Chinese UCAV/CCA/flying wing drones (ISR, A2A, A2G) thread
- Thread starter VESSEL
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PSed with a pic of J36 to fit the paper of NWPU，someone before had made a comparison.
You can find that this aircraft has no flaps
The NWU paper indicates that its design is a variable-sweep-wing aircraft. I'm not going to speculate on its impact on its supposed all-aspect stealth, but it would at least partially explain why recent photos of this mysterious aircraft/CCA seems to have different wing configurations.
The paper diagram:
The recent sightings of this airframe:
The possibility of PS notwithstanding, it is possible that the aircraft in these images look "different" because its wings might be at different sweep angles. Compare the first and middle photographs for example. The rightmost image - assuming that it's the same aircraft - likely shows its wings at a minimum sweep while the leftmost image shows wings at their maximum sweep.
Again, this is just a semi-serious guess. And this all banks on the aircraft being real and not PSed in any way and the NWU paper being related to this airframe.
The paper diagram:
The recent sightings of this airframe:
The possibility of PS notwithstanding, it is possible that the aircraft in these images look "different" because its wings might be at different sweep angles. Compare the first and middle photographs for example. The rightmost image - assuming that it's the same aircraft - likely shows its wings at a minimum sweep while the leftmost image shows wings at their maximum sweep.
Again, this is just a semi-serious guess. And this all banks on the aircraft being real and not PSed in any way and the NWU paper being related to this airframe.
For what its worth, I asked ChatGPT to geolocate those photos based on the foliage in the scenery and the fact that they were taken in China.
The top photo shows leaves of a bamboo tree (ChatGPT identified the genus as either Phyllostachys or Bambusa), which are found in southern and eastern China. Notably, Sichuan (where Chengdu is located) is one of the places where this genus of bamboo is common. I did not see Northern China (specificially Liaoning, where Shenyang is located) being listed as a probable place where these trees grow.
The bottom photo shows leaves of the broadleaf-tree type growing on trees with a dense green canopy. Being no botany expert, I dug deeper and ChatGPT was able to conclude that these trees grow in Southern/Central China and in humid subtropical climates. This does not explicity point to Sichuan but cold, arid places like Shenyang are unlikely to have this kind of tree in prominence.
So while this certainly isn't the best way to geolocate a photo, the vegetation in the photographs make it more likely that the airframe was spotted near Chengdu rather than Shenyang or Xi'an. This of course assumes that the two photos show the same airframe and that they haven't been doctored in any way.
Can't believe we're researching trees for the sake of aviation watching.
I think for the moment - unless new evidence appears - we should stop promoting this „whatever it is“ as a VG-aircraft!
There is in fact more evident to point toward this is the aircraft mentioned in the patent than it is not, the planform is an exact match for the patent while assuming the newer pictures are real, the intake and landing gear both matches nearly 100 percent as well.
The point is, that our collection of images that seem to point towards a manned fighter aka even a naval VG-design are just falling apart since - at least Iif I read the last two pages correctly - all underside images are psed or fake and especially the one showing its intakes.
variable wing sweep? Inb4 the F-14 copycat comments
Sure enough, started popping up on the usual aviation subs