Was this GJ-X drone geolocated? Is it from the Malan Air Base?
Chinese UCAV/CCA/flying wing drones (ISR, A2A, A2G) thread
- Thread starter VESSEL
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Considering up to 20 days ago nobody knew the existence of multiple UADF or GJ-X, all of which are either already in service or at late testing stage, the fact that you have to grapevine and presume flight status of a single never seen US unmanned program proves the original point exactly don't you think?
After all do you really think China has no classified programs just because you saw GJ-X at Malan?
Seeing these 2 side by side. It seems like the fuselage for WZ-X is minimally sized for power generation & propulsion. Other than that, it's just one big boomerang, pretty idea for long range subsonic cruise and for EW + ISR. I don't think they need any kind of IWB with it. Anything not related to fuel, power, sensors and propulsion should be kept to minimum and you have an extremely long endurance platform.
I don't see how WZ-X is only a 2IC platform. I'd imagine it's range is significantly longer than B-2 given the layout, lack of pilot and weapons related space & weight penalties and more modern propulsion and material.
If B-2 has a 11000 km range without refueling, then you can make your own guesses on how far PLA would theoretically be able to use this to.
Depending on which airport in China would be able to support these long winged drones in the future, but there are a lot of places you can fly to if it can carry missions that are 5000-6000 km away.
Even with GJ-X, I think it should have theoretically longer combat radius than B-21 since it's only slightly smaller and you can get rid of all that pilot related penalties & the structure may not need to handle same level of G.
Looks like the IWB can easily be larger than on B-21 (if they choose to do so).
it's amazing with the improved material science, how much more capable GJ-X will be over GJ-11/21.
yeah, the IWB on this thing will be huge.
If we just concentrate on 2IC missions, the jump in what this can do vs H-6K will be pretty huge.
If we consider MUMT, it can carry quite a few very long range AAMs as well as anti-ship missile or ground attack missiles.
I'm not saying that WZ-X and GJ-X can't do missions at distances greater than the 2IC, but rather that they are perfectly suited for 2IC missions.
What I mean by that, is the PLA currently lacks a persistent, highly responsive fixed wing ISR and strike component to their HIC strategy at 2IC distances.
Persistent, responsive means the ability to loiter over an area at a given mission distance. It means on station time
- For WZ-X in the ISR role, that could mean doing racetrack orbits at 2IC distances for 12-24 hours and then returning home, which would be very useful for real time/near real time surface search of naval forces at those distances as well as any pop up ground based threats, and real time fixed wing BDA
- For GJ-X in the strike role, it is a bit more flexible because strike aircraft typically would not be loitering as long over a mission area (but rather ingress, then egress), however if needed the ability for GJ-X to loiter at 2IC distances and hit pop up targets of opportunity is something no other platform the PLA can do.
Naturally, you can do missions at distances greater than 2IC, but that means you'll be sacrificing on station time.
Initially, you probably will just want them to conduct those kind of missions, but once you get infrastructure built up in the Northeast base and add possible refueling capabilities to them, I think they are pretty ideal for Alaska type of missions too.
Sure, but considering fighting a comprehensive high intensity westpac conflict would be a more pressing priority for the PLA to master for now, and the more pressing threat/relevance of US capabilities in 2IC than in Alaska, those sort of missions would be more of a luxury for observers at this stage to consider relative to 2IC missions, no?
Interesting... last week we all thought the most advanced aerial platform in the world right now were our 6-gen fighters from last christmas, but its really this gigantic stealth death robot in our western desert.
Just what do you think my post sought to communicate, friend?
Well the only reasonable way to interpret your post was that you were suggesting the Lockheed program was a stealthy strike UAV of at least medium range that has test flown.
And he and others are contesting whether such an aircraft has yet to be test flown or be in an equivalent developmental stage to what GJ-X is thought to be at.
Personally, I am cautious about the overall idea of how far China actually is ahead of the US in UAV/UCAV development and applications simply because these programs are hard to measure (both ones we know about, and ones we don't know about). But listing specific examples of programs that companies have sunk money into is not inherently the best way of making that argument.
Wasn't trying to say much beyond: "Similar-ish programs likely do exist on the other side of the ledger, but things might not be going well or at least as well as their equivalent Chinese programs."
TBH, I'm a bit surprised by the definitiveness of your interpretation, especially given my employment of verbiage like: "according to the grapevine," "presumably," "might," and "reportedly."
Totally agree with you: there are a lot of unknowns with these sorts of classified programs.
This is also why I have a habit of hedging language to communicate or address uncertainty, but I'm starting to suspect that the hedging more often than not goes unnoticed.
Sometimes besides financials released due to regulatory requirements and maybe a few other limited data points, there just isn't much to work with when assessing or discussing certain classified DoD acquisition programs.