H-20 bomber (with H-X, JH-XX)
- Thread starter Deino
- Start date
To echo untoldpain:
No.
To elaborate a little:
By the latter part of this century, if you are in the market for a new clean sheet new design strategic bomber, pursuing anything other than VLO is indeed unacceptable.
If you want non-VLO strategic bomber performance, there are much more sensible choices to make instead of literally developing a clean sheet non-VLO strategic bomber.
At the top of the list is the procurement of weapons dispensing kits that allows tactical and strategic transporters to launch complex munitions from their cargo holds.
Alternatively if you are the US, China or Russia, you can just continue to keep overhauling your affordable and simple subsonic non-VLO strategic bomber airframes.
Can you show the exact quotes?
How come the J-20 can be re engined without airframe change if it's built around a specific engine?
If the H-20 is a subsonic flying wing (which I think is likely), it won’t be China’s first crack at the FCS for flying wings. While there are inherent difficulties with the FCS for flying wings China has flown a number of flying wing designs already, with at least on in production.
This is not exactly true. Engine power shapes how much design margin you have to acquire competing capabilities without making as many tradeoffs, and are a key consideration in your design process, but they’re not prevailing over the aerodynamics design either. One is not more important than other. They’re interactive and equally important considerations for achieving your requirement specs.
So just more thoughts on how we should interpret this tender. I think this is more a signal that something is currently in the process of being assembled to fly, and suppliers are being lined up to support construction of prototypes. But that alone doesn’t tell us that the timelines for this project will be the same as for the J-20, or that whatever plane that comes out of this tender will be representative of the same stage of development as the first J-20 prototypes that flew.
Probably closer than the final product for the airframe than the first batch of j-20 prototypes was, because of the price per airframe ? It's still a long road ahead sadly.
Well, keep in mind that the J-20 went through a demonstrator phase before a proper pre-production prototype was built, and that demonstrator phase took us from 2010 to 2013. I suspect the H-20 won’t need to go through a demonstrator phase like the J-20 did. In part that’s probably because aerospace capabilities are a lot more mature than a decade ago, and in part because the basic aerodynamic configuration for bombers is just less demanding in terms of meeting specific flight performance parameters than fighters.
To me the maintenance cost of H-6s compare to a stealth bomber is probably miniscule, so once air supremacy is achieved then there's no longer any reason to use H-20s. No matter how good your stealth is you won't be able to get into dumb bomb range without also getting into AA range, since you're basically on top of your target. Of course you can use glide bombs, but so can most other aircraft in the PLAAF's inventory, the only thing a large stealth bomber would bring to the table after air supremacy is achieved would be payload.
There will be many instances where a bomber will have to be on top of the target, in order to deliver a heavy bomb penetrator.
And if we're talking about Japan, the chances are that that airspace will still be contested - with some fighters and SAMs.
That makes H-6 bombers too vulnerable, even with glide bombs at coastal targets.
And if you look at geography, an H-6 would have to fly over Japanese land to reach many targets, even with glide bombs.