It's not the kind of plane you can hide so there's no ponit in trying. My reading is that the PLA isn't impressed by what they know about the American efforts so it's not much of a risk. Besides, the most important element of the J-36 is that third engine and the one for the J-50 is the rotating wing tips. These aren't ideas that can be copied without designing a new plane. Also, the control systems and avionics are crucial and they're impossible to copy by just looking at the design.
Ask anything Thread (Air Force)
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
are movable wingtips better than canards?
Can't really keep aircraft secret, given that the factories are in densely populated areas.
China will likely develop the aircraft faster in any case. See below
Now that the J-36 has been seen, do you see any other country trying to create an air superiority aircraft designed to operate 3000km+ away? Note that the Shenyang aircraft should be quite similar to the USAF F-47 anyway.
twz.com/china-acquiring-new-weapons-five-times-faster-than-u-s-warns-top-official
The speculation is that they're a replacement for vertical stabilzers, but nobody has ever designed something quite like it before.
Canards should be detectable by long-wave radars.
Movable wingtips should avoid this, but they are more complex
Is it possible that any of the two 6 gens could have some sort of APS?
Other countries are not so stupid as to not understand concepts like tailless designs or three engines regardless of whether you show them. But copying aircraft is and always has been extremely difficult because the hard part is actually making them, not just coming up with ideas.
Easy analogy is how any physics student understands how to build a nuclear weapon. The hard part is actually doing it.
Has there been any developments/rumors/patents etc etc regarding aircraft equip-able towed decoys?
lcloo
Major
If you considered a drone as an aircraft, yes. There was a video on youtube that I watched a few days ago, in which PLA mappads were used to hit the flare decoy towed by a drone with cable.
However, if you refer to the current in-service fighter jet or other man aircraft, then I don't know.
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Two different designs. Delta canards need canards in order to bring the center of lift forward, because their wings are so far back. Movable wingtips are no different than elevons and ailerons. They just pivot about their center instead of hinging at an extremity. This makes them larger and more efficient at redirecting air.
If we're talking stealth, then a movable wingtip would be better by virtue of being part of the wing and not an entirely new surface.
Highly doubt that. If the wingtips deflect one way and ailerons the other in order to generate drag and achieve yaw, then one might as well go ahead and use split rudders instead of subjecting the control surfaces and wing to all these unnecessary bending moments and torsion. The J-50 already looks stable enough, directional wise. It has a void on its belly starting from between the intakes and all the way out the back between the nozzles, and it has another one on the top right behind the cockpit and out the back between the nozzles, somewhat like a YF-23. It will likely yaw using some sort of thrust augmentation/bleed, or split rudders, or both. We won't know until the design is finalized.