On December 2, in the report on the actual combat training of fighters of a brigade of the PLA Air Force, the China ** Network announced for the first time the rumored number of the Thunderbolt-17 (PL-17) domestic ultra-long-range air-to-air missile, in terms of size, the missile is much larger than the Thunderbolt-15 (PL-15) long-range air-to-air missile mounted on the same aircraft, and it is speculated that its length may be as high as about 6 meters.
Judging from the hanging bombs of other J-16 in **, if the J-16 wants to mount the Thunderbolt-17, it needs to use a large pylon with a longer size, and we believe that this pylon can be "optional" according to the demand, which greatly increases the flexibility of the J-16 to perform the mission.
In addition, the J-16 fighter jet in the report is mounted with 4 - PL-15 and 1 PL-17 - and this is still in the case of no missiles on the wingtip pylons, the J-16 is really a well-deserved "bomb truck".
Judging from the ** circulated on the Internet in the early days, the Thunderbolt-17 can not only be mounted by the J-16, but also the "Flying Leopard" fighter-bomber has also been mounted. From the perspective of the universal design of air combat, the fighters of the main domestic force should have the ability to mount the Thunderbolt-17, including the J-20 fighter with the non-stealth mount mode.
In May 2022, the U.S. Military Watch magazine ranked first in an article entitled "The World's Seven Most Dangerous Air-to-Air Missiles", the Thunderbolt-17 (then known as "PL-XX") ranked first, which believed that the Thunderbolt-17 had been in service as early as around 2015, and was the most mysterious of China's new generation of air-to-air missiles, and by far the largest, mainly used to hit local bombers, tankers, transport planes and early warning aircraft.
The article also said that the Thunderbolt-17 has a range of up to 500 kilometers, which is the world's longest-range air-to-air missile so far, and is equipped with a new active phased array radar seeker and an infrared warhead, which has strong anti-jamming. However, due to the large size of this missile, heavy fighters such as the J-11BG and J-16 can only carry two without affecting flight performance.
Of course, there is no publicly available information about the Thunderbolt-17, and the analysis of Military Watch magazine can only be used for our reference. It should be emphasized that the longer the range of air-to-air missiles, the better, because as the range increases, it will bring about the problem of target detection and locking.
Some netizens may think that now the PLA must have a data link system based on the battlefield information sharing network, and does not need the carrier aircraft and the missile itself to complete the detection, but for long-range air-to-air missiles and targets that are rapidly maneuvering in the air, in order to achieve such capabilities, it is necessary to solve the problem of information transmission and coordinate datum and normalized data, which is a complex and huge system engineering, which has gone beyond the long-range air-to-air missile platform itself.
Therefore, there is no need to over-consider or try to dig into the specific parameters of the Thunderbolt-17.
We only need to know that with the development of aviation technology and information technology, air combat has changed from a confrontation between individual planes to a large-scale system confrontation with the organic combination of early warning, reconnaissance, jamming, air combat, refueling, and other aircraft in the contest between major powers. In this kind of system, early warning planes, tankers, and so on can be called the most valuable targets, and if they can have ultra-long-range air-to-air missiles launched from outside the defense zone to destroy the enemy's tightly fortified targets in depth, the opponent can lose the information support and supply support in the air.
In this regard, the "2030 Air Dominance Flight Plan" issued by the U.S. Air Force pointed out that "with the continuous development of the enemy's long-range engagement ** and the enhancement of lethality, the risk of large combat platforms such as traditional early warning aircraft continues to increase, and the United States will develop new early warning command and combat systems such as manned and unmanned marshalling coordination and decentralized command and control systems." It can be seen that for the world's military powers, it is necessary to consider not only the "spear" of ultra-long-range attack, but also the "shield" of the first-class target protection, and for the "spear", the importance of ultra-long-range air-to-air missiles has been raised to an unprecedented height.
In fact, ultra-long-range air-to-air missiles are not a new concept.
As early as the Cold War, in order to effectively deal with the saturation attack of Soviet strategic bombers, the US Navy developed the AIM-54 "Immortal Bird" air-to-air missile ** system with long-range multi-target attack capabilitiesIn order to cope with the endless early warning aircraft development projects of the United States, the ultra-long-range air-to-air missiles developed by the former Soviet Union and Russia, such as the KS-172 and RVV-BD, have the ability to counter high-value targets.
Finally, the Thunderbolt-17 may not be the only ultra-long-range air-to-air missile equipped by the PLA, when we introduced the Russian Su-35 fighter jet, we simultaneously introduced a batch of supporting airborne ammunition, if there are no accidents, among them there are ultra-long-range air-to-air missiles like the KS-172.