Chengdu next gen combat aircraft (?J-36) thread

[00CuriousObserver]

I made it big in the China watching circle. If anyone from DC is reading this PM me so I can instruct you on where to deposit the DOGE coins.

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View attachment 142290

Damn I want a Guancha x SDF crossover podcast with Rick Deino and everyone

You've been locked on, quick deploy countermeasures!

In retrospect even though we had a good feel Guancha team knew a lot beyond what they're allowed to say on air the amount of info Yankee was privy to was still surprising. He said in the previous Chahuahui that he knew the layout of J-36 two years ago and when questioned by Ayi at Zhuhai this year on where the 3rd intake was and if it was on the back he gave him a plausible deniable nod. He really is worth the "and now even Yankee" comment.

With CJDBY gone those three have become one of the best sources, it helps they're witty too. They're like the Top Gear of PLA watching.

It must also be hard to precisely disclose what they're allowed to disclose and nothing more.

 

[enroger]

I am not sure how this works either with 1 MW generation. Typically I think anything that relies on high intensity RF (radar and EW) is the most energy intensive.

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But do you really need THAT much RF power?

The flight computer itself should take little energy and comms should be moderate. IDK enough about computing to judge but I don't think the power required to train an AI model is the same as the power required to simply use a pretrained model where you just load model weights. Even if you have like a few hundred pre-trained models for different scenarios, that's just storing numbers, as long as you don't need to figure out those numbers in the air.

IMO the most computation demanding job maybe the sensor fusion part, where it collects raw sensor data from multiple sensor nodes and combine it into a coherent battlefield picture. Especially if they try to pull something tricky like multi-static radar from multiple say WZ-9 drone. But still that is way short of MW level.

Comm should be as low emission as possible for obvious reason. Radar/EW (one and the same with AESA array) ideally as high power as possible, the only limitation is power rating of TR module, If they can manage 1MW on those then they absolutely should even if it can only lasts for minutes with battery power.

I personally think it would be overengineering to put all that into one air platform. The command/control "brain node" should ideally be as stealthy as possible and avoid danger at all cost, if so then powerful radar and EW would be a waste on such a platform. Conversely for a frontline attack node, all those computation and comm capacity would be a waste. Putting all those capacity on one platform just made sure only half of it's capability is used at any given time, and each time one get shot down it's double the pain

 

[whatnow]

I know that we're told to not share unrelated tweets anymore but this one is simply too funny:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1874131536347619475

At least 90% of them Western/Western-aligned crowd believe this...

LMAO Let's just say that their hubristic asses are in for a shock soon

 

[tphuang]

Also think about cooling and weight. 1MW of power would be accompanied by some 500 KW or more cooling demands. Coolers add weight and size, as well as generators Which for 1 MW assumption will be about 500-625 Kg worth of generator depending on whether there is CSD (Constant Speed Drive) or not.

The power consumption part itself is going to include cooling. Also the Chinese EV industry is fairly advanced in thermal management. Your assumption about cooling demand and weight is unlikely to be accurate based on why we have seen in EVs.

we have cars that are 3 ton and supporting 1MW in electric motor. I don’t see how they can possibly use 20% of weight for cooling.

F

I’d tap the brakes a little on 1 MW sustained power. Might still be more aspirational for now.

I got the 1MW from NGAD program. Are you saying J-36 is aiming for less? Even if they don’t hit that on 2032. Will they need that much for 2040?

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

I know that we're told to not share unrelated tweets anymore but this one is simply too funny:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1874131536347619475

At least 90% of them Western/Western-aligned crowd believe this...

LMAO Let's just say that their hubristic asses are in for a shock soon

in the film they don't show use of BVR combat with radar, long range munitions, communicating with offboard sensors, etc.

in WVR combat they do not show use of helmet mounted sights, AI assisted maneuvering or high offbore missile launch capabilities while still using guns.

I don't think those 2 ex F-16 pilots are a minority. I think a substantial fraction of their pilots really think like this, it isn't even cope.

 

[AssassinsMace]

I know that we're told to not share unrelated tweets anymore but this one is simply too funny:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1874131536347619475

At least 90% of them Western/Western-aligned crowd believe this...

