Chinese UCAV/CCA/flying wing drones (ISR, A2A, A2G) thread

[totenchan]

What about the rather overlooked diamond wing tailed one, that apparently does not have a bay? Is that likely to be an ISR/sensor/ECM oriented CCA?

Yes, you can see sensor apertures on the bottom of the aircraft in some pictures.

 

[Trigger666]

Shilao and Yankee talked again about the UADFs tonight among other things, although they used kind of vague terms. They implied:

1. CAC and SAC were rather surprised that the two UADFs were called to participate in the parade, in their opinion it's a lot earlier than expected

2. the UADFs actually have quite a lot of focus on dogfighting, as sort of insurance and bodyguard for J-20S and 6th gens which are highly focused on BVR. Yankee mentioned offhandedly "20G" but I'm not sure if that's just a figure of speech showing AI's advantage to human or if its meant to be taken literately

3. In experiments with manned fighter pairings it's found that UADFs are particularly fast at reaching for the kill shot compared to human pilots. To the point that human pilots afterwards complain of the AI doing "kill steal" on them. Pilots being highly prideful folks sometimes had to be comforted with words like "yeah but he's a computer, he's never going to get a promotion over you no matter how many kills he score" and "it's not about who gets the kill, it's about winning together as people's air force". Yankee joked that maybe for morale sake they need to figure out a way for AI to toast humans at the dinner afterwards to smooth things over.

4. The very best human pilots can still outfight an UADF, but it's physically and mentally exhausting and if immediately faced with another UADF they're very unlikely to win again.

5. Yankee described the UADFs as "not a gram of it was for a strike role, every bit of it is for air superiority". Instead of smaller CCAs (MQ-28, YFQ-42 and YFQ-44 mentioned here as examples) they said given their size and the power of their engine it's more useful to think of them as unmanned J-10.

6. Shilao described a scenario for their use. Imagine a J-20S (might have been J-36, I forgot) and a F-22 snuck on on each other with their stealth. They get into WVR combat and J-20S takes out a pair of PL-10 while F-22 starts spinning it's gun. Shilao describes using 5th gen this way ("knife fight in a phone booth" as he puts it) as "不体面" or "unbecoming" for high tech fighters. Instead if J-20S had a UADF bodyguard it could just tell it to dogfight and beat the F-22 while it gets away.

7. The very smooth and highly polished appearance was a requirement from higher up. In CAC and SAC's opinion these aircrafts have not yet reached a stage where such care and attention to detail are required. But the order from above was slick and aesthetic appearance was also a requirement for displaying such advanced aircrafts so they insisted on it much to CAC and SAC's annoyance. The new paint job for J-20A and J-20S was for similar reasons and to differentiate them from regular J-20. The powers that be understand the soft power advantages that came with showing off cool looking aircrafts.

It reminds me of the plot in Ace Combat 7

 

[valysre]

1. CAC and SAC were rather surprised that the two UADFs were called to participate in the parade, in their opinion it's a lot earlier than expected

So, they're developed enough to be flying (and upsetting PLAAF pilots with their ability) but not refined enough for deployment. I think that would put the program conservatively 4-5 years before deployment readiness?

To the point that human pilots afterwards complain of the AI doing "kill steal" on them.

Hopefully they will eventually realize that the UADF increasing their life expectancy in times of war is perhaps worth getting a few kills 'stolen'.

 

[latenlazy]

In that case - Wondering if there will be multirole (and not fully strike-focused only) counterparts to these UADFs (in terms of size, speed, range, capability etc), similar to how the J-35A is a multirole counterpart to the J-20/A/S in the PLAAF?

Part of the point of drones is that they don’t need to be generalists. They offer cheap affordable scalable modular optionality for your mission profile.

 

[tphuang]

Shilao and Yankee talked again about the UADFs tonight among other things, although they used kind of vague terms. They implied:

1. CAC and SAC were rather surprised that the two UADFs were called to participate in the parade, in their opinion it's a lot earlier than expected

2. the UADFs actually have quite a lot of focus on dogfighting, as sort of insurance and bodyguard for J-20S and 6th gens which are highly focused on BVR. Yankee mentioned offhandedly "20G" but I'm not sure if that's just a figure of speech showing AI's advantage to human or if its meant to be taken literately

3. In experiments with manned fighter pairings it's found that UADFs are particularly fast at reaching for the kill shot compared to human pilots. To the point that human pilots afterwards complain of the AI doing "kill steal" on them. Pilots being highly prideful folks sometimes had to be comforted with words like "yeah but he's a computer, he's never going to get a promotion over you no matter how many kills he score" and "it's not about who gets the kill, it's about winning together as people's air force". Yankee joked that maybe for morale sake they need to figure out a way for AI to toast humans at the dinner afterwards to smooth things over.

4. The very best human pilots can still outfight an UADF, but it's physically and mentally exhausting and if immediately faced with another UADF they're very unlikely to win again.

5. Yankee described the UADFs as "not a gram of it was for a strike role, every bit of it is for air superiority". Instead of smaller CCAs (MQ-28, YFQ-42 and YFQ-44 mentioned here as examples) they said given their size and the power of their engine it's more useful to think of them as unmanned J-10.

6. Shilao described a scenario for their use. Imagine a J-20S (might have been J-36, I forgot) and a F-22 snuck on on each other with their stealth. They get into WVR combat and J-20S takes out a pair of PL-10 while F-22 starts spinning it's gun. Shilao describes using 5th gen this way ("knife fight in a phone booth" as he puts it) as "不体面" or "unbecoming" for high tech fighters. Instead if J-20S had a UADF bodyguard it could just tell it to dogfight and beat the F-22 while it gets away.

7. The very smooth and highly polished appearance was a requirement from higher up. In CAC and SAC's opinion these aircrafts have not yet reached a stage where such care and attention to detail are required. But the order from above was slick and aesthetic appearance was also a requirement for displaying such advanced aircrafts so they insisted on it much to CAC and SAC's annoyance. The new paint job for J-20A and J-20S was for similar reasons and to differentiate them from regular J-20. The powers that be understand the soft power advantages that came with showing off cool looking aircrafts.

I was having a discussion with someone about UASF and basically my point is that they could very well be more effective used in MUMT combat scenario than F-35s. Essentially, they are stealthier from frontal and side for sure and they have better sensors and probably has better supersonic performance. So if you have a few controller manned aircraft sitting further back that is conducting EW and synthesizing sensor data, then they can control the nearest UASF drone to do A direct B shoot kind of scenario and then getting closer to get full lock on to a target F-35 with weapon grade tracking (or maybe it doesn't need to if the quality of AAM seeker keeps improving) and then several nearby drones + manned aircraft all perform electronic attack on the target F-35 and leave it unable to track incoming missiles.

So, i'm not sure about 6). That seems quite unlikely.

 

[tphuang]

Part of the point of drones is that they don’t need to be generalists. They offer cheap affordable scalable modular optionality for your mission profile.

although, one could argue the UASFs aren't cheap at all =)

if AI continues to improve and same with sensor fusion, I really see less need or demand for J-20/35s (maybe just slightly less), but you could end up with more J-20S and maybe J-35AS/J-35S and just an astronomical number of medium to higher end drones.

 

[talonn]

Curious which drones were used in their reportedly combat simulation between J-20 and F-22 back while

 

[siegecrossbow]

Curious which drones were used in their reportedly combat simulation between J-20 and F-22 back while

You mean the one from SCMP article? Pretty sure it was a complete academic simulation. Whatever they do in exercises involving real aircraft they keep under several layers of wrap now.