utahbob said:Deino,
The images in you post at « Reply #234 on: Yesterday at 01:41:22 pm » are those CGI, actual A/C or a scale model?
Cheers!
Trident said:The antenna photo does match what is seen on the J-10B very well, but I don't think you can reliably tell apart a PESA and AESA radar just by looking at the antenna. Ok, if it has tapered slot radiating elements it's probably an AESA, but other solutions are not unheard of with non-Western AESAs (EL/M-2052, Zhuk-MAE, NIIP radar for the T-50). More importantly, Tikhomirov and Phazotron have used the same external element design on both their PESAs and first-generation AESAs (apart from the helical, non-equidistant distribution on the Zhuk-MSF and Kopyo-F). Compare a stripped down Bars or Irbis antenna to the PAK-FA AESA, there is very little difference superficially (on a related note, the J-10B array looks remarkably similar to these!). Having IFF-dipoles would definitely be unusual for an AESA (the Zaslon PESA is the only ESA example I can think of), but there is in principle no reason why it couldn't be done, so that's not a reliable indicator either.
That link to the article is dead so I’m including the pages
From 2016, just rumour in my opinion. Some of the comments on the article are very critical.
Interesting article
@Deino
According to this the J-10B radar is an AESA. As a first generation AESA it’s actually very heavy, similar to APG-63(V)2 which required 600 pounds of ballast to counter the radars weight. For the J-10 this lead to the development of the DSI inlet on later series J-10B and on (saves 200kg in weight from what I’ve read). Performance suffers from the weight gain.
So this gives some very interesting insight on both what kind of radar the J-10B has but also why the B had a limited run.
J-10B has an AESA but it’s very heavy, J-10C possibly has a more modern radar the doesn’t effect performance in the same way.
This is actually almost identical to the F-15
18 aircraft got the heavy APG-63(v)2 and tasked with cruise missile defense and the APG-63(v)3 saw much more widespread use and didn’t seem to require extensive modifications.
Not sure why those radar were so heavy, not all early AESA were heavy but it seems to have been a common issue.
Not sure why those radar were so heavy, not all early AESA were heavy but it seems to have been a common issue.