Well, well, well . . .
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H-20 bomber (with H-X, JH-XX)
- Thread starter Deino
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Well, well, well . . .
Hmm. If it’s supersonic then they will probably include afterburners. Because if the airframe can cruise at supersonic it can also dash, and dash is a good feature to have for survivability. No point sticking an afterburner onto a flying wing that’s severely limited by its planform to be subsonic but once the planform is supersonic adapted the speed is always valuable. That said the basic intuition about payloads etc should probably stick to dry thrust only.
So the advantage of not having afterburner is basically weight and size reduction making it easier to “fully conceal” the engines inside the aircraft. And I would assume that using afterburner also notably increase IR signature coming out of the back.
is it worth sacrificing the dash ability for that?
I would think not. The vision of future air combat consists of distributed sensors combined with bomb trucks armed with long range missiles. Being able to dash at Mach 2+ at high altitude would greatly shorten the effective range of enemy stealthy loitering bomb trucks.
Afterburners with concealment is a solved problem and T:W ratio is not that important for a bomber. When you fire up the burners you do lose a lot of IR suppression but in those situations you are also dashing away from a threat and when evading a missile being able to do a higher energy maneuver matters as much or more than reducing your IR signature.
Someone from SPF said that it implies the use of 6x WS-15 engines, not 4 engines and he said he can read Chinese, so which is it?
In that case, maybe it’s worth it then.
I guess you can do super cruise with right layout at like Mach 1.3 and get close to mach2 with afterburner.
that would be even faster than backfire.
Assuming that the claim where the H-20 is supersonic-capable is accurate (I have reasons to be reserved on said claim for now), then having afterburning-capable engines is a must, whether those be normal low B/P turbofan engines or VCE/ACE.
In fact, even the swept-wing B-1B with an MTOW of 216 tons and is only capable of Mach 1.25 is powered by 4x afterburning F101 engines. Frankly, I failed to see how the H-20 is capable of going supersonic without afterburning-capable engines.
In fact, even the swept-wing B-1B with an MTOW of 216 tons and is only capable of Mach 1.25 is powered by 4x afterburning F101 engines. Frankly, I failed to see how the H-20 is capable of going supersonic without afterburning-capable engines.
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Unfortunately supersonic speeds on a plane that big will introduce massive stresses on the wing. The B-1B is a maintenance magnet for that reason