I think you are comparing this single engine aircraft with other aircraft with more engines. If there are more engines the diameter of an engine and its exhaust is relatively smaller so they can more easily be buried in the wing. You might also think of changing the cross-section of the jet pipe as in F-22 but that increases weight and reduces thrust and it needs a large design effort to minimize these effects. This might be used in a later prototype of this aircraft. That obviously depends on the purpose of this aircraft.
Chinese UAV/UCAV development
- Thread starter AssassinsMace
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Actually all other single engined UCAVs from X-47B, X-45A/C, Neuron etc all have their engines buried in the fuselage ala B-2.
I think the engine may once again be the limiting factor. Possibly lack of a more powerful engine means it cannot be buried as deeply which may reduce thrust, so they compromise to this.
It might be reasonable for supersonic fighters to have round nozzle and discard rear aspect LO
But for a bomber with primarily SEAD and recon type mission, it does not make sense, i think we can agree this is some sort of early demonstrator
plawolf
Lieutenant General
I would like to see more shots, especially from below when she flies, but from the pictures so far, I get the impression that the engine nozzle is sitting very high in the fuselage rather than centre aligned in the horizontal axis. This suggest to me that the round nozzle is totally obscured from anything below the plane and is only visible from above or at least the same level and from the sides as the pictures show. Thus, against ground based radars, the round nozzle should not make much difference to the RCS of this bird unless the ground based radar was directly behind the UCAV.
Even the post child of all aspect stealth the F22 isn't all that stealthy when scanned from above or from behind when the radar can get a nice juicy return from inside the engine itself, so one really has to wonder just how cost effective it would be to try and bury the entire engine in the fuselage for the sake of marginally better RCS from scan angles the UCAV should not normally have to face.
It is not just the cost and weight penalties of having a stealthy nozzle, but also the reduced internal volume from placing the entire engine much more forward in the fuselage. With such a small airframe, that extra metre or more of extra space in front of the engines could make a massive difference in terms of the bomb bay size as well as the available space for fuel and avionics etc.
One of the reasons western weapons systems are so expensive is because their designers tend to want perfection when just good enough is usually good enough.
If having a little bit of round engine nozzle sticking out the back that will only be visible to airborne radar scanning from above or the sides of the UAV significantly reduces unit cost and/or significant increases operational range and/or bomb bay size, well, that could well be a very good trade off to be honest.
Even the post child of all aspect stealth the F22 isn't all that stealthy when scanned from above or from behind when the radar can get a nice juicy return from inside the engine itself, so one really has to wonder just how cost effective it would be to try and bury the entire engine in the fuselage for the sake of marginally better RCS from scan angles the UCAV should not normally have to face.
It is not just the cost and weight penalties of having a stealthy nozzle, but also the reduced internal volume from placing the entire engine much more forward in the fuselage. With such a small airframe, that extra metre or more of extra space in front of the engines could make a massive difference in terms of the bomb bay size as well as the available space for fuel and avionics etc.
One of the reasons western weapons systems are so expensive is because their designers tend to want perfection when just good enough is usually good enough.
If having a little bit of round engine nozzle sticking out the back that will only be visible to airborne radar scanning from above or the sides of the UAV significantly reduces unit cost and/or significant increases operational range and/or bomb bay size, well, that could well be a very good trade off to be honest.
size looks about right, nozzle looks different though, might need clearer picture to tell
yep, i don't know of any other engine accesible to china which would be anywhere near this class. rd93 or its chinese variant seems most likely. If it is that engine, it would mean the whole aircraft is between 9.5 and 10 meters long (without all these temporary pitots on the nose) That puts it more or less in the same category as all the other high profile ucav demonstrators.
vertical center of gravity certainly seems higher than in US programmes, but is similar to nEuron in that regard. Biggest difference between other ucavs and this one would certianly be that here the afterburner seems to have been retained. Why do that on a demostrator plane - who knows? certainly supersonic performance has its advantages and drawbacks.
Cant wait to get a pic showing the shape of the wings.
vertical center of gravity certainly seems higher than in US programmes, but is similar to nEuron in that regard. Biggest difference between other ucavs and this one would certianly be that here the afterburner seems to have been retained. Why do that on a demostrator plane - who knows? certainly supersonic performance has its advantages and drawbacks.
Cant wait to get a pic showing the shape of the wings.
Broccoli
Senior Member
Engine nozzle is probably for everyone to see because it's only prototype, etc. Aviation week reported few years ago that Chinese are currently in same level where US was in 2000-2003 with their UCAV projects.
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