Everyone still remembers that a while ago, CCTV interviewed me about the J-16 pilot, and the J-16 pilot told about a dogfight in the East China Sea with U.S. stealth fighters, finally achieving 1 lock 2 and forcing the U.S. stealth fighter to retreat. At that time, everyone thought it was an F-35 or F-22, but the maneuverability of the F-35 and F-22 wouldn't be so poor.

However, the American media "Military Observation" directly confirmed that the one locked by the J-16 was not an F-35, but an F-22, even admitted that the J-16 fighter had a "dominant advantage" in this air combat.

In the U.S. media's report, they first openly admitted that the J-16's onboard radar has the capability to counter stealth, directly stating that the J-16's radar antenna is large, with a diameter exceeding one meter, and has a high power, which is not weak in detecting stealth targets. Moreover, the J-16's infrared search and track system can detect airborne 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 the 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 aircraft.

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

The U.S. media also said that during this close-range fight with the F-22, the F-22 exposed a fatal flaw: lacking helmet-mounted sight technology, the F-22 could not lock onto the J-16 in close combat.

A helmet-mounted sight is a sighting 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 rapidly intercept targets with missiles.

The advantages of the helmet-mounted sight are two-fold. 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-right pitch and yaw, almost reaching ±60 degrees in azimuth and ±40 degrees in pitch; second, it greatly reduces the weapon response time. Simulation results of air combat 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%, and the enemy loss ratio for the same target goes from 1.8:1 to 3.8:1.

The reason why it has such a significant effect is that after the helmet-mounted sight is installed, the eyes see where, and the missile's "spotter" (the target detection and tracking part inside the missile's warhead) also points there simultaneously. Before firing, the missile has already tracked the target seen by the pilot's eyes (a switch is needed to confirm this), and once other conditions are met (distance, off-axis angle, etc.), it can fire after computer verification.

The F-22 was developed earlier, and its avionics system adopted a very advanced yet extremely closed and highly integrated "joint" architecture at that 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 during its initial design (late 1990s). Its software and hardware architecture are very fixed, and due to the need for ultimate stealth performance, the electromagnetic compatibility requirements in the cockpit were extremely strict.

When the U.S. Air Force later realized the importance of the helmet-mounted sight and tried to retrofit it onto the F-22, it encountered great difficulties. Directly transplanting the JHMCS system used on the F-16 or trying 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.

Not only can the helmet-mounted sight aim, but it can also directly project key flight data and target information in front of the pilot's eyes, realizing "head-up display," significantly enhancing situational awareness. That is why in the confrontation with the J-16, the F-22 pilot's reaction capability lagged behind, and after the J-16 performed a defensive roll, the F-22 pilot couldn't shake it off.

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

By contrast, the J-16's helmet-mounted sight technology is globally leading, being a standard third-generation helmet, 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, while the J-16's system achieves the pilot's "visual locking" capability through high-precision sensors and advanced algorithms—just by rotating the head to look at the enemy aircraft's cockpit, the missile guidance head can automatically point to the target, greatly shortening the attack response time.

This system, when combined with high agility dogfight missiles such as the PL-10 carried by the J-16, allows the pilot to launch an attack without laboriously adjusting the aircraft axis during air combat, significantly increasing the chances of winning in close-range air combat.

Additionally, the system is deeply integrated with the aircraft's active electronically scanned array radar and distributed optical aperture system through data fusion technology, projecting radar and electro-optical detection information in real-time to the helmet display. This way, the pilot can "see" the 360-degree battlefield through the fuselage. This virtual透视 capability greatly enhances the pilot's situational awareness.

That is why the J-16 pilot could quickly achieve 1 lock 2 with the help of the onboard radar's anti-stealth capability. What made the U.S. media feel desperate was what? If it was beyond visual range air combat, then the gap between the J-16 and the U.S. would be even greater, because the PL-15 has already proven it can destroy fourth-and-a-half generation aircraft over 200 kilometers away, 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 advanced electronic jamming technology, meaning that in actual combat, the U.S. radar cannot detect the J-16.

So think about it, what can the F-22 and F-35 do to confront our J-16? The U.S. media's report actually reveals a fact—that the development of U.S. weapon technology has stagnated since the 1990s.

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7559632291254682151/

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