Chengdu next gen combat aircraft (?J-36)

GypsophilaDream said:

Some new surprise coming in
According to @Monkey King on Weibo:
"(Traiangle) History will finally remember this day(triangle)"
And from @Crosshair:
"OMG Even 3 months earlier than my "carving the boat to find the sword"(prediction)"
And the closest prediction he made was October 2026 J-36 Production Model will make its first flight

3 months earlier is exactly right now
Still waiting for further picture or video

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(PS:Just saw what siege posted and we might not have to wait for further images)
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Not to blow the party or anything, but are these two accounts credible info sources? They seem to be making the claim that this is production variant LRIP (analogous to maybe J20 unit 2101?) which is quite the statement, so I dont want to just take what they say for granted without proof.

Schwerter_ said:

Not to blow the party or anything, but are these two accounts credible info sources? They seem to be making the claim that this is production variant LRIP (analogous to maybe J20 unit 2101?) which is quite the statement, so I dont want to just take what they say for granted without proof.

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From my perspective pretty credible but yeah,nothing could be confirmed right now.
Maybe we could say that a new prototype has flown and it means something.

Schwerter_ said:

Not to blow the party or anything, but are these two accounts credible info sources? They seem to be making the claim that this is production variant LRIP (analogous to maybe J20 unit 2101?) which is quite the statement, so I dont want to just take what they say for granted without proof.

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Rumor is that it is the fifth prototype. If that’s indeed the case then we may see the bird in LRIP before the decade is out, assuming that subsystem development proceed smoothly of course.

From Ayi:

"Rupprecht will be very excited and check out what the bunch of us are saying on Weibo, and he will find only I posted a weibo saying he's (insert that one rude name)"

So certainly the usual suspects are reacting to the news.

GypsophilaDream said:

From my perspective pretty credible but yeah,nothing could be confirmed right now.
Maybe we could say that a new prototype has flown and it means something.

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siegecrossbow said:

Rumor is that it is the fifth prototype. If that’s indeed the case then we may see the bird in LRIP before the decade is out, assuming that subsystem development proceed smoothly of course.

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Gotcha, so not a lot of confirmed info other than something (likely the aircraft in page 437 w/ DSI and channeled nozzles, though it may be a PS in place of the actual thing) flew. Eagerly awaiting new pictures, pls my Chengdu bros

GypsophilaDream said:

Some new surprise coming in
According to @Monkey King on Weibo:
"(Traiangle) History will finally remember this day(triangle)"
And from @Crosshair:
"OMG Even 3 months earlier than my "carving the boat to find the sword"(prediction)"
And the closest prediction he made was October 2026 J-36 Production Model will make its first flight

3 months earlier is exactly right now
Still waiting for further picture or video

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Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

(PS:Just saw what siege posted and we might not have to wait for further images)
View attachment 178670View attachment 178671

Click to expand...

Crosshairs also claims here that it will be shown publicly for the first time at the 2026 Zhuhai airshow, which we all know is not going to happen.

InsaneHum said:

Crosshairs also claims here that it will be shown publicly for the first time at the 2026 Zhuhai airshow, which we all know is not going to happen.

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Best they can do is show subsystems like internal structure for broadband stealth as part of a static display.

InsaneHum said:

Crosshairs also claims here that it will be shown publicly for the first time at the 2026 Zhuhai airshow, which we all know is not going to happen.

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Yep I also think this is where he predicts too radically(if what he means is showing the complete aircraft), but as what he said he was just "randomly guessing" and very roughly comparing it to the development history of J-20--even J-20 spends 10 months between LRIP first flight and Zhuhai airshow.
So yes maybe don't take this prediction too seriously.

Tbh even if it is the 5th prototype and if it has some features that are close to a LRIP state (like J-20 prototype s/n 2016/7) that would already be fairly impressive and based on normal project development progress it would likely already be flying with some representative avionics and subsystems by now.
(Heck I'd even completely forgotten that the 4th prototype is said to have flown at the beginning of the year)

The exhaust will naturally be the most interesting part to confirm -- whether it goes back to the pattern of the initial prototype, or something in between or different between the initial and subsequent prototypes to date.

The 5th prototype going back to test trench-style exhausts with DSI intakes is strange. I would have thought they'd eliminated the trench-style exhausts after the 2nd/3rd/4th prototypes all ditched them. If there was a time to test trench+DSI, it would have been the 3rd prototype (after the 2nd tested 2D TVC + DSI). Hopefully we won't see Caret-style intakes return, as much as I like them aesthetically.

Its possible the programme isn't as far along as we think if they're still testing major changes like this, or perhaps they're testing for a new variant.