2024 Zhuhai Airshow main thread, Air Systems

latenlazy

Brigadier
According to your photo, the J-35A is 83.0% the length of a J-20. If we are to assume the J-20 is 21.2m long from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail, that would make the J-35A approximately 17.6m long. That would be very close to the supposed 17.3m length of the FC-31 from many years ago.

If your photo is indeed accurate, the J-20 weapons bay is 7% longer than the J-35A weapons bay.

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If we are to assume the weapons bays are supposed to be of identical lengths, that would mean your photo is inaccurate. We would have to resize your J-35A photo by +7% to ensure its weapons bay is identical in length to the J-20 weapons bay. In this scenario, the entire J-35A would have increased to a length of 18.8m. That would be much longer than the rumored specs for the FC-31, which usually sat between 16.9m and 17.3m.

Could the J-35A really have grown that much bigger compared to the FC-31 prototype?

I haven't even spoken of the widths of the weapons bays. If the J-35A photo is resized by +7%, its weapons bay length will indeed match the J-20's weapons bay length. But even in this resized version, the J-20 weapons bay remains 5% wider than the J-35A weapon bay.

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I realize that comparing between photos is very prone to errors, especially when we don't have the actual specs of the J-35A as a frame of reference. But right now, I'm questioning the longstanding assumption that the J-35A weapons bay would be identical to a J-20 weapons bay.
I think you are confusing the length of the door hinges with the length of the bay. The sawtoothing on the J-35’s doors are shorter than the J-20’s.
 

THX 1138

Junior Member
Registered Member
I think you are confusing the length of the door hinges with the length of the bay. The sawtoothing on the J-35’s doors are shorter than the J-20’s.


I compared the middle seam of the weapons bays. I thought the middle seam would be a good indicator of the length of the opening. I see now that was a mistake.

Looking at photos of the open J-20 weapons bay, I now see that the external door is longer than the internal weapons bay. So it's possible the interior bay of the J-35A could still be just as long as the J-20's, even if its door looks shorter on the outside.


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by78

General
Ejection seats, life support, and pilot survival systems, etc...

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