I’ve been reading the FC-1 thread and shaking my head. Apparently some think that LCA is better than F-10 which must be better than JL-17 etc etc etc. On some level, some of these statements are fair, but by and large lots of it is out of context and politically biased. I'm not taking sides...
I think that direct comparison is useful and interesting, but some sort of perspective helps. Different air forces have different needs and at any rate, an airframe is only a small part of the wider picture.
The classic example would be people reading spec data and taking it as fact. What's the point in arguing that your country's fighter has a smaller radar cross-section (Hint, those published figures are normally for a clean airframe) than mine's on the one hand, and then arguing that it's also better because it can carry more external loads... which undermines the radar cross-section point. See the contradictions mounting up. Then, for the sake of example, let's put the relevance of RCS into perspective. Someone may argue that the F16A has a lower radar cross-section than the Su-30 –so what? With underslung loads, from non-head-on etc, both are far from "stealthy". At any rate the Su-30 will probably see the F16A first, simply because of better radar performance and, much more crucially, AWAC/Ground radar support. Bigger picture puts the “spec†data into context, mostly showing it to be irrelevant.
Context, context context…
Rant over
