It wasn't that long ago that so many people were screaming they were SURE this was an AESA:
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When the obviously visible IFF interrogators should have been an immediate dead giveaway to the contrary. The J-10B is not even remotely China's best radar technology, so selling it should represent no controversy at all.
Except, we had the following reasons to believe it was an AESA (and I still do).
Also recall the image below. We never did clarify whether this image was a J-10B or a J-10C. If the former, perhaps the radar in the picture is a PESA, and they ended up going with a different radar for the J-10B than the one we saw in 2011 with the IFF dipoles. Or perhaps this picture is indeed the J-10C with an AESA radar, and the J-10B does indeed have a PESA radar, but perhaps the PESA radar is one we've never actually seen before, and both the the radar in this picture and the one with the IFFs were AESAs. Or perhaps the one with the IFFs was indeed a PESA, contradicting all the earlier information we gathered when it first came out. It could even be that the J-10B does use the radar with IFF dipoles but it's an AESA, and J-10C has a different newer AESA.
The reversal on the radar with IFF dipoles came out of the first rumour that claimed there would be a J-10C, which also said that the J-10B uses a PESA. The rumour itself, to my knowledge, never specified that the radar with those IFF dipoles was the PESA being used, however. Furthermore we don't have a good trace on where this rumour came from, and how credible the original source was (I don't recall the first rumour coming out of a big shrim). We also have this post from tphuang around the time the rumour came out.
https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/j-10-thread-iii-closed-to-posting.t4290/page-489#post-323767
"Just to carry over from J-20 thread. An article on 14th institute talks about development of China's first AESA radar for fighter jet. It will be x-band based and won national awards in 2009/2010. From that, it seems like they flight tested it by 2009/2010. From all of that, it seems likes this radar is developed for J-10B/C although we have heard rumours on Chinese bbs that the first batch of J-10B we saw are using PESA radar. None of which is conclusive. So this AESA radar is either going to already be on the first batch of J-10B that we saw or on the second batch (J-10C as some calls it).
Technology wise, the article claimed that it has same level of technology as APG-77 on F-22. And that 14th Institute is using experience from developing this radar to develop J-20's radar. For the first part, I think it could just be talking about the usage of GaA T/R modules and the design of the radar rather than the actual power/capability of the radar."
All this to say we don't have the definitive word on whether the radar in question was an AESA, whether the J-10B uses a PESA, or even whether the production J-10B is mounted with the radar in question. Until we get another look at what's inside a production J-10B's nose (one that we can definitively identify as a J-10B), this matter is more ambiguous than it may seem.