LMAO Let's just say that their hubristic asses are in for a shock soon

This is like the Dark Star in Top Gun 2. The producer Jerry Bruckheimer said DARPA created this fictional hypersonic aircraft for the movie but people are claiming Dark Star exists…

 

[Temstar]

in the film they don't show use of BVR combat with radar, long range munitions, communicating with offboard sensors, etc.

in WVR combat they do not show use of helmet mounted sights, AI assisted maneuvering or high offbore missile launch capabilities while still using guns.

I don't think those 2 ex F-16 pilots are a minority. I think a substantial fraction of their pilots really think like this, it isn't even cope.

BVR combat doesn't translate well to action scenes, dogfights with missiles that are barely faster than the aircraft and burn and chase the plane for a whole action scene is par for being a movie. But that the CCA in Stealth has the correct flying Dorito shape and its unmanned nature being central to the plot is pretty impressive in retrospect given the movie came out in 2005.

Consider just this year a Su-57 had to shoot down an uncooperative S-70 over enemy air space, Stealth was pretty precognizant.

 

[Stealthflanker]

The power consumption part itself is going to include cooling. Also the Chinese EV industry is fairly advanced in thermal management. Your assumption about cooling demand and weight is unlikely to be accurate based on why we have seen in EVs.

I dont think aircraft can be equated with EV's in this respect. Also what i mean with cooling demand is What kind of cooling capacity you need to cool the aircraft not the amount of power required by the cooling. So you cant really put it in power consumption there.

Let's say you want a DEW laser say 250 KW even with 50% efficiency you have at least 125 KW of waste heat, this needs to go somewhere, especially not to cause increase in IR Signature of the airframe.

Radar, say your MW level power plant can allow 100 KW of prime power to Radar, typical prime to radiated power efficiency is about 25% or maybe 35%. Only 35 KW of average power is radiated, leaving you with 65 KW of waste heat

ECM's you need a wide bandwidth amplifier for this, and for solid state, this tend to lower PAE (Power Added Efficiency) so no more 25-35%, it can even be as low as 20 or even 10% if you want coverage to say X-band to L-band. You let another 100 KW for the jammer thus about 10-20 KW of power with 90-80 KW of waste heat.

That makes some 370 KW of cooling demand here. For stealth it will most likely be going to fuel as heat buffer.

 

[Jason_]

I'm not sure if anyone has posted this recently, but on the topic of future trends of air to air combat, CSBA back in 2015 did a paper speculating about future air to air warfare trends in historical context. Reading this paper back then played a role to inform my own views about the most valuable trends and characteristics of future air combat.
The future speculated part begins at page 41, and naturally there is a focus on CCA/UCAVs, networking, sensing, a large manned aircraft (they depict a generic flying wing manned LO bomber sized airframe in this instance)

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I encourage people to have a read of it, if they aren't aware of it. It is a decade old now, but I feel many of its predictions and recommendations have largely been borne out with the emergence and maturation of various technologies, including the characteristics of J-36.

CSBA have of course done some other papers along this trend since then about overall USAF recommendations that are not quite as targeted as that 2015 paper, but still make some recommendations towards PCA/NGAD.

I have read this and its one of the main inspirations for me to create the graphics of how I see future high end air combat play out. I think it raise very good points but I also have some disagreements with its more radical proposals, which I think is shared by PLA and USAF.

 

[kurutoga]

Let's say you want a DEW laser say 250 KW even with 50% efficiency you have at least 125 KW of waste heat, this needs to go somewhere, especially not to cause increase in IR Signature of the airframe.

That makes some 370 KW of cooling demand here. For stealth it will most likely be going to fuel as heat buffer.

Laser is a bad example since it is not turned on 24x7. Most likely you fire up the laser for half a second then wait a few seconds to have a chance to fire it again.

Wang's paper also mentioned overall thermal management/optimization as a fundamental challenge needs to be addressed in the plane's design. He mentioned some thing like an expert system (such as an AI program) to predict the thermal load and heat sink condition(air intake, bypass, etc.). This is not just the electronics also the engine needs heat dissipation. It is very much like an EV where the air cooling the battery is used to heat up the cabin in some situations.

If anyone still remembers how phones evolve into touchscreen smart phones, the trend is the same. Every mechanical device using ICE energy source, once electrified, becomes more and more like a computer with realigned I/O. This trend was pretty clear in 4th, 5th gen fighter jets, but in the next gen it will be more pronounced.