As the saying goes, fists are afraid of being young, and the F-16 and F-16, the Cold War heroes who served in the 70s, were undoubtedly strong at the beginning. But today, in the 20s of the 21st century, even after several rounds of escalation, the pair of Cold War heroes are dying.
Recently, Pakistan** (look at the format should be**) said that in the "Indus Shield-2023" air force exercise held in October, the JF-17C Thunder Dragon Block 3 fighter successfully suppressed the F-15 and F-16, and the radar and electronic warfare of the Thunder fighter made it difficult for the F-15 and F-16 to match.
In order to avoid major power conflicts, the confrontation mode of China, the United States and Russia in service fighter jets is often dominated by two-person conversion, and the probability of air combat is very small. However, there have been a lot of cases of high-intensity confrontation and confrontational military exercises between export fighters. In the Indus Shield 2023 military exercise held in Pakistan some time ago, Turkey's F-16C D fighters, Saudi Arabia's F-15SA fighters, and Pakistan's Thunder Dragon Block3 fighters held confrontation exercises.
There are many cases of joint exercises between Arab countries (except Iran and other Shiite countries), and Saudi Arabia has not seen a few cases of buying ** from other Arab countries out of its own pocket. The Mistral-class amphibious assault ships of the Egyptian Navy, as well as the Turkish Island-class frigates ordered by Pakistan, are all paid for by Saudi Arabia.
Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani air forces).
During this military exercise,The performance of the Thunder Bolck3 fighter, which will only be officially put into service in July 2023, is very goodTurkey's F-16C D fighter jets and Saudi Arabia's F-15SA fighter jets. The avionics and electronic warfare systems of the Thunder fighter jets are even more unmatched by Saudi and Turkish fighter jets.
The reason why the Thunder fighter performs so well is not because of how good the performance of the Thunder fighter platform is. Maximum take-off weight 127 tons, maximum speed 1Mach 6 Thunder fighter, with a maximum take-off weight of 217 tons, the F-2 with a maximum speed of Mach 16 and a maximum take-off weight of 308 tons, maximum flight speed 2The Mach 5 F-15 has no advantages over the platform.
And the aerodynamic layout of the Thunder fighter is only a decent conventional layout, and there is no advantage in stable and instantaneous disks. Since the Thunder fighter is only a light fighter, the nose diameter is much smaller than that of the F-15 and F-16, if the avionics electronic warfare system of the same technical level is used, or if the air combat within visual range is used, then the Thunder fighter will inevitably be completely suppressed.
And the point where Thunder breaks the game is the technical level. The U.S. Air Force officially entered the stealth era in 2005, and before the end of the Cold War, the United States had a large number of stealth aircraft projects in the air, sea, and land in the pipeline, so the F-15 and F-16 have long been reduced to aircraft with no future.
In 2004, the F-15E fighter used by the US military was discontinued, and the F-16 fighter used by the United States was also discontinued in 2017. These two fighters have been in low-speed production for a long time before they were discontinued. Modernization improves whatsoever simply does not exist. I don't plan to be the main force anymore, why do you put so much heart into it?If it weren't for the F-35's performance, the F-15EX wouldn't have had a chance to come out.
The discontinuation of the U.S. military's own use has led to a sudden slowdown in the iteration of the F-15 and F-16 upgrade packages. Saudi Arabia's F-15SA fighter jets are compatibleThe maximum firing range is 160 kmThe capabilities of the AIM-120D air-to-air missile, the earlier F-15 may not necessarily be able to use the AIM-120D.
The F-16 fighters, which are more inclined to throw mud in the US military system, do not have the ability to use the AIM-120D at this stage, and can only use the AIM-120C5 with a range of 100 kilometers and the AIM-120C7 with a range of 110 kilometers to 150 kilometers. However, whether it can be compatible and whether it can be mounted are two concepts. The air-to-air missiles mounted by the F-15SA fighters of the Saudi Air Force at this stage are mainly the AIM-120C series, and the D series has also been ordered, but whether they can be delivered in 2025 is a question.
The air-to-air missile of the Thunder Dragon fighter is the Thunderbolt-15E air-to-air missile with a maximum range of 145 kilometers, and the range of the self-use Thunderbolt-15 is close to 200 kilometers, so the range of the foreign trade Thunderbolt-15 is most likely limited by software, in other words, the proportion of the non-escape zone of the Thunderbolt-15E will be greater than that of the conventional air-to-air missile.
In terms of radar, the Saudi F-15SA fighter is equipped with an AN APG-63V3 radar with a panel detection capability of 400 kilometers, and the radar of Turkey's F-16C D has also been upgraded to an APG-80 active phased array radar with a detection range of about 150 kilometers. The KLJ-7A of the Thunder Block3 benefits from the advantages of the manufacturing process, and on the premise of a smaller diameter, the detection distance is increased to 170 kilometers, which is not inferior compared with the F-15 and F-16, but due to the limited size, the back-end processing capacity of the Thunder is much worse.
KLJ-7A active phased array radar presented at the Zhuhai Air Show)
However, US arms sales have always been political in nature, and in order to ensure that the United States can effectively control the US-style users, the United States will often cut down electronic warfare equipment to ensure that the United States can effectively interfere when necessary. And China's exports do not have such concernsTherefore, the Thunder fighter can effectively balance the F-15 and F-16 with its more powerful electronic warfare system.
To be honest, the small Thunder can compete with the F-15 and F-16, which are larger and thicker in the nose, and it is very good news that they have become a hard bone that neither of them can gnaw. But according to Pakistani netizens, the performance of the radar and electronic warfare systems of the Thunder fighter surpassed that of the F-15 and F-16, which has to be said to be really unexpected, maybe because the Americans are faking again
In addition, the Thunder Block3 is only sold for $55 million (Argentina), while the F-16 is sold to new users** for as much as 1$600 million (Bulgaria) The price of the F-15SA fighter in the hands of Saudi Arabia is as high as 300 million US dollars. The good guy F-15 doesn't perform much better than the Thunder Block 3 in most missions, but the F-15 sells for nearly 6 times as much as the Thunder.
Maybe by the time of Thunder 4, Thunder can also hang like this.
In terms of cost of use, the F-15 cost per hour of flight is 420,000 dollars, the cost of an hourly flight of the F-16C D amounted to 160,000 to 1At $80,000, the F-16A B (MLU) costs $10,000 per hour, while the Thunder costs only $7,600 per hour. The gap is even greater, and it can only be said that 50% or even 30% of the F-16 has 90% or even 95% of the performance of the F-16It can only be said that the cost performance of the Thunder fighter is really too brutal.
And the performance of the Thunder fighter is so good, so what about the J-10C?
Moreover, Pakistan has a complete production and maintenance capacity of Thunder fighters, so the cost of Thunder fighters is operated within the system, while Saudi Arabia and Turkey are paying for the United States to repair, and suddenly understand why you can see that Saudi Arabia and Turkey have the idea of buying Chinese fighter jets at every turn. Project Sword