PLA Air Force General News Thread:

New American equipment is no longer affordable even for a country that prints its own money...

Drones are popular in the west because they are almost affordable, but only the small cheap drones make sense, and the big expensive ones probably make more sense during peace time but look at the conflict in the Ukraine... the big drones are not being used because they are just too vulnerable to a decent air defence.

I agree. Without the external buyers the f-35 would be as expensive as the f-22. And they aren't buying it because they need it but because the US oblige them to do so.

Big drones are good for peace time monitoring or some EW/Elint activities during a war staying outside of the enemy AD. On the battlefield stuf like Geran-2, small zala and Forporst-R are what is needed.

Orion, Tb-2 and similar are already too vulnerable to fighter jets and AD. Bigger ones like rq-4 or Altius that are as big as a c-130 aircraft are just easy targets above the battlefield.

China expected to retire legacy J-7 fighter jets from combat service in 2023.

The retired J-7s could be reserved for training and testing, or they could be modified to become drones and play new roles in modern warfare, analysts said.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202301/1284429.shtml

The J-8 cant be far behind. So in a couple of years the oldest fighter in PLAAF should be the Su-27.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the balloon discovered in the US sky really belongs to China, but it has a purely civilian scientific purpose.
According to Chinese diplomats, the balloon is used for scientific meteorological research, and in the state of Montana, where the main part of the US ground nuclear arsenal is located, it was simply blown away by a tailwind.
Against the backdrop of these developments, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has already postponed his planned visit to China.

 They have balls The balloon is flying over the ICBM missile base and the US is unable to intercept it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.... so the Chinese excuse is that it is.... a Weather Balloon....

Hilarious....



(For those not familiar with the Cold War any CIA or US military aircraft or western platform shot down over Soviet or Eastern block territory was on a training mission or was a weather balloon or other such innocent thing...)

Can someone explain to me about this Chinese Spy Balloon that the US shot down? What is going on? Do it belong to China and why would China do something like this?


https://www.yahoo.com/gma/us-tracking-large-chinese-spy-221300297.html

Yes chinese balloon above US territory. China says it"s a meteo balloon. US says it's a spy balloon.

Frankly the weather balloon that get pushed by winds story is not impossible. Such balloons are sent in the high atmosphere to study winds and air. It has no propulsion so can easily get lost.

Can the Chinese government now have an argument for shooting down low orbit American satellites?

No. US had the right to shoot it down... it was threatening their civilian aviation in their airspace. Just like Iran had the right to hijack and shoot down US drones in their airspace.

Threatening their civilian aviation?
Wasn't this flying around 60000 feet? More than 18 km height? And these balloons often can fly above 80000 feet (around 24 km).

The normal commercial jet cruising altitude is between 33000 feet and 42000 feet (about 10 to 13 km).
Why was that dangerous to civilian aviation?

In this case we could extend the reasoning and say that a spy satellite at 200 km can be a danger.