Everyone still remembers that recently, CCTV interviewed me about the J-16 pilot, and the J-16 pilot described a dogfight in the East China Sea with U.S. stealth fighters, ultimately locking onto two targets and forcing the U.S. stealth fighter to retreat. At that time, everyone thought it was an F-35 or an F-22, but the maneuverability of the F-35 and F-22 was not so poor.

However, the American media "Military Observer" directly confirmed that the F-22 was locked by the J-16, and even admitted that the J-16 fighter had a "dominant advantage" in this air combat.

In the U.S. media's report, it first admitted that the J-16's onboard radar has the capability to detect stealth targets, directly stating that the J-16's radar antenna is large, with a diameter exceeding 1 meter, and has high power, which is not weak in detecting stealth targets. Moreover, the J-16's infrared search and track system can detect aerial targets without turning on the radar.

This also confirms that China's onboard radar technology has broken the U.S. myth of anti-stealth. It should be noted that the nose of a fighter jet is so small that the aperture and power of its onboard radar are naturally constrained, making it impossible to carry ultra-high-power radar systems like ground-based large anti-stealth radars or airborne early warning systems.

The fact that the J-16's radar system can achieve anti-stealth indicates that our radar performance has developed to another dimension.

Moreover, the U.S. media stated that the F-22 exposed a fatal flaw in the close-range combat with the J-16, that is, the lack of helmet-mounted sight technology in the F-22 made it unable to lock onto the J-16 in close combat.

A helmet-mounted sight is a targeting device mounted on the pilot's helmet, which can guide radar, laser, and infrared devices, as well as movable gun mounts, to aim at the target; it can quickly control the launch of off-axis and large off-axis angle weapons. It plays an important role in improving the air-to-air combat capabilities of fighter jets and the ability to quickly intercept targets with missiles.

The advantages of the helmet-mounted sight are two. First, the field of view is large. The field of view of a general head-up display is 20°~30°, while the helmet can follow the head's left and right, up and down movements, almost reaching ±60° in azimuth and ±40° in pitch. Second, it greatly reduces the weapon reaction time. Air combat simulation results show that under the same conditions, the preparation time for launching a missile can be reduced by 8~18 seconds, and the probability of launching a missile increases from 50% to 70%. For the same target, the enemy loss ratio improves from 1.8:1 to 3.8:1.

The reason for such a significant effect is that after the helmet-mounted sight is used, the eyes see where the missile's "spotter" (the target detection and tracking part inside the missile's warhead) also points. Before launching, the missile tracks the target visually seen by the pilot (a switch is needed to confirm this), and once other conditions are met (distance, off-axis angle, etc.), it can fire after being verified by the computer.

The F-22 was born earlier, and its avionics system adopted a very advanced yet extremely closed and highly integrated "joint" architecture at the time. This system did not consider the helmet-mounted sight/display system (such as the JHMCS later popularized on the F-15 and F-16) as a core requirement when it was initially designed (late 1990s). Its software and hardware architecture were very fixed, and due to the need for extreme stealth performance, the cockpit had extremely strict electromagnetic compatibility requirements.

When the U.S. Air Force later realized the importance of the helmet-mounted sight and tried to install it on the F-22, it encountered great difficulties. Directly transplanting the JHMCS system used on the F-16 or attempting to introduce the more advanced HMDS system of the F-35 failed due to the above-mentioned electromagnetic compatibility issues and the inability of the underlying avionics system to effectively support it.

Furthermore, the helmet-mounted sight not only allows targeting but also directly projects key flight data and target information in front of the pilot's eyes, achieving "head-up display," significantly enhancing situational awareness. This is why during the confrontation with the J-16, the F-22 pilot's response capability lagged behind, and after the J-16 performed a defensive corkscrew maneuver, the F-22 pilot could not shake it off.

Without a helmet-mounted sight, it is impossible to support the large off-axis aiming of the AIM-9X air-to-air missile, which puts it at a disadvantage in close combat. That is why the F-22 couldn't lock onto the J-16.

By comparison, the J-16's helmet-mounted sight technology is globally leading, representing the third generation of helmets, which is ahead of the F-35's HDMS Gen3 series helmet display. Traditional helmet-mounted sights can only provide a rough direction of the target, whereas the J-16's system achieves the pilot's "visual lock" capability through high-precision sensors and advanced algorithms—just by rotating the head to look at the enemy aircraft's cockpit, the missile seeker automatically aligns with the target, significantly shortening the attack response time.

This system, combined with high-maneuverability combat missiles such as the PL-10 carried by the J-16, allows pilots to launch attacks without the need to adjust the aircraft's axis during air combat, significantly increasing the chances of winning in close-range air combat.

In addition, this system is deeply integrated with the aircraft's active electronically scanned array radar and distributed optical aperture system. Through data fusion technology, radar and electro-optical detection information are displayed in real-time on the helmet display, allowing the pilot to "see" the 360-degree battlefield through the fuselage. This virtual perspective capability greatly enhances the pilot's situational awareness.

That is why the J-16 pilot can quickly lock onto two targets with the help of the onboard radar's anti-stealth capability. What shocked the U.S. media was that if it came to beyond-visual-range air combat, the gap would be even larger because the PL-15 has already proven that it can destroy a fourth-generation-and-a-half aircraft at a distance of 200 kilometers, while the U.S. has not yet deployed the AIM-260 air-to-air missile, whose performance cannot reach 200 kilometers to destroy a fighter jet.

It should be noted that CCTV has publicly stated that both the J-16 and J-10C can achieve stealth effects through leading electronic jamming technology, meaning that in actual combat, the U.S. radar cannot detect the J-16.

Think about it, what do the F-22 and F-35 have to face against our J-16? The U.S. media's report actually reveals a fact—that the development of U.S. weapons technology has stagnated since the 1990s.

Original text: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7559742850389279275/

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