People’s Daily Web reported that some overseas media said China is busy with testing the latest PL-13 air-to-air missile on J-20 stealth fighter, which would be a serious threat to America’s F-22 fighter.
Chinese military expert Li Li said in an interview that no fighter would be able to escape from such attack from J-20 with PL-13 missiles under the assistance of early warning aircraft.
It is reported that PL-13 air-to-air missile is about 3 meters long, 170mm diameter and 500mm wide, which are beyond any other combat missiles in service in the world, and is nearly France’s Mica missile.
PL-13 missile adopts edge wing design, which is close to Russia’s R-77’s wings, but the rear is similar to Russian R-27 missile, and might use thrust vectoring.
The U.S. once organized air combat battle between F-22 stealth fighters, and found fights between stealth fighters could become short-distance fighters and China has obviously accepted this theory, and PL-13 is the result of this theory.
PL-13 missile will be used together with long-range early warning aircrafts, which will send target information via data chain to J-11B and J-10 fighters with PL-13 missiles.
Analysts said PL-13 will be similar to America’s state-of-the-art Sidewinder missile, and almost no aircraft could get rid of its targeting. Japanese Military Research magazine said J-20 fighters will use similar radar to that of F-22, and combined with PL-13 air-to-air missile, Japan’s weapons bought from U.S.A would have no advantage.
Besides, Chinese military expert Li Li said J-20 fighter and PL-13 missile will form a system together with early warning aircrafts, which will be able to find enemies hundreds kilometers away, and guide J-20 to attack them.
She added that Sidewinder missile is an infrared guidance type missile different PL-13’s rear tracking, and PL-13 air-to-air missile’s speed might be as high as Mach 4 to 5, giving no opportunity for escape of any targets.
