China's new fighter

[102first_hussars]

The Chinese military projects i tend to take a little more seriously then the Iraniuns

i do recall there being a thread on this exact plane already

 

[mikemike]

I think you american guys would be upset that the Israelis recieved $1.3 billion of US funding for the Lavi and now toss the beast to a possible foe

The Lavi story is a bit more complicated: The plane was conceived by the Israeli airforce, tailored to their requirements. The development was partly financed by the US government, as part of the military aid to Israel. But when the Lavi was ready to go into series production, the USA cut all the funding to force the Israelis to buy F-16s. (No propaganda: it was officially stated at the time that it was not in the interest of the US Government to finance competition to the US aerospace industry!) No wonder that made a lot of bad blood with the Israelis who had sunk enormous R&D effort into a potentially super plane, far better than the F-16, just to be forced to buy that ageing design the USA was selling to all and sundry in the Middle East at the time.
It was probably not the wisest move to give the design to China, but you can understand the motivation.

As a Canadian, you may remember that a similar switch was pulled on the RCAF. It might have got the CF-105, but was left with some tired F-101s. But at least it was your own government that shot you in the back in that case.

 

[102first_hussars]

As a Canadian, you may remember that a similar switch was pulled on the RCAF. It might have got the CF-105, but was left with some tired F-101s. But at least it was your own government that shot you in the back in that case.

yeah thats a bit sensitive subject among some Canadians till this day


I hate Deifenbaker, he gave Conscervatives a bad name