As a matter of fact, from a rational point of view, this arms purchase case is more or less gratifying than practical. Saudi Arabia bought a total of 120 different models of Tornado fighters from the British, and this fighter-bomber slowly withdrew from the mainstream of the world after the 90s, and then the British discontinued it in the 90s. Since then, heavy multirole fighters such as the F-15E and Su-30 have begun to replace traditional fighters such as the F-111, Su-24 and Tornado.

In other words, if Saudi Arabia's arms purchases are rational, in fact, it is not much, because a pilot of the Saudi Air Force is equipped with an average of about 3 fighters, completely 135 F-15, 246 Hurricane, and a European typhoon on Sunday (this is of course impossible, jokingly, even if there is one more pilot in the plane, only one fighter usually flies). Unlike China's Air Force and Navy, which are two planes with three pilots.

These countries in the Middle East have the habit of accumulating equipment, and they can rest assured that they don't usually need it in their own homes, and Saudi Arabia is a typical example. They can't play so many planes themselves, and they have to pay to hire a minibus pilot to fly for them.

After Zhao Jinsong found out about the deal of the century, he felt that it was a pity to let Britain earn the 43 billion pounds in vain. If cultivated well, Saudi Arabia can become the largest exporter of China's weapons stability, bring a large amount of foreign exchange to the country's economic development, and at the same time become an ally in the Middle East in the future.

So from the beginning of the operation, Zhao Jinsong's idea was not to seek to put Al? Yamaha agrees to eat it all, and at least half of it is also good. The first $7 billion alone is a sky-high contract, and it's hard to be emotional to think about it.

At this time, Prince Sultan interrupted Zhao Jinsong's thoughts and began to talk about business.

"In terms of character positioning, experts believe that the European Tornado and the Chinese Flying Leopard should be similar, and there is a striking similarity in appearance, except that the Tornado is a variable-swept wing fighter, while the Flying Leopard is a trapezoidal upper wing. Through a large number of arguments, our experts believe that there is still a gap between your country's flying leopard and European Gale in terms of body design and power system. ”

Zhao Jinsong does not want to deny that the design of the variable sweep wing adopted by the Tornado fighter makes it able to take into account the performance of both high speed and low altitude and low speed, and gives this fighter very excellent low-altitude penetration performance. Although the Flying Leopard fighter also has the ability to penetrate defense at low altitudes, there is still a certain gap between it and the wind in terms of flight quality at low altitudes. In Qi Yiming's time and space, the flying leopard had repeatedly crashed because of entering the tail spin at low altitude. However, the new leopard that Qi Yiming brought to this space-time PLA is a version with great changes, and a lot of bold modifications have been made in aerodynamics, although the shape can still be seen at a glance that it is a flying leopard, but it has become a lot more trendy, and the low-altitude performance of the flying leopard has been improved.

As for the power issue, there is really nothing particularly good to explain, the Flying Leopard and the Tempest are both the heart of Rolls-Royce, one is a turbofan-9 Qinling modified from Spey, and the other is Spey's next-generation RB199. The net weight of the turbofan-9 is more than 1800 kg, and the thrust-to-weight ratio is only 5. 05;RB199 does not even weigh 1000 kg, and the thrust-to-weight ratio is 7. 6. This level was already very dazzling in the seventies. Of course, the turbofan-9, which is almost twice as heavy as the RB199, has a thrust of 91 kN, which is a little larger than the RB199's 76 kN, but this comparison is moot.

In fact, there is a solution to the power problem, just change the hair. Spey's volume is even larger than the high-thrust engine WS-10A, and the WS-10A has a thrust of 132 kN and a thrust-to-weight ratio of 8, which directly lifts the flying leopard into heavy duty. It would be nice to change the WS-13A with similar thrust, but the WS-13 weighs 1100 kg, which is almost half smaller than the WS-9.

No matter which engine is replaced, the airframe has to be redesigned relatively largely. As far as Zhao Jinsong knows, there is indeed a project team that is replacing the Leopard B of the WS-13A, but he doesn't know what the result will be at this moment.

Zhao Jinsong naturally couldn't admit the above points, doing business too sincerely did not have much benefit, so he chose another way - to highlight his own advantages and compare the weaknesses of his competitors.

"Your Excellency, as you can see, in this conflict on the Korean Peninsula, our Flying Leopard fighters have played a very good role in battlefield disruption and air support, and in fact, we have already verified the role of Flying Leopards in the border conflict with Vietnam. Now the Vietnamese will not be able to carry out large-scale raids on our territory again in the jungles and mountains, because the flying leopards will bomb every bridge, road they need to cross, and raid at the assembly points of their soldiers.

