Binkov's Battlegrounds

While this blog mentioned one event at China Airshow at Zhuhai in the last post, there's a whole bunch of potentially interesting photos and news bites coming out. So let's review some of them that seem to be bringing potentially new abilities to Chinese armed forces or Chinese military exports in the near future. Two different AESA radars for fighters were shown. Both were sized for small fighters, aiming at export. Both manufacturers claimed JF-17 could benefit from them. CETC, maker of the existing JKL-7 radar, showed an AESA variant with integrated side cheek arrays. The other manufacturer, in an alleged world-first, the LKF601E features an air cooled array. It allows for a lightweight and compact array that can easily retrofitted to existing older planes. Similar tech may find its way onto not only JF-17, but even smaller, cheaper planes, as well as Chinese early J-10A, after a potential retrofit. Brochure for the LKF601E radar A myriad of various drones were sh