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and my initial thought was the F5.

Apart from the fact that F5 is twin engined

I stand corrected *reaches for humble pie*. Why does a single engined aircraft have twin exhausts - I can't recall any other single-engined aircraft that has twin exhaust?

Pakistan to buy Chinese missiles

BEIJING – PAKISTAN has confirmed it will buy Chinese missiles and flight systems to equip its 250 JF-17 Thunder jet fighters as it seeks to deepen military cooperation with Beijing, state media said on Thursday.

Rao Qamar Suleman, air chief marshal of the Pakistan Air Force, told the Global Times newspaper Chinese radar systems and SD-10 mid-range homing missiles would be used on the fighters co-developed by the two nations.

‘PAF has no plans to install Western devices and weapons on the aircraft for the time being,’ the newspaper quoted Suleman as saying.

Pakistan may also buy up to four Chinese surface-to-air missiles, as it seeks stronger cooperation with China to help upgrade its armed forces, Mr Suleman told the China Daily in a separate interview.

He made the remarks on the sidelines of the annual Zhuhai Air Show now under way in southern China.

Chinese defence experts played down the comments, saying any cooperation did not target any country and did not compare with deals adopted during a visit to India this month by US President Barack Obama, the China Daily said. — AFP

China's SD-10 claimed to be a dual-mode AAM.

Robert Hewson Jane's Air-Launched Weapons Editor - Zhuhai, China


China's SD-10 medium-range air-to-air missile (AAM), as exhibited at Airshow China earlier in November, may be a considerably more capable weapon than was hitherto believed, Jane's understands.

Officials from the SD-10's manufacturer, the Luoyang Electro-Optical Technology Development Center (LOEC), said the missile was designed from the beginning to function with a dual-mode seeker operating in distinct active and passive radar homing modes. If so, the SD-10 is the first AAM to enter service with this acknowledged capability.

There have been suggestions that the latest AIM-120D Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) developed by Raytheon for the US Air Force and Navy has a similar dual-mode seeker capability. The full capabilities of the AIM-120D remain classified, but its development has been problematic and it has yet to enter operational service.

The SD-10 - the current production version is the refined SD-10A - has been cleared for service on the Chengdu J-10 and late-model versions of the Shenyang J-8 combat aircraft. By the end of this year the missile is expected to be operational with the PAC JF-17s of the Pakistan Air Force.

In lengthy discussions with LOEC at the 16-21 November Airshow China exhibition, the operating modes of the SD-10A were set out to Jane's in detail. The missile has an active terminal homing capability, which has been openly described since the first details of the SD-10 were made public in the middle of the last decade.

What has remained unspoken until now is the missile's claimed ability to home in on radar or electronic warfare emissions from the target aircraft, without support from the launch aircraft or use of the missile's own active seeker modes.

A LOEC official told Jane's that the passive mode was not intended to be the missile's primary targeting mode and cited the risks to friendly aircraft of relying on passive guidance alone. It is not clear if the SD-10A's seeker can continually alternate between active and passive modes in flight or if it makes a less sophisticated 'one time' switch.

In the past, Russian sources have given Jane's a detailed account of the assistance supplied by Russian design bureaus in the development of the SD-10. A LOEC official hinted that this co-operation is continuing when he noted: "We [LOEC] have the capability to make the seeker ourselves, but obviously we want it to be the best it possibly can." He confirmed that the missile still relied on some unidentified components that were sourced outside China.

Within Russia the AGAT Design Bureau has developed several dual-mode seeker designs which it only began discussing in public in 2009. Senior AGAT officials have remained vague when asked by Jane's about who paid for these development programmes, noting only that there is no Russian application and no Russian state support for them.

During the 1990s China also gained access to the 9B-1032 passive seeker developed by Avtomatika for the Vympel R-27P (AA-10 'Alamo') AAM. A melding of these two design inputs might explain how China arrived at its SD-10 seeker design. According to a LOEC official, the dual-mode capability was designed into the SD-10 from its inception.

An SD-10A missile (underwing) is part of the weapons suite of a Pakistan Air Force JF-17 at November's Airshow China.

China's airborne weapons array gets an airing at home show.

Robert Hewson JDW Correspondent - Zhuhai, China



The Airshow China 2010 show, held in Zhuhai between 16 and 21 November, was a shop window for China's latest air weapons programmes - all of which are available for export and some of which are already in service. The show underlined China's continuing development emphasis on small precision guided munitions (PGMs) and larger stand-off weapons.

The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) is active in both fields through its FT (Fei Teng, 'To Soar') series of PGMs. Current versions include the baseline 500 kg class FT-1 and 250 kg class FT-3 INS/GPS-guided bombs. When fitted with range extension kits, these two weapons become the FT-2 and FT-6 respectively. The pop-out wings give both bombs a gliding range of up to 90 km.

According to CASC, these weapons can be used against "hostile political targets, military headquarters, [industrial] plants, harbours, power plants, transformer substations, communication centres and ground forces."

The FT-5 is described by CASC as "a small diameter bomb" and it stands apart from the other FT weapons by virtue of its smaller size and revised airframe configuration (CASC does not appear to have an FT-4). The FT-5 weighs between 55 kg and 75 kg, according to CASC data.

At Airshow China CASC made reference to "an additional seeking system which greatly improves its delivery precision", allowing the weapon to "precisely attack small point targets" with CEP (Circular Error Probability) accuracy of around 5 m. The INS/GPS-guided FT weapons are accurate to between 10 and 20 m CEP.

The new guidance system for the FT-5 is almost certainly a semi-active laser (SAL) seeker, allowing precise terminal guidance by the launch aircraft or forces on the ground. CASC is integrating the FT-5 on its CH-3 medium-range long-endurance UAV.

Drop tests with unguided weapons began in 2009 and a CASC official told Jane's that guided tests would be completed in 2011. Jane's was also told that this armed CH-3 configuration was being sold to Pakistan, with 20 air vehicles to be acquired.

A similar SAL-equipped enhanced guidance fit has been developed by the Luoyang Electro-Optical Technology Development Centre (LOEC) for two new variants of its LS-6 guided weapon family. The 50 kg LS-6(50) and 100 kg LS-6(100) use some of the basic GPS/INS guidance components of the much larger LS-6(250) and LS-6(500) but with a redesigned airframe and a new laser seeker for enhanced precision.

The two previously unseen 'small diameter' LS-6s have a specially developed tubular warhead fitted with a tail kit housing the bombs' GPS/INS guidance systems and actuated control surfaces. Four long-span, short-chord wing surfaces are strapped on to the bomb body to provide extra lift for gliding range. Each weapon is tipped with a circular SAL seeker.

LOEC says that an infra-red seeker is a future guidance option.

Development of the small diameter LS-6s does not seem to be as advanced as the CASC FT-5. LOEC says it has clients for the weapons but that drop-testing has not begun.

LOEC placed less emphasis on UAV operations with its small weapons, noting they were best suited to expanding the warload of aircraft such as the J-10 and the JH-7.

A LOEC official said that the LS-6(50) and LS-6(100) were also well-suited to internal carriage. The official added that this was not yet a design feature on any current Chinese combat aircraft but would emerge on China's coming fifth-generation fighter, which was acknowledged to be in an advanced development phase.

The CASC FT-5 guided bomb may have been further developed with a new semi-active laser seeker, although this was not evident on the models at Airshow China 2010.

LOEC's LS-6(100) is the larger of the two new 'small diameter' variants of the LS-6 series exhibited for the first time at Airshow China 2010. It combines an additional laser terminal seeker with its basic INS/GPS guidance fit