In essence, our Flying Leopard and the British Tornado are two fighter-bombers in different combat modes, although our two fighters are similar in appearance, similar in size, and have the same bomb load, but the specific tactical use is different. Well, because of the large-scale use of precision-guided weapons and stand-off guided weapons, our fighters usually drop guided bombs in areas where the enemy's anti-aircraft fire has not yet covered 40-60 kilometers away, and these weapons can fly dozens of kilometers away and then accurately hit the opponent, and we do not need to fly close to the ground like a strong wind to avoid the enemy's anti-aircraft fire, and then fly to the enemy's head and drop the iron bomb. I can tell you very responsibly that in today's environment of anti-aircraft firepower, even if the Hurricane can complete the task and attack the opponent, it will face considerable battle losses, and they do have a chance to penetrate the enemy's defensive circle, but in a situation where it is inevitable that there will be collateral losses, a group of excellent pilots are likely to fall into the hands of the enemy, affecting the combat strength of the Air Force in the future. On the other hand, the pilots of the Flying Leopard can swim in the airspace of 3,000 to 6,000 meters, drop bombs and missiles out of the airspace, and then turn around and run.

Yes, these are two different modes of warfare, and I am confident that the way we choose is the direction of the development of the war, and it will not take long for the fighter-bomber with variable sweep wing to prove out of place, and then slowly withdraw from people's view, and eventually the throne of ground attack will be ceded to a carrier aircraft platform with precision strike capabilities like the Flying Leopard.

What else does our flying leopard have besides precision-guided weapons? First of all, the level of our Flying Leopard glass cockpit is much better than that of the Tempest, and the pilot's flight enjoyment is much stronger than that of the Tempest, a fighter developed in the sixties and seventies. Our Flying Leopard also uses a new data bus (actually 1553B), which is a three-axis dual-redundancy fly-by-wire flight controller, which greatly improves the compatibility and reliability of the avionics system.

Our Flying Leopard also has an electronic warfare model, which is commonly known as the Electric Flying Leopard. Equipped with a set of 4-7 pods, the Flying Leopard can complete a variety of tasks such as electronic suppression, communication interruption and eavesdropping, and electronic warfare support. I know that the Tornado fighter also has its own electronic warfare and reconnaissance models, but at this time I want to emphasize the ability to systematize and complete, the electronic warfare system used by the Electric Flying Leopard is definitely more comprehensive and excellent than the Tornado, if possible, the two fighters are pulled out and released in the sky, and it is no problem to see who can suppress whom.

The last point, our Flying Leopard actually only has a combat bomb model and an electric warfare model, and does not have the ADV air defense interception model of the Tornado, but what I want to say is that the Tornado as a fighter-bomber, its foundation is the battlefield blocking model of IDS, and even if the British have made a lot of improvements on its basis and developed the ADV air defense interceptor, it is still compared with the F-15 and F-14 equipped by the United States, and the Soviet Su-27 and other fighters There is a certain gap, Even against medium-sized aircraft MiG-29 and F-16, it is not necessarily advantageous. Frankly speaking, the Flying Leopard is also the foundation of a fight-bomber aircraft, and its air combat performance is scum, but our Flying Leopard has a PL-12, a medium-range interception projectile that does not matter after firing, and if we catch the enemy 80 kilometers away, we can knock the enemy down, and there is no need to enter a close-range dog fight.

Well, having said all this, compared to His Excellency the Prince, he must have some very basic cognition. I also want to emphasize that the price of a Tornado is about $30 million, which is still a flying price, and if you put together a weapon system or something, it must be a sky-high price at the very end. And the Flying Leopard as a fighter whose performance is close to that of the Tornado, our flight price is only 24 million, well, if Saudi Arabia is willing to order in large quantities, we can further discount, each fighter is equipped with a set of mounted weapons. An aircraft will include two PL-12 medium-range arrest missiles, two PL-9 infrared combat bombs, four 500-kilogram or eight 250-kilogram Thunder series or Thunderstone series guided bombs, two C-705 anti-ship missiles with a range of 160 kilometers and two C-901 anti-radiation missiles. Hehe, but a plane with so many weapons is about two or three million dollars, and the more you buy, the more I will give! ”

Prince Sultan couldn't help but be speechless, he actually had more confidence in the Flying Leopard in his heart, because judging from the actual situation he had grasped in the Vietnam battlefield and the South Korean battlefield, China's fighter-bomber performed well, although one fell in South Korea, but it was not a combat loss, and there were no casualties. On the contrary, the damage it inflicted on the enemy was astonishing to Prince Sultan and a group of Saudi experts.

In terms of pure bomb load, the two fighters are basically nine tons of pay, and in reality, the fylon design is more reasonable, and the wind can be carried more. Relatively speaking, the Flying Leopard, as the real body of the naval aviation fighter, has a stronger anti-ship assault capability than the Tornado. So each has its own merits.

But at this time, the wind has not yet been equipped with weapons such as Baobao Road and JDAM, but the flying leopard has begun to use thunder and thunder stones to accurately strike, and for Saudi Arabia, where pilot resources are precious, this ability to defend against the zone is more valuable than the low-altitude penetration performance near the ground that is better than the wind.

Now the Chinese have even shouted the price of 24 million weapons systems in one breath, which is nearly 10 million cheaper than the unit price of the British Tempest, although the Saudis are never bad for money, but it is also a joy to buy cheap things.