yes, i just don't get what exactly the point he want to make....
flanker is aerodynamic unstable as well...
Relaxed. And it's fbw in 2/3 channels, though there's already flight computer.
Again, point is simple. Flanker is a plane from the very dawn of digital era. It's digital, but analog/manual aspects are everywhere.
It's a direct overflow of T-10 (due to ambitions of new chief designer to make
his ideal bird at public expense), which wasn't fbw at all.
Yes, of course, later everything was added into it. But still, it's a platform that
can work otherwise. Just like F-15EX - which is of course fully FBW now. But same configuration can be flown even the dad's way. Won't fall.
J-10A is digital from inception - it's designed on computers, if flies on computers (in a way which is impossible without computer), in a configuration that can't fly w/o computers, and so on and so forth. It relies, at least partially, on 1980s research of those highly maneuverable (fbw) configurations - in US, but also elsewhere. Its maneuverability profile is much more modern (compared to Su-27s, which are really Vietnam children). it's, again, rigid brick - which can carry heavier payloads relative to airframe without massive reinforcement with significant weight penalty (which J-16 doesn't have).
This is a big structural difference - and while there is some temptation to call it same gen with J-11/16(with whom it creats Hi/Lo pair), it's really a next generation plane. If you look at Soviet plane, designed the same way (unstable delta canard with digital design) - it's not flanker, it's 1.44. Or, for more direct size and role counterpart, 4.12 (LFI).
