Is rcs smaller than palm of your hand claim a mistranslation? Could it be your fist? Because palm suggests a plate, which can have quite huge rcs, or near zero, if viewed from other angles. But fist could be approximated into a sphere of a certain size. Which makes more sense as a reference point for rcs measurement.
J-35A fighter (PLAAF) + FC-31 thread
- Thread starter ACuriousPLAFan
- Start date
Obviously it means the RCS is smaller than the frontal area of your average palm which iirc is somewhere around 60cm2.
If PLA didn't value 2D TVC, then J-50 which is even more advanced and premier fighter of the PLA, wouldn't have it. But it does, so maybe their 2d tvc nozzle just wasn't developed in time for J-35, and only was developed for the next gen.
There is some kind of design freeze in every air frame. J-35 freeze probably happened couple of years back and missed out on the tvc
TVC is far more important for the J-50 as it is tailless. I hope you can read a bit more about what the benefits of TVC actually are in comparison to the drawbacks, as you seem to be extremely opinionated but rather ignorant.
Well that depends on many variables. I ran a calculation for sphere with 10 cm diameter against a plate 10x10 cm and for X band, i got 0.00785 m2 for the sphere and 1.4 m2 for the plate. For uhf band its much, much closer. (0.014 m2 for the plate) Of course, could be said math is incorrect.
Again, you just proved my point. If TVC wasn't useful, the PLA wouldn't be developing it for its 6th-gen fighters. But its value goes beyond that. Look at the US with TVC on the F-22, and Russia adding it to the Su-57.
For the J-35, which doesn't have the J-20's canards, TVC is a logical step for better maneuverability. And for the carrier-based version, it's even more critical—it would be a huge help for low-speed handling on the deck.
TVC for tailless fighters is partially to compensate for the lack of a tail, and the stability and control benefits a tail grants. TVC comes with weight penalties and additional complexity, and certain nozzle types also have a thrust penalty. On carriers, the PLAN would have to balance those factors, which potentially increase maintainence footprint and payload capacity with the handling benefits. They may consider it worth it, however there is good reason to drop TVC if your design priorities do not require it. In the end all design is to acheive specific capabilities and TVC as well as other shiny features you seem to obsess over may simply not be on the list.
Your overthinking, they just mean the RCS in the relevant band is about the size of a palm which is 50cm2 or around -25dsbm level. Not that it literally have the exact same signature as a human palm.
Any design must also account for the current maturity of the industry and its ability to deliver a feature on time. China's jet engine sector is still relatively less mature. So, even if all the design priorities support adding TVC for the J-35, the industry may not have the capability to develop a TVC-capable WS-19 on schedule.
The PLA likely has an urgent need to deploy the J-35, particularly for its carriers, and might not be able to wait for the ideal engine. This could lead to an initial deployment with an engine that works, even if it isn't the final, TVC-equipped setup.