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

[lcloo]

I do agree with your line of thinking and I've made similar arguments in the past, but some others on the board don't seem to think finding enough pilots is gonna be an issue. I don't really know what it takes to train a pilot so I can't say for sure, but the way things are developing with the J-36 almost like an AWACS with a crew of 2, I'd think that becoming a pilot will become increasingly more difficult and more of a bottleneck than aircraft production.

The question of pilot availability all comes down to the long term planning. It takes a very long time to train a good pilot, if I may guess, at least a minimum of say, around 500 to 800 hours on operational flights, which could meant the pilots should have at least 5 years experience as combat pilot before he can go on to pilot a new advance combat jet.

Long term planning should cover 5 to 10 years consideration of pilot availability and aircraft production. If they cannot to match availability of qualified pilots vs the production rates of new aircraft, then that is a very critical big failure.

Annual cadet pilot intake and fresh qualified pilots is a variable figure. They can expand, maintain existing figures or reduce it according to ther long term planning. There is no lack of training facilities nor pool of potential pilots.

BUt then we know Chinese always planned long term, they planned anything from 10 years to 50 years into the future unlike the short term planning of the West, freuently disrupted by policies of a new president every 4 or 5 years.

 

[by78]

A rare video of WZ-9 Divine Eagle in flight with sound.

 

[by78]

A

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on a remote control console for handling fixed wing UAVs (i.e. manual taxiing, flight deck operations, etc.)

 

[escobar]

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[mack8]

That's not the CH-7 isn't it?

 

[Deino]

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Interesting, but since it was seen at Malan AB and not at Xi‘an-Yanliang, I think it is more likely „just“ a huge so far unknown UAV.

 

[Blitzo]

That's not the CH-7 isn't it?

Beyond the fact that its proportions are not the same, in terms of dimensions they also highly differ


CH-7 has a wingspan of 26m
This thing has a wingspan of 52m -- double the wingspan.

 

[Maikeru]

So if this new flying wing is a recon UAV is there a role for CH-7 in PLA? CH-7 would appear to be less stealthy as a result of it's "beak".

 

[Andy1974]

Could this be the tea pot?

 

[PLAwatcher12]

So if this new flying wing is a recon UAV is there a role for CH-7 in PLA? CH-7 would appear to be less stealthy as a result of it's "beak".

If this new drone can’t launch precision strikes then the CH-7 is still useful, but if it can then most likely the CH-7 would be useless but it depends on this new drones role