manoba wrote:
But what is the little story? Both fighters look similar except for the engines. Hope F-5G/F-20 hasn't got photoshoped (reengineered with single engine) as Thundaar in China!
The story is a little bit more complex than that - but what you say is possible in an indirect way.
In the late 1980s when Osama bin Laden was a great freedom fighter, the Chinese and the Americans were thick as thieves. China contracted Grumman corp to help her upgrade Chinese MiG 21 clones (called F-7) to create a super MiG 21 called "Super -7". What Grumman did was to put a nose cone on the design and move the intakes to the side. The nose cone of the "Super-7/Grumman Sabre II" was to house the radar of the F-20 Tigershark. Grumman was clearly playing with its own ideas about the F-5/F-20 and was trying to sell it to various nations. You probably know hat Grumman tried to palm off the F-20 to India. A sale of F-20s to Taiwan was blocked by the US government because the Chinese would get upset and get their kimkoms in a twist.
Here are photographs of the designs of Super-7/Saber-II.
Click on the image below to see the original Grumman Sabre II design, and the Super-7/FC-1 project that came later.
The Sabre-II retained MiG 21s Delta wing but from the front the design looks pretty much like what the Thundaar does today. But Grumman had to pull out because of the Tiananmen love fest. But not before they had shared ideas with China, which went on and started what was called the FC-1 project that later became the Thundaar JF-17. The FC-1 retained the nosecone of the Super-7/Saber II/F-5 and the front profile looks very similar.
But what the Chinese did for the FC-1 was to change the classic MiG 21 delta to the delta with relatively shorter chord (and longer wingspan) that we see on the Bundaar as can be seen in the head on front views in the image above.
Yesterday when I was searching for some other photos I was struck by the remarkable similarity of proportions of the Thundaar and the F--5 and realised that both have a Grumman corporation lineage. It is possible that the Chinese have taken various inputs from Grumman and I wouldn't put is past them to have used the Grumman F-20 design as a basic template for the JF-17. The JF-17 could be son of MiG 21 father and F-5/F-20 mother with Grumman being the pimp.
The Z-10 attack helicopter is under development in China. It’s development began in the mid-1990s. Prototype of the Z-10 maid it’s maiden flight in 2003. It is expected to enter service with Chinese army in 2008 – 2009. It will be the first dedicated modern Chinese attack helicopter. It has been designed with extensive technical assistance from Eurocopter and Augusta. Primary mission of the Z-10 is ant-armor and battlefield interdiction. It also has some limited air-to-air combat capabilities.
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