Chengdu next gen combat aircraft (?J-36) thread

Blitzo

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Sorry for the late reply, but this is the discontinuity that I was getting at.
View attachment 153770

If that is the discontinuity you're referring to, well I must say to me it doesn't look like a discontinuity, but rather just a camouflage splodge.


If you look at the bigger picture, it would look something like this -- I've tried to illustrate the S-duct and where the engine nozzles ends up. See also @WaterbDoge 's CG which gets at the same idea -- the taper of the dorsal intake should be quite steep at this angle, given that we are almost head-on and that the intake does not appear to widen significantly since it is constrained within the two side engine nacelles in previous side-on photos.
View attachment 153773

I understand where the logic comes from, but the problem is that from this near frontal angle we shouldn't actually be able to see the taper of the dorsal intake that clearly -- the taper should be mostly obscured by the front of the dorsal intake and dorsal fuselage.

If we look at the perspective lines running front to rear (drawn out in your image as well, based on the weapons bay door lines, which I've also done and duplicated at various parts of the aircraft such that they all run parallel to each other), it somewhat demonstrates just how much of the "rear" of the aircraft we really shouldn't be able to see from this angle -- including the "taper" of the rear part of the dorsal intake blending back into the fuselage.

1749287858931.png


I'm not trying to rule out other explanations, to be clear. But given a combination of past photos of the left side, which have not had these white splotches curving in that way (see below), a liberal estimate that a mirrored image is relatively unlikely, and my understanding of aerodynamics and area ruling indicating to me that the inlet manifold will be more likely narrow rather than wide, this seems to me the most likely shape.

View attachment 153774

Anyways, I'm happy for everyone to keep their own reservations and I'm sure we'll find out in due time (hopefully not too long).

My view is that the "inconsistencies of the camouflage splotches are a combination of:
- not having seen the aircraft from this angle before
- camouflage inherently being difficult to make sense of, especially in absence of high resolution images of a three dimensional model that already exist
- possible image artefact due to digital zoom or built in AI enhancement causing a degree of fuzziness

I don't actually disagree with much of what you've depicted in your annotations except for the part about the dorsal fuselage/intake -- you've depicted it too symmetrically, whereas from the angle it should look more like this: (my line for overall aircraft silhouette in green)

1749288179432.png

===

I think this image can depict what I mean most clearly -- with the yellow highlighted bits being the approximate part of the dorsal intake on the new frontal aspect image, corresponding with the side image.

1749288484992.png
 

Tomboy

Junior Member
Registered Member
That's just a very weird design though, that's a massive panel I can't imagine such a large panel popping open fast enough to allow the speedy launch of interceptor missiles also it probably would be terrible to increase your RCS and kill all your energy from deploying the airbrake every time you launch an interceptor missile. Also, from the patents it seems that these missiles launch vertically upwards this panel does not seem to open all the way vertically to allow such a launch.
 
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