Shilao and Yankee talked again about the UADFs tonight among other things, although they used kind of vague terms. They implied:
1. CAC and SAC were rather surprised that the two UADFs were called to participate in the parade, in their opinion it's a lot earlier than expected
2. the UADFs actually have quite a lot of focus on dogfighting, as sort of insurance and bodyguard for J-20S and 6th gens which are highly focused on BVR. Yankee mentioned offhandedly "20G" but I'm not sure if that's just a figure of speech showing AI's advantage to human or if its meant to be taken literately
3. In experiments with manned fighter pairings it's found that UADFs are particularly fast at reaching for the kill shot compared to human pilots. To the point that human pilots afterwards complain of the AI doing "kill steal" on them. Pilots being highly prideful folks sometimes had to be comforted with words like "yeah but he's a computer, he's never going to get a promotion over you no matter how many kills he score" and "it's not about who gets the kill, it's about winning together as people's air force". Yankee joked that maybe for morale sake they need to figure out a way for AI to toast humans at the dinner afterwards to smooth things over.
4. The very best human pilots can still outfight an UADF, but it's physically and mentally exhausting and if immediately faced with another UADF they're very unlikely to win again.
5. Yankee described the UADFs as "not a gram of it was for a strike role, every bit of it is for air superiority". Instead of smaller CCAs (MQ-28, YFQ-42 and YFQ-44 mentioned here as examples) they said given their size and the power of their engine it's more useful to think of them as unmanned J-10.
6. Shilao described a scenario for their use. Imagine a J-20S (might have been J-36, I forgot) and a F-22 snuck on on each other with their stealth. They get into WVR combat and J-20S takes out a pair of PL-10 while F-22 starts spinning it's gun. Shilao describes using 5th gen this way ("knife fight in a phone booth" as he puts it) as "不体面" or "unbecoming" for high tech fighters. Instead if J-20S had a UADF bodyguard it could just tell it to dogfight and beat the F-22 while it gets away.
7. The very smooth and highly polished appearance was a requirement from higher up. In CAC and SAC's opinion these aircrafts have not yet reached a stage where such care and attention to detail are required. But the order from above was slick and aesthetic appearance was also a requirement for displaying such advanced aircrafts so they insisted on it much to CAC and SAC's annoyance. The new paint job for J-20A and J-20S was for similar reasons and to differentiate them from regular J-20. The powers that be understand the soft power advantages that came with showing off cool looking aircrafts.
