J-15"S" Two Seater Appears to be a Growler Analog

The Chinese have been working on a two seater version of its J-15 fighter. The West had dubbed it the S model and had thought it was a trainer. However, the Chinese have now flown a version of it, which they are seemingly calling the D model, that has wing tip EW pods and probably other electronic equipment internal to the aircraft. An interesting and obvious difference is this new model lacks an IRST, unlike its

The J-15 is the carrier version of the Su-27 derived fighters. Given the small contingent the current Chinese carriers have, the introduction of the Ganker (as I am calling it, Growler x Flanker) would indicate either they are expecting the two current carriers to act as more support ships carrying a lot of jammers with little strike or they are expecting to have a carrier with a much larger capacity. Given what we've heard so far on the carrier front, I'd lean towards the latter. Big carriers are coming...Big CHINESE carriers.

www.janes.com...

a reply to: anzha

I think China will use a larger variant of the J-F17 on future carriers. Just a hunch

wondered what that was saw one flying last month when was in china .
wasnt brave enough to try and get a photo of it .

J-15D and J-16D. The J-16D is land based, the J-15D is carrier based.

Hi Guys and Girls,

I have seen the Russian version close in, and the thing screams detectable. The Russians know this as that's one of the reasons the engine are far apart (An attempt to stop one engine fire becoming two!).

Maybe enough to annoy poor neighbors but that changes quickly if you decide to upset the Japanese or the Australians.

Flip side MBDA may get more Meteor sales :-)

Kind regards

RAB