You can’t upgrade them easily.
J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VIII
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
All the issues comes from the engines. Baseline J20 cannot be expected to be able to mount WS15 without cost-ineffective ridiculous modifications. Similar issues troubles the Su57 which also struggles to accommodate AL51F in its current form. And without the power generation and cooling capability the new engines bring, electronical upgrades will have a barrier similar to what F35 is facing. Thankfully, WS10C2 being a heavily modified WS10 can greatly alleviate this issue while still fitting to the baseline airframe. If it is determined to be a fitting interim engine for J20A in its first year of mass production, it will certainly be able to solve the majority if not all of the problems the baseline aircraft have.
Eh not so fast. As mentioned before a super early initial introduction does not necessarily mean equally quick move towards mass adoption. I’d add also that the J-36 doesn’t necessarily fill the same roles or mission profiles as the J-20. We should consider the possibility that at least for the near term past IOC the J-36 might be treated as additive rather than substitutive for the mainstay air fleet. The real substitute for the J-20 (and J-35) insofar as mainstay fleet production is concerned is probably going to be the J-50 and we don’t have any updates on how quickly that program is moving to my best knowledge.
Is it anticipated that UADFs will eventually replace majority of 5th gens for the air superiority role?
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Supplement, not replace. Not in the foreseeable future in any case. It could well be that in the not too distant future, CCAs will become the majority of the force structure, but that will be more a case of adding more assets as opposed to it being a 1-1 replacement of manned fighters.
It’s similar to me not throwing out my old manual vacuum cleaning just because I bought a couple of robot vacuum cleaners. The original is already bought and paid for, throwing it away when it’s still perfectly serviceable just makes no sense, especially since I sometimes still need to use it to supplement the robots.
I wouldn't be so confident with WS-10C2, from one of the first posts on production WS-15 airframes some "credible" posters commented that WS-10C2 was still limited at providing J-20A with electrical power and cooling. Though it may be possible to design MLU avionic upgrades for legacy J-20s with WS-10C2's limits in mind but IMO, as for flight performance, I'm not as optimistic given WS-10C2 is still basically just a 4th generation engine being modified to the extreme and the base design here isn't exactly good for what it is in the first place. AFAIK from a paper on UADF, I believe the SL static thrust for WS-10C2 is probably ~15.5tf which is comparable to F-119 but it is unknown whether the whole performance envelope would still compare favourably especially for supercruise and transonic regimes.
There were upgrade routes for the GE F110 engine that were specced for 178 kn. Don’t sneeze on “4th gen architecture”.
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I'll never forgive Lockheed for sticking us with these "generation" marketing terms. What even is a "5th gen" turbofan vs a "4th gen?"
Increasing static thrust wouldn't really matter if it could not match true 5th generation engines at flight regimes where it actually matters like attaining good supercruise speed and efficiency or good transonic acceleration which IMO is far more important for J-20.
4th generation turbofan is usually designed more around subsonic flight regime and is relatively inefficient at supersonic speeds while 5th generation turbofans are designed to sacrifice some subsonic cruise efficiency (F-119 is very fuel thristy) for higher supersonic efficiency and performance like allowing for high supercruise. Next generation VCE are suppose to provide the best of both worlds by offering both good subsonic cruise efficiency and high supercruise speed and performance.
Then is the P&W F135 a 4th gen turbofan by this definition?