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

[vincent]

Thanks for the pointer. I had to dig up their radio talk show (on a mobile app called Qingting Radio). It's a talk show for the fans, not official source. They seem to think J-36 was designed differently.

• The entire plane is a vehicle of energy management. There are energy source (engines), energy consumption, thermal management etc. They compared J-36 as if it is a Plug-in Hybrid Car which is designed primarily as a electric car with gas as energy source. They also compared it to traditional propulsion in warship vs new IEP solutions
• The traditional fighter jet wasted too much energy in propulsion without thinking about using it. In J-36 and the new plane design methodology, the type and model of the engines are still important, but they no longer define the plane.
• Just like Plug-in Hybrid cars or IEP ships, I suspect the plane contains much larger energy storage (battery or some sort of system) than traditional jets

After listening to it, my immediate thought was to compare J-36 to a flying Type 055. Then, a few more little points I can remember:

• CAC and SCA each have an entire system, not just one jet (remember the tea pot/tea cup analogy)
• What they showed so far is part of each system
• They believed the CCA/UCAV in both systems had flown two years ago

It's been more than 100 years since electrification as human's way of using energy. Finally we are seeing it goes into mainstream weapon systems. Seems so natural for China's industry base.

This one?

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[Awenumick]

Does anyone which paper this is talking about?

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[siegecrossbow]

This one?

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[BillRamengod]

The discussions on the forum have started to go deeper, which is good, but there's an elephant in the room that hasn't been mentioned yet: what would the combat scenario look like between sixth-generation aircraft, or rather, between military systems equipped with sixth-generation fighters?
Let me kick off the discussion by posing a few questions for everyone to consider:

1. How much will the stealth capabilities improve compared to fifth-generation fighters? (Will it be exponential?) Under the conditions of all-aspect, all-band stealth of sixth-generation fighters, how can they be detected? How close does one need to be to detect them?
2. Will manned sixth-generation fighters actually encounter each other in combat?
3. What role will unmanned wingmen fighter play in combat? Could the battlefield turn into a contest of drone numbers?

Let's assume that by 2035, both China and the U.S. will have around fifty manned sixth-generation fighters each (I believe the NGAD will certainly be revived given the recent news, but the high costs and the increasing role of drones might limit the production numbers of manned sixth-generation fighters). If a limited war breaks out between the two over the Taiwan issue in the Pacific, what would the aerial landscape over the Pacific look like?

 

[BoraTas]

Some PLA observers (and leakers in this event) on Weibo & Guancha(Yankee & Xi Yazhou) dont think that the J-36 needs to/can accelerate to Mach 3 and 30km. They point out that the core speed indicator of the J-36 is to ensure long-term supersonic cruise under the premise of long range (for example, CAP on 2IC). Under this requirement, maintaining just Mach 1.5+ while carrying a bunch of payload is good enough.

I believe they are after high acceleration and efficiency between Mach 1 and 2.5 too. There are inherent problems with speeds exceeding Mach 3.

- RAM longevity
- IR signature
- Severe low speed performance and efficiency penalties especially without variable geometry inlets

Many others a specialist would think of better

 

[lushangdao]

The discussions on the forum have started to go deeper, which is good, but there's an elephant in the room that hasn't been mentioned yet: what would the combat scenario look like between sixth-generation aircraft, or rather, between military systems equipped with sixth-generation fighters?
Let me kick off the discussion by posing a few questions for everyone to consider:

1. How much will the stealth capabilities improve compared to fifth-generation fighters? (Will it be exponential?) Under the conditions of all-aspect, all-band stealth of sixth-generation fighters, how can they be detected? How close does one need to be to detect them?
2. Will manned sixth-generation fighters actually encounter each other in combat?
3. What role will unmanned wingmen fighter play in combat? Could the battlefield turn into a contest of drone numbers?

Let's assume that by 2035, both China and the U.S. will have around fifty manned sixth-generation fighters each (I believe the NGAD will certainly be revived given the recent news, but the high costs and the increasing role of drones might limit the production numbers of manned sixth-generation fighters). If a limited war breaks out between the two over the Taiwan issue in the Pacific, what would the aerial landscape over the Pacific look like?

