Compilation of supermaneuvers performed by The Chengdu J-10B fitted with WS-10 TVC engine performed its maiden flight this afternoon in Chengdu. The Shenyang WS-10 codename Taihang, is a turbofan engine designed and built by the People's Republic of China. Thrust vectoring, TVC, serves to manipulate the direction of the thrust from its engine in order to control the attitude or angular velocity of the vehicle. The J-10A is normally powered by a single Russian Lyulka-Saturn AL-31FN turbofan engine.
It was clear that the nozzle did vector downwards but only for a small degree. The minute deflection was enough to generate the lift necessary to keep the nose up during the pass. The angle of attack was between 20-30°. Even during the cobra maneuver, not much deflection of the nozzle is necessary to execute the classic move. As this is a single engine aircraft, the benefits of the TVC is limited to the lateral axis unless the engine can produce high thrust to weight ratio to contribute to the other two axis.
The Chengdu J-10 (NATO reporting name: Firebird) is a lightweight multirole fighter aircraft capable of all-weather operation, configured with a delta wing and canard design, with fly-by-wire flight controls, and produced by the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation (CAC) for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). J-10B is an upgraded J-10, initially identified as “Super-10”. It features a lighter and stealthier diverterless supersonic inlet, a longer nose radome possibly housing an active electronically scanned array radar, an electro-optic targeting sensor (IRST, and laser rangefinder,) and a new electronic warning or countermeasures pod atop the vertical stabiliser.
The J-10 is externally similar to the IAI Lavi. In 2008, aviation publishing house Jane’s alleged that China’s development of the Chengdu J-10 had benefited from technical information from the Lavi project, citing senior Russian engineers who said they had heard this from Chinese colleagues. This was echoed by PLAAF major Zhang Weigang in a 2012 interview. There have been no public statements or formal claims along those lines; by 2000, however, openly disclosed advanced technology transfer of any origin had become anathema to the United States, which forced Israel to cancel a sale of Phalcon airborne early warning planes.
