Allow me to explain, just by researching the technology see you need not to fly the thing to know it was never meant to dogfight and is nothing more than a freak of a naval strike fighter severely over buffed to be a dogfighter because GJ needed something to sell about it with such a limited loadout they were not interested in truly modelling.
The JH-7 has swept-back high mounted wing, dog tooth leading edges and marked anhedral.
Starting with High Mounted Wings.
Very high drag design and stall characteristics are of great concern in the low-speed handling regime. Assuming an aircraft’s horizontal tail is mounted at or near the bottom of the fuselage, the high wing aircraft’s turbulence from the wing at high angles of attack may be more likely to interfere with the aircraft’s tail. This wake interference is dependent on flap position and a number of other design factors; however, two primary effects can be surmised.
The high mounted wing aircraft are more likely to encounter a strong buffeting effect near stall deterring the flight crew from slowing down. The interference of the wing with the tail may decrease the effectiveness of the elevator due to the effect of “downwash.” The downwash effect, in production aircraft is highly dependent on specific design criteria, but ultimately this effect reduces the angle of attack on the horizontal tail, reducing elevator effectiveness. With stronger pre-stall buffet and decreased elevator effectiveness the high wing aircraft will exhibit stall characteristics in pitch that both discourage stall entry and increase the pilot effort required to achieve stall. The low wing aircraft in contrast will exhibit stall characteristics in pitch that provide less warning to the pilot of impending stall.
Additionally, the high mounted platform is very drag inducing. It’s probably why an aircraft has engines capable of a staggering 20,520lb of afterburning thrust each and is barely a 1.5 Mach capable platform.
dog tooth leading edges
It’s nothing but one of the earliest forms of leading-edge designs suitable for swept-back wing like the Hawker Hunter and F4C. However, the dogtooth is largely irrelevant to the performance of the JH-7A as this jet’s high mounted wing design came with literally no leading-edge flaps to allow airflow to pass over the already difficult high mounted wing at any angle of attack and not separate from the wings and immediately stall. The aircraft is not meant for high alpha. It is not meant for dogfighting.
Anhedral (downward) angled wings.
These wings are nothing special, yes, they do offer better instability however, once again stability is greatly increased with these high mounted wings as well as drag, roll is greatly hindered in high wing aircraft, the center of gravity sits below the wing, meaning that the fuselage of the aircraft acts as a pendulum to increase roll stability relative to the low wing aircraft, whose center of gravity is balanced above the wing. Anhedral angled wings in this situation are merely there as attempt counteract the pendulum like stability of the high mounted wings of such large and heavy aircraft with no leading-edge flaps.
There is nothing on this aircraft that ever suggested it was once remotely capable of dogfighting, especially performing the Star Wars maneuvers it does in game. The combination of technology in the airframe is nothing modern at all, but actually comes from way back in Vietnam, found in the F8 Crusader having the exact same high mount swept back wings, dog tooth and Anhedral (downward) angled wings.
The difference here is that the Crusader had actual gigantic leading-edge flaps to perform sustained high angles of attack that are completely nonexistent on JH-7A however it just magically performs right there with a spaded Crusader though the crusader is vastly lighter at 18,000lbs empty both spaded roughly carry the same thrust to weight ratio.
I do not care about nerfing the JH-7A to be clear.
I am merely point out how the hell does the SMT remain this heavily nerfed with a clear lack of lift, but a crap ton of drag all because of 2000lbs of upgrades? while at the same time we have a much heavier mutant naval strike fighter flying around like it’s a super flankers on min fuel with a wing set up designed from the early Vietnam War.