Nigeria's "Dragon" installed on the Turkish photoelectric pod? China-made pods still need to work hard...
Recently, a video was released on foreign social media showing a JF-17 "Dragon Fighter" in Nigeria, which is numbered 720. It can be clearly seen that this "Dragon" has a large dark gray pod mounted in the belly of the aircraft, which is almost certainly an ASELPOD photoelectric targeting pod made by the Turkish company ASELSAN.
Coincidentally, on pakistan's independence day not long ago, the "dragon" of the Pakistan Air Force also carried the ASELPOD pod. At present, the "Dragon Fighter" of the Pakistan Air Force will use this Turkish photoelectric aiming pod for precision guided attacks on the ground. The ASELPOD pod is equipped with infrared and daytime cameras that enable pilots to detect targets from great distances. When performing an attack, laser-guided munitions can be aimed at the target using a laser marking unit and allow the pilot to lock on to a moving or fixed target.
It is understood that the performance of the Chinese-made WMD-7 photoelectric pod originally equipped by the "Dragon Dragon" has a big gap with the Turkish pod, so Pakistan chose the latter. At present, it seems that the ASELPOD pod is also used as an export supporting product of "Dragon Owl".
Objectively speaking, China's export fighters still do not attach much importance to the application of precision-guided weapons (export-type UAVs seem to be the opposite), although many guided bombs and missiles have been launched, but the electronic equipment supporting the export is still insufficient. Although the problem was exposed a decade ago, there is not much improvement in exports today.
