China's V/STOL studies, concepts & considerations
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Need for both PLAAF and PLANAF could be same - airfield-agnostic combat aircraft.
I don't in fact think for China 075/76 are the primary use case.
First, it's forward basing.
Second, it's lack of dependence on airfields, which, due to proliferation of space tech, turn into trouble magnets.
I guess same as others?
If you don't need higher supersonic speeds, discard stabilizers. Excessive power available is useful, too.
Won't fly too far, but with stovl you often don't need to.
STOVL aircraft is never going to take off vertically for any proper combat mission anyways, sure you could shorten the runway requirement but you'd still have to take off on an airfield or atleast a prepared paved road. PLAAF has access to large airfields anyways, the range penalty will make such an aircraft pretty useless other than airfield defence and maybe short-range interceptions. There's a good reason why F-35B is USMC only and not used by the USAF, they tried to get rid of airfields via VTOL fighters in the 70s and 80s yet today they are still stuck with them. It just doesn't make much sense outside of capable of taking off and landing on LHDs and taking off from expeditionary airstrips operated by the marine corps and mostly for strike missions. Which makes me think that this aircraft might be a stealthy strike fighter, mostly focused on strike missions as a squadron of these on a 076/075 would massively boost their strike/CAS capability compared to an all helicopter loadout with secondary air superiority mission (Ideally fleet defense should be taken care by escort destroyers/frigates). I personally also think that this aircraft might also be relatively cheap and simple to shorten development cost and time especially due to a likely limited production run, ie. more of a modern stealthy harrier than a full-on VTOL J-35. I don't think PLA should go down the road of JSF with this and just have it focus on one main thing.
I lied about the previous lift fan being the last part of the system, this is the *true* last part of the VTOL system. This is a patent about the actual swiveling nozzle. The only piece missing right now is what engine is this new aircraft going to use, potentially large bypass WS-15 variant? Papers said something about a twin spool turbofan being used as a testbed, Shenyang AECC products to my knowledge right now have WS-10, WS-15 and WS-20.
In the 1960s, NATO pursued multiple V/STOL fighter programs out of the fear that full blown war against the Warsaw Pact would lead to the destruction of most available runways. IIRC, West Germany even pursued 2 or 3 V/STOL simultaneously at one point.
However, it didn't take long for these NATO countries to realize or at least decide that their fears were overblown and finite resources would be better invested elsewhere.
Considering the number of runways that are available to the PLAAF in the ETC and STC, as well as what is arguably generally known about adversarial magazine depths, it's challenging to see the PLAAF and/or PLANAF seriously pursuing a V/STOL fighter program on top of what the CMC is already paying for, especially given how much such a program will likely cost relative to the use case or production run.
The F-35B largely exists because the USMC wanted a direct successor for their Super Harriers, and had the requisite political pull with both Congress and within the DoD to make it happen.
Given the size of both China's academia and its aerospace industry, there shouldn't be any surprise that R&D into V/STOL technologies is ongoing, but that also doesn't mean the PLAAF or PLANAF actually intends to acquire a V/STOL fighter platform, as such research stands to contribute to UCAV programs and can be relevant elsewhere.
Is it possible or perhaps even likely that the Chinese V/STOL fighter project that people have been talking about is in fact a commercial venture akin to the FC-31 (before it reincarnated as the J-35), and we're hearing about it because SAC is looking for a foreign partner to bankroll the program?
It seems to be quite an effort for a pure academic research IMO, the paper said that a prototype clutch mechanism has already been tested while hooked up to a full-scale turbofan engine. Such a tests isn't cheap to carry out and likely would require highly modifying a very expensive turbofan engine, it makes me think that there is significant backing behind this project whether from PLA or perhaps even from Shenyang AECC itself to make this project a reality. Shenyang AECC here seems to have actually designed and to a extent tested(paper mentioned the clutch being hooked up to a load) the system already which to me seems quite extensive for pure research. This and a tender requesting trim simulation for a VTOL aircraft early this year.
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Well, another patent dropped this time for a lift fan exhaust/nozzle system. This one is interesting because it dates all the way back to 2018 while all the other patents were submitted in the 2022-2023 timeframe. But it's also from Shenyang AECC so presumably it's also a part of the lift system they are working on with the other patents.
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I don't think there are any probable customers for China's hypothetical S/VTOL fighter jets that are rich enough, capable enough and needy enough to operate them.
The only prospective customer that meets all three requirements which I could fathom of would be the PLANMC.