J-10 Thread IV

plawolf

Lieutenant General
CFTs are most beneficial for multirole strike oriented fighters, as they increase range without taking up valuable, heavy duty hard points most useful to for carrying bombs.

The downside with CFTs is that they cannot be ejected like conventional fuel tanks. That comes at the cost of agility if the fighter needs to get in a dogfight.

Since the first and most challenging mission the PLAAF expects to perform is air superiority, they are much less inclined to take the permanent performance hit CFT could convey to their fighters' air combat capabilities, compared to western air forces, who expect to achieve air superiority almost as a matter of course, and is far more strike oriented.

An updated J10S, taking onboard the DSI and other airframe refinements of the J10B/C as well as AESA radar and improved avionics would certainly be a reasonable next step for the J10 line.

An updated twin seater naturally lends itself for more dynamic roles compared to the single seat J10s, in which case, CFTs may make more sense.

To sum up, if the J10D is real, I expect it to be an updated twin seater J10, in which case CFTs could certainly be on the cards for it.

However, I would be surprised if CFTs make their way onto single seat J10s. Certainly not until J20s are operationally deployed in significant numbers, in which case the air superiority burden would be much less for the J10 fleet, and the PLAAF might start looking at how best to utilities air superiority now that they are expecting to win it.

So, CFTs and strike oriented MLU package for singe seat J10s may be a good bet, but that's probably 10 years away at this point.
 

FORBIN

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
Thinking a very recent udpate Scramble which is well informed say possible the 131 Rgt to Luliang have do transition from J-10A on J-10C.
Early 2016 the J10As were replaced by J10Cs (to be confirmed).
Chengdu MR Training Base (serials 6xx7x) used to operate J6 aircraft from this base. April 2012 this regiment got subordinated to 44th Div. as 132nd Regiment.
Interesting but in this case 2 J-10A Rgts to find :rolleyes:
 

MastanKhan

Junior Member
Gripen-NG-Fighter-Jet-Plane.jpg

Hi,

This is the new fuel tank for the Gripen NG---it is not like the conventional fuel tanks---but rather rectangular---which means that i can hold more fuek than the round tank of equal length and equal width .

I think that is what the chinese need to look into for the J10's and the JF17's fuel tanks.

These tanks can carry around 75--100 litres more fuel in each tank or maybe more.
 
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