Anyone know if J15s have plumbing in the wings to take drop tanks?A J-15 that played the role of a tanker:
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For others in training:
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Anyone know if J15s have plumbing in the wings to take drop tanks?
Afaik, no standard flanker has wing plumbing for drop tanks due to its huge internal fuel capacity, but for a carrier based bird for buddy refuelling, that would be a really useful capacity to have.
Some Flankers have a centerline drop tank.
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But I guess is that if the plumbing is in place for the buddy refueling pod, it would also be able to take a drop tank.Not entirely correct. It is an IFR-pod, but not a tank,
But I guess is that if the plumbing is in place for the buddy refueling pod, it would also be able to take a drop tank.
The only question mark remaining would be the weight that pylon is rated to carry. However, given that the central pylon is often used with large PGMs on other flanker variants, I don’t think weight should be an issue given the limited size fuel tank they would be able to fit there to start with. That may be the main limiting factor, since the clearance between nacelles would probably limited that pylon to a 500-1000l tank at most, so is that juice really worth the squeeze?