Quickie
Colonel
A variant of kd88 with an active radar seeker would be the YJ-83K itself? The question would then be whether the YJ-83K has a radar seeker in the mmw band.
JH-7/JH-7A/JH-7B Thread
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A variant of kd88 with an active radar seeker would be the YJ-83K itself? The question would then be whether the YJ-83K has a radar seeker in the mmw band.
Goes to show how incompetent the journalists are these days.
Actually Avia Darts is not a competition of planes, but a competition of pilots/crew skills. They don't use on board equipment, but have to find their targets by their eyes, made maneuvers to avoid air defense, fly in proper formations in the time of different maneuvers and engage ground targets by unguided rockets and free fall bombs. Crews and pilots have in this way same conditions not depending on planes in which they fly.
I did not know that.
So they cannot rely on their in-flight instruments for flying or attacking?
I'm not sure about the details -- but I do know that they cannot use guided weapons during the actual weapon-employment part of the competition. That is why JH-7s that participated only carried rocket pods.
As for how JH-7/A actually compares to the Su-34 or Su-24, I think JH-7/A actually has quite a good weapons suite to choose from, if such a competition allowed employment of PGMs. JH-7s have stand off cruise missiles in the KD-88 with various types of seekers, free fall PGMs in the LT-2 with self designation from targeting pods, and anti ship missiles in the various YJ-83K variants. The only major thing missing from JH-7/A to Su-34/Su-24 is the lack of a heavy anti ship missile in the class of moskit. Though Su-34's radar is likely superior to JH-7/As.
In a sense, that makes the aviadarts competition more logical, as forcing pilots to not rely on their onboard targeting avionics and not using precision guided weapons (the quality of which may vary between aircraft and aircraft quite dramatically) means they are assessing the skills of the pilots rather than the equipment.
They use navigational instruments for safety of flying, but for searching of targets they could use their eyes and for targeting their HUD to use unguided rockets and bombs. No PGMs, radars, optics, etc. This is why pilots in old Su-25, Su-24, Su-27 and MiG-29 have the same chances as pilots in new Su-30, Su-34, Su-35, Su-25SM and MiG-29SMT. They all have the same route to fly, the same targets, the same tasks to do, but who do it better, depend on the pilot, not on the plane. You could fly in old MiG-15 and you will still have the same conditions as the pilot in Su-35.
@Totoro To be fair though, the H-6K production probably won't last long either since its allegedly only suppose to be a stop gap measure until the H-X comes along, however I agree that JH-7 production probably won't be revived as J-16 is more or less going to replace it in PLAAF service, however we don't know what the status of the JH-7B is and we haven't gotten any pictures in a while, and like you said when Y-20 production comes along it'll take up a lot of resources.