I hope the PAF can afford it if China agrees to install this beast in the Block III. This will definitely be the perfect powerplant for the JF-17. And perfect timing too!!
Chinese Engine Development
- Thread starter jackbh
- Start date
I hope the PAF can afford it if China agrees to install this beast in the Block III. This will definitely be the perfect powerplant for the JF-17. And perfect timing too!!
SinoSoldier
Colonel
WS-15 might be entering flight tests and no one cares?
Wow, quite a contrast from a few years ago.
Wow, quite a contrast from a few years ago.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
it was posted on the previous page. But sofar is just rumor no confirmation yet and there will still be long road ahead at least 2 or 3 years. Nothing to be excited about!
May be a sign that everyone has learned to question sources and wait for confirmation. Also may be a sign that we’ve debated the different angles of this engine and its development timeline, with no hard information to go by, to death, and now everyone just wants to wait for real data...
That's it for me.
If we get pics of a flanker flying with ws-15 then that's something to be excited about. Or even a half clear picture is ws-15 like what we had for ws-19
Same. Or some performance figures for the engine from a believable source. Otherwise information on the component technologies (fan blades, compressor designs) is more interesting to me than an unverified blurb that it’s undergoing flight tests...
I will say though, something new of value that has turned up for this story is that I think we should have thought of over the years but didn’t is that the flying testbed may be a redundant step now because its original purpose was to conduct high altitude testing, and China now has on the ground facilities. It would explain why we never got pictures for the flying testbed we were expecting for so many years, and maybe that development is much further along than the milestones we’ve set using prior precedents.
Hyperwarp
Captain
While other developers did have testing straight from the laboratory to the target airframe for the engine, the rumor above states the testbed will not be a J-20. Hence by musings about a IL-76 (or similar) testbed. Now, if we go along with the rumor, while it's in theory possible the testbed can be a flanker I don't really see much point in that. If J-20 was an unknown quantity, not in service yet, then yeah, there'd be some sense to have flanker test the engine. But J-20 has been flying in active service for some 2 years now, with upwards of 20 airframes in PLAAF. It's not a risky platform anymore.
Testing in straight away on J-20 would make sense, as it's the intended user. But rumor states it won't be J-20. So why test in on a flanker, which in all likelihood may never use WS15, and even if some modernization down the line does make it happen, it's bound to be 10 years from now, at least. While WS15 is probably designed to be compatible in size, there would surely have to be some specialized integration issues solved.
What can one get with testing on a Flanker, that can't be tested on a subsonic jet? Speed, I guess. Inlet performance in theory, but that'll be flanker inlet, different from J-20 inlet. It's actually a tad more plausible that a large plane testbed can test not just the engine but also a specialized package with a simulated J-20 inlet. (I agree that too is unlikely, I haven't ever seen something like that)
Basically, going from ground testing to J20 testing sounds logical enough. (But rumor says that won't happen) Going from ground to flanker to J20 seems like an unnecessary stepping stone. Going from ground to large plane to J20 sounds like a protracted yet conservative and careful approach.
Now, if the rumor above is to be discarded and if WS15 will get tested on J20 first then that's okay, but that's a whole other conversation from what I intended to start here. Whenever that test may happen.
Yes. The size should be similar to that of the RD-93.
Looks like there is hope for FC-31 after all. It would be funny if it flies with its target engines earlier than J-20.
I don't have any idea of why "lab->flanker(J-20)" or "lab->IL76->flanker(J-20)", but from a pure Chinese language/terminology standpoint, the original text (hightlighted in yellow below) is very likely excluding any usage of IL76.
In English and your interpretation, both flanker and IL76 are testbed because they are not the target airframe, J-20 is the target airframe. However, in Chinese, 装机 literally means "mounting on the aircraft". Now IL76 is an aircraft too, but for IL76 there is a specific term in Chinese "实验平台" literally meaning "test platform" or testbed. A Chinese speaker (the author) would not have used the word "装机" if he meant IL76. In other words, in Chinese terminology IL76 is "not" categorized as an aircraft but a test-rig in the same way as a high-altitude test stand.
Of course, nobody could be always correct in language/wording, but that is the convention. The issue IMO is a lost-in-translation "testbed has no literal equivalent word in Chinese".