I don't know for certain. Maybe what human understanding of aerodynamics have improved that much where we can achieve similar levels of agility without stabilisers and canards now for these next generation. But looking at Shenyang's where there are likely moving wingtips, additional control surfaces on the top of the wings and canted stabilisers, that would suggest the best aerodynamicists can do to match 4th and 5th gen agility without vertical stabilisers is SAC's approach with numerous control surfaces that can be brought in when needed and cruise flat when not.
Chengdu next gen combat aircraft (?J-36) thread
- Thread starter Blitzo
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I don't know for certain. Maybe what human understanding of aerodynamics have improved that much where we can achieve similar levels of agility without stabilisers and canards now for these next generation. But looking at Shenyang's where there are likely moving wingtips, additional control surfaces on the top of the wings and canted stabilisers, that would suggest the best aerodynamicists can do to match 4th and 5th gen agility without vertical stabilisers is SAC's approach with numerous control surfaces that can be brought in when needed and cruise flat when not.
Is it really? Autopilot have been a thing for decades now. UAVs have been in use in strike roles controlled from the other side of the world for decades too.
We have seen swarm based communication from ground based drones navigating through a dense forest and various display of swarm usage in loitering munitions.
We have also seen successful long ranges strikes between Ukraine and Russia that have to get through thick GBAD networks and EW, hitting critical infrastructure quite accurately after flying through hundreds of kilometres of enemy airspace.
Is there a caveat to CCAs that I'm not seeing that makes them more complicated? They're expected to operate over higher and more open airspace, so I can't imagine command and control to be more challenging then other UAVs.
FriedRiceNSpice
Captain
Or tries to start a war with Russia by shooting down Su-37s before flying off to North Korea to try to trigger a nuclear war on the peninsula.Unless HAL tries to fly you into a mountain or shoots at friendlies
I’m not talking about autopilot, which is trivial, but tactical decision making based on huge amounts of data available.
Imagine that you are in a stealth fighter aircraft and through data linking with AWACs as well as passive sensors from your own aircraft you know that there are three enemy boogies in front of you, one of them is stealth, and two stealth fighter below you in the rear quadrant. Do you engage the boogies? In what order? How to engage while optimizing your stealth sector? How do you collaborate with other friendly assets? These are things that can be optimized through AI decision making.
We have yet to see even ground strike UAVs be given the delegation to attack ground targets autonomously. I think it's more of a doctrinal hurdle than a technical one. I'd imagine CCAs will be kept on a very tight leash from the command aircraft while running default routines, i.e maintain maximum stealth, only passive sensors/IRST and only engage when tasked by the command node.
But from a technology point of view, F35 recently demonstrated this capability which I believe China can also easily do:
Most likely not. Most aircraft’s max Mach number is achieved at high altitudes (usually fairly close to the ceiling) while the max airspeed is achieved at low altitudes. For example at sea level 750 kts cas equals around M1.1 while at 50000ft 750kts cas equals to around M2.25
Additional clarification: very generally speaking 2 factors dictate the max “speed” of an aircraft: the airframe’s ability to withstand dynamic pressure and the engine’s ability to produce thrust (which counteracts drag). Generally at lower altitudes fighter aircraft are limited by airframe strength (AKA you see very high airspeed with relatively low Mach number) and at higher altitudes (where a low airspeed can equate to higher Mach number) they are thrust limited. This then means that if a number refers to an aircraft’s “Max Mach number” it most likely means the max within its entire envelope which then means it’s generally achieved at high altitudes.
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That wasn't my argument. It is one of the first things they teach in aerospace courses.
The CFM-56 would work in Mach 2 with a proper inlet BTW. In fact high-bypass turbofans have higher TSFC than low-bypass ones at all regimes. They just introduce too much drag.
Reverse understanding of the reality... This is like saying wet roads cause rain. One wants as low jet velocity as possible because thrust is the momentum added to the air and momentum scales linearly with both speed and velocity. The same energy added to more mass means more momentum. Adding energy to a bigger mass of air is always better. It is impossible for an engine to not generate a jet faster than the incoming flow anyway. Thinking that jet engines need to have a stationary jet velocity above M2 to reach M2 is Reddit understanding. There is no jet velocity matching in aerospace engineering.
None of these are relevant to the (already very off) topic and they address nothing too. You are trying to nitpick the semantics of my writing. Go look at the thrust and wing area of the F-15 and other 4th gens and compare them to the previous aircraft of the similar MTOW. A strawman argument is exaggerating or distorting peoples' statements and then arguing against that version. Which is exactly what you attempted with Mach 5 and the CFM-56 examples.
What you call strawman there (in a wrong meaning) has the first half of the sentence an objective reality. And the second half is someone saying "The WS-15 is probably isn't rated for a lower pressure or temp than engines from 50 years ago". You are calling that "nonsense" because you indeed don't know much.
???????? Air defenses those countries had were indeed defeated and EW was a part of it. The US sent the F-117s to bomb Baghdat right at the start during the Gulf War. This was mentioned on this thread previously in other contexts.
Millenium 7*History Tech is my first go-to for Western-based commentary on the Chinese military, especially aircraft. He is one of the least biased and most knowledgeable Western-based commentators on YouTube. Perun and Bronk are white noise compared to him.
I feel like we could have already concluded he was trying to wordcel his way through this argument when he insisted that the J-36 was too voluminous for high speed supersonic cruise, as if drag was purely a function of volume. Like what is even the point of wind tunnels and aerodynamic shape modeling if you could make such simplistic inferences.