This may sound dumb, but why does the PLA publish their patents? Doesn't that allow their enemies to have a rough idea of their technological level? I'm sure some research is confidential, but why are some others, like this drone design, not? Thx.An out of Chengdu on a variable wing design applicable to flying-wing UAVs. Basically, a portion of each wing folds up slightly in for supersonic flight. For subsonic flight where more lift is needed, the portion returns to its default position to generate maximum lift.
Not entirely certain if this is the appropriate thread. Perhaps we should have a dedicated thread for China's aerospace research.
Chinese UAV/UCAV development
- Thread starter AssassinsMace
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To my knowledge, all of these are only body shape and external appearance patient, so they should be very far away from technology secrets.
In terms of estimates technology level, I think China has surpass that, now they want outside world, especially the general audience in the western countries to know and stop ignoring them, China wish the world to accept that they are also one of the technologies leader and pilot in the world, which has the capacity to provide you powerful weapon and advanced products that suit your need, so please join the belt and road initiative. Things like this...
To the reason why it’s patented? What I heard it’s mainly due to the history that AVIC used to loss cases over some tv commercials using y-20 or j-20 without their authorization, the court didn’t rule in favor of them, because at that time, j-20 or y-20 appearance are not AVIC patients...
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There's nothing wrong about giving away knowledge of theoretical airframe design. I think the risk here is letting those understand China is exploring certain designs with the intention of making them if they prove effective in theory and modeling. In fact most countries with any decent research into aerodynamics are more than capable of coming up with drawings. Building them is another matter entirely. This is assuming actual leaked details and not something like the above where they're random papers out of many that gather some public attention every year. These aren't even that "exotic" looking.
You can give enemies a lot more information and at best they can only figure out rough flight parameters and performance. It's not like they can build something just out of some very rough MS Paint diagrams. There is already a world of engineering difference between the fully completed design of an aircraft and actually going about building just one, then there's another world of engineering trouble to figure out how to build them in series without costing billions.
AssassinsMace
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The US charges China is not transparent. I remember there was an article of some American who went to China to see for himself and he found plenty of information of what the US charges China was hiding in the public resources. The problem for the US was it was all in Chinese. If you've read about US intelligence services they're paranoid of hiring anybody Chinese who can translate being spies. The US doesn't promote Americans studying Chinese. There was a school district outside Los Angeles that was planning to have Chinese being taught in their schools but protests from parents cancelled their plans. The parents believed being taught Chinese amounted to being brainwashed. And then there's the prejudice of Americans who only want to learn romantic languages. Even though this information can be found publicly but because it's in Chinese, that's not being transparent. They demand the Chinese translate it for them but because they don't trust Chinese, they learn nothing. They're living in their own hell.
Another out of Chengdu. It has to do with a novel aerodynamic design involving movable side strips on a canard-flying-wing design.
"The utility model belongs to the technical field of aircraft aerodynamic layout design, in particular to a canard-type flying wing layout aircraft with movable side bars. The canard flying wing layout aircraft with movable side strips is designed for the characteristics of high lift-to-drag ratio of the flying wing layout but low trim lift coefficient and poor maneuverability. Based on the flying wing layout, the airframe is modified and installed at the front end of the airframe. Long-distance control canards, with a small loss of lift-to-drag ratio to obtain a large trim lift coefficient and good handling performance; an integrated movable side strip is installed on the inner side of the leading edge of the wing, which can be obtained by adjusting the dihedral angle of the side strip The vortex lift in different flight attitudes further improves the lift characteristics and lift-drag characteristics. The aircraft also adopts the stealth design principle, which is suitable for high-altitude long-endurance aircraft and unmanned combat aircraft, which can significantly improve the cruise altitude, cruise time, take-off and landing performance and maneuverability of this type of aircraft."
Dark Sword 2.0, is that you?
Looks like they have created a modular UAV where the fuselage stays common and the wings can be changed around depending on flight characteristics needed. Quite a decent idea without 6th gen levels of variable geometry.
What I thought too.
High subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic platforms.
Maybe even one with detachable wings so can act as suicide drone when needed.
A cost-effective hybrid of one-use/recoverable platform as recon/combat drone or smart munition depending on circumstances. So in the future with unmanned platform the boundary between what is an aircraft and what is a munition will be blurred.
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Sino Defence forum is very important for them then.
The most interesting part for me was the way they designed an approach to adjustable LERXes that’s different from LEVCONS (or maybe it could be classified as a variant of LEVCONS?). Would be curious to know what the test data shows for this sort of approach.
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