place where you hold missile and bombs??

The older PRC planes did not have very many hardpoints, but the newer planes seem to have a lot more. For instance, old J-7 and j-8 only had 5 hardpoints each, jh-7 had 7, and older J-11(Su-27SK) have 10. More recent planes have more hardpoints, newer j-8 varients have 7, jh-7a has 11, J-10 has 11, j-11b has 12. FC-1 only has 7, but it is very small plane so 7 hardpoints is not that bad for a plane of its size.

j-10 has 11 hardpoints????
in this forum i think i heard that j-10 has less than 11 hardpoints

11 hard points, but they can't all be equipped with AAM. But yeah, there are plenty of non ps'ed images showing that J-10 has 11 hard points.

ahho said:

Well the question is, why does china design aircraft with little hard points compare to the western planes??? Is it because of the engine problem where it can't take too much weight???
Just wondering are hardpoints and pylon the same thing??? the place where you hold missile and bombs??

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Usually "pylon" is used to describe the weapons mount on the hardpoint. But yeah the 2 are somewhat inter-changable.

Older PLA aircraft are based on MiG-19 & MiG-21 with fewer hardpoints. The typical MiG-21 has 1 centerline hardpoint + 4 under the wings. Note both J-7 and J-8 (older) have same configuration. Newer aircraft, such as the Mirage-2000, F-16, Su-27, & J-10, have 9 to 11 hardpoints each.

This J-8 IIM seem to have 6 hardpoints under the wings:



If I'm not mistaken, the centerline hardpoint is being used in multi-rack config carrying 3-4 bombs.

As for weight limit, that applies mostly to hardpoints under the wing, or the wing-tip. The first F-16A's could not carry AMRRAMS safely under its wing hardpoints, they had to made structural changes to reinforce the wings for the heavier missile.

so there are 11 hard points but cannot use them all at the same time.

hmm, so ther question remaining is that why not make it like the mirage that can carry a lot of bomb and some aam for strike mission

Some of the J-10's hardpoints are so small that they can carry nothing more than dumb bombs or sensor probes. So while a J-10 can carry 11 dumb bombs with no problem, it's impossible to load it with 11 AAMs or fuel tanks.

AAMs, especially SRAAMs, don't weigh a lot.
The light ones weigh 83kg, heavy ones weigh 115kg.

If I'm not mistaken, the centerline hardpoint is being used in multi-rack config carrying 3-4 bombs.

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Yeap. That or fuel.


I am really disappointed that the old planes aren't/can't be updated w/ these features. The J-7Es can carry 2 tonnes on 5 HP, meaning 500kg for each HP. Since they carry only 1 AAM each, it's only 115kg on each HP. That's 385kg unused! If you can fit one of those multi-racks on a HP, you can fit three AAMs on each HP. Meaning you can carry 6 AAMs to combat w/ three tanks on a long range mission. Does a lot more.
The plane can turn with ease, but sometimes it just isn't enough.

Same goes with J-8B.

JH-7 has 11 HP BTW, 4 on each wing, 3 on the body.

To my knowlidge, these hardpoints affects quite a lot to the drag that airflown couses and thus stersing the wings whit lots hardpoint makes the aircraft les manouvrable, even when the weigth of the amament isent overhelming. Thats why orginal concepts US fighter such as F-4, F-14 and f-15 tryed to avoid wing hardpoints as much as they can placing the armament to under aircrafts body. To soviet desings which forms the backbone of chinese aircrafts, these kind of configurations were rare and nonexistence. I believe that MiG-31 was first Soviet desing that had weapon stores in the belly.

sumdud said:

I am really disappointed that the old planes aren't/can't be updated w/ these features. The J-7Es can carry 2 tonnes on 5 HP, meaning 500kg for each HP. Since they carry only 1 AAM each, it's only 115kg on each HP. That's 385kg unused! If you can fit one of those multi-racks on a HP, you can fit three AAMs on each HP. Meaning you can carry 6 AAMs to combat w/ three tanks on a long range mission. Does a lot more.
The plane can turn with ease, but sometimes it just isn't enough.

Click to expand...

I think both the Mirage-2000-5 and MiG-21 have 250kg limit on the outer wing pylons. If you look at the MiG-21 ground strike mission load, it's usually 2x 500kg bombs on inner wing and 2x 250kg bombs on outer wing (or rocket pods). The J-7E is basically a MiG-21 and prolly follows similiar weight restrictions on wing hardpoints + ~1,000 kg on centerline hardpoint.

Another consideration is that, for air superiority missions, they tend to load 2-3 external fuel tanks on aircraft like the F-16 & Mirage-2000-5, to extend range and loitering time.