The discussions on the forum have started to go deeper, which is good, but there's an elephant in the room that hasn't been mentioned yet: what would the combat scenario look like between sixth-generation aircraft, or rather, between military systems equipped with sixth-generation fighters?
Let me kick off the discussion by posing a few questions for everyone to consider:

1. How much will the stealth capabilities improve compared to fifth-generation fighters? (Will it be exponential?) Under the conditions of all-aspect, all-band stealth of sixth-generation fighters, how can they be detected? How close does one need to be to detect them?
2. Will manned sixth-generation fighters actually encounter each other in combat?
3. What role will unmanned wingmen fighter play in combat? Could the battlefield turn into a contest of drone numbers?

Let's assume that by 2035, both China and the U.S. will have around fifty manned sixth-generation fighters each (I believe the NGAD will certainly be revived given the recent news, but the high costs and the increasing role of drones might limit the production numbers of manned sixth-generation fighters). If a limited war breaks out between the two over the Taiwan issue in the Pacific, what would the aerial landscape over the Pacific look like?

If there are only about 50 sixth-gen fighters, they probably won’t make much of a difference, kind of like how jet fighters in the late stages of WWII didn’t end up being the game-changers.

 

[iBBz]

Those VLS micro-missiles would almost certainly be intended for large, slow, high-value assets like tankers, AWACS, transports and bombers etc. Although a case can be made to design a defensive UCAV around the VLS to fly escort rather than try and mass integrate the VLS across all those airframes, both for the sake of speed of introduction, as well as cost/performance penalties having them integrated would impose on all those assets.

Fighters like the J36 won’t have the room for them, and as you already pointed out, they would need to sacrifice most of its speed/energy advantage to use them.

If the J36 can mount DEW, it would make far more sense to just add a couple more arrays to give it full 360 coverage and use DEW for self defence. Indeed, DEW on the J36 would make far more sense as a defensive weapon instead of offensive, since you really wouldn’t want enemy assets to get close enough to your J36 to get within DEW range in the first place.

When you say slow, you mean 500-800km/h airspeed. That is not slow in terms of launching an object in a direction that is perpendicular to the direction the plane is traveling in. It can't be done and it is a stupid design, because of the various loads applied to the plane, canisters, & objects launched, in all kinds of directions. You can't just copy VLS from ships and paste it on planes and call it a day. Ships travel slowly enough for VLS to work on them, while planes do not travel slowly and aerodynamics play a pivotal role in their design, which is why designers always opt for launching missiles in parallel or slightly diagonal directions to travel. There are better ways to go about this than the 3d model in question.

 

[BillRamengod]

If there are only about 50 sixth-gen fighters, they probably won’t make much of a difference, kind of like how jet fighters in the late stages of WWII didn’t end up being the game-changers.

I don't think this is a fair comparison. Early jet figher like the ME262 from the late WWII only underwent engine upgrades, which merely enhanced the aircraft's aerodynamic performance. As discussed in this thread, sixth-generation fighters like the J36 are likely to bring about a paradigm shift similar to the leap from fourth to fifth-generation fighters. (Remember the F-22's 144-0 exercise record?)

 

[bsdnf]

CAC just put it directly on the bottled water lmao

 

[tankphobia]

If there are only about 50 sixth-gen fighters, they probably won’t make much of a difference, kind of like how jet fighters in the late stages of WWII didn’t end up being the game-changers.

Imo it will make a huge impact. J-36 would be accompanied by multiple UAVs, by 2035 there could easily be 150+ supersonic LO strike capable UAVs creating a very sizable strike package. This combined with the ability to seriously threaten Guam via air launched munitions rather than only ballistic missiles throws US westpac strategy into disarray.

Based on the large optical windows we can decern that j-36 is optimised for fighting other LO aircraft, it is expected that IRST will be used to detect and track NGAD during engagements.

In other news, based on recent discussions are the 3 engine set to be the same? Only difference being perhaps inlet geometry.