Despite Russia's efforts, the Su-35 has a 'copy'

When handing over 4.5 generation Su-35SK fighters to China, Russia made technical interventions so that Beijing could not dissect the fighter.

One of the actions that Russia took was to weld many parts of the engine together, making it impossible for China to disassemble them to study the structure thoroughly without destroying them, of course, at that time the sample would no longer have much value as before.

However, according to many observers' predictions, with its superior "reverse engineering" capabilities, Beijing will not take too much time to grasp the technological secrets of the Su-35 fighter and soon launch a domestic version.

As stated above, yesterday Chinese news sites published photos of the latest variant in the J-11 family, the J-11D, performing a test flight. Mainland media reported that the J-11D is even superior to the Su-35SK.

Image of the first test flight of the J-11D fighter.

China's J-11D project has actually been "conceived" for a long time, but progress has been stagnant before Russia provided the country with Su-35SKs. At one point, the J-11D program faced the risk of being canceled.

Although the J-20 5th generation stealth fighter is about to enter mass production, its high unit price makes it difficult to manufacture them in large quantities.

Therefore, the J-11D will take on the responsibility of filling the gap, creating a connection in the formation according to the common high-low model.

Developed on the same Su-27 Flanker fuselage, the Su-35 has a completely different aerodynamic design. The most noticeable thing is that it has removed the rather long airspeed tube at the nose of the aircraft that acts as an aerodynamic fulcrum, and this feature has appeared on the J-11D.

China's J-11D fighter has external characteristics almost identical to the Su-35.

Even according to the introduction of Chinese aviation engineers, J-11D is even more superior than Su-35 thanks to being equipped with active phased array radar (AESA) instead of passive type (PESA) N035 Irbis-E.

The J-11D will be able to see ahead and shoot ahead at very long ranges without having to worry about enemy electronic countermeasures.

In addition, China has also mastered 3D thrust vector control (3D TVC) engine technology when the WS-10 integrated for J-20 has passed the initial test evaluation stage.

The engine for the J-11D may also carry some characteristics of the type installed on 5th generation fighters.

Of course, this is just an assertion from Beijing, there is no truly reliable indication that their statements are true.

But that aside, the fact that the J-11D fighter jet has taken off is still a very interesting event.

According to Baodatviet