Ideal PLAAF/PLANAF fighter?

I absolutely might be overestimating required weights, that's true. I've no hard evidence to support any claim. Still, I'd very much like any sort of conclusions based on hard evidence.

We have a plane like J8. A huge, long plane. Old manufacturing methods, old materials. No composites. Still very light for its size. Could it be it is because it was designed for short lifespan with not too much stress on the airframe?

We have planes like F15 or Su27, examples from the past, comparing with the new, chock full of composites f22. Even though its roughly the same size as f15, its much heavier. Visibly bulkier. Even though f22 is smaller than su27 in almost every regard, with all its composites, it is still noticably heavier.

We have other examples. Eurofighter, full of composites. Small and compact dimensions. Yet it weighs 11 tons empty. Civilian B787 and A350, even though they're literally half made of composites, don't feature empty weights that much different, percentage wise, than their older predecessors of the same class.

Of course i've no hard evidence but it seems to be composites, even if used for 50% of the airframe, won't really make the whole plane lighter than a few percent.

No matter how we look at it, taking weapons and fuel internally takes up space, materials to wrap around that space, structure to support the weight that comes into that space and added weight and volume to compensate for the bigger wings/engine required to compensate for the initial add on.

Viggen might be just 7.8 tons, but if one were to add two large weapon bays plus a smaller, central one, plus the added fuel plus the added structure to support all that - I do believe we'd be looking at more than a marginal increase. Composites might take that down a notch but then again we havent even put in the added RAM weight yet.

I went with the new draken idea and remodelled it a bit, so there's enough interal volume for all the weapons and fuel and such. Also used jf-17 as a starting point so the length is the same, without pitot tube. A bit smaller vertical stabilizators, of course, and some half a metre longer wingspan. More or less. Still, fuselage is bulkier so I would expect the whole thing to be close to ten tons empty. Weapon bays are perhaps a tad oversized, as i used pl10, and i didnt even use the shorter wingspan. So that'd be smaller. Weapon bays themselves would be very shallow.

While there seems to be enough space for a decent wing root structure over the weapon bays i must say im concerned how the intakes would do and where would they go. Perhaps there'd be split intakes at certain point.

Performance wise it's too hard to tell what such a plane could do. Though the engine is pretty massive, so there shouldn't be a shortage of power. (relocated the engine closer to center of mass, relocated the landing gear etc...) Everything is a bit chubbier, not unlike f22.

Nice looking kite, I like your idea of small 'bumps' to accomodate weapons bays.




Maybe the weapons could be in tandom so 4 missiles, two each side one after the other. The intake would be as far forward as practical.



I'm even toying with the idea of a nose inlet :coffee:

Very nice lines overall but aren't the intakes a tad too big? That's enough airflow for almost two ws10 class engines. The body, the forward fuselage, also seems a bit oversized. Or are there addional weapon bays on the centerline?

Tandem missiles require length... plus there's the issue of storing the landing gear. Something like Typhoon solution might be okay, but the whole structure would have to be even a bit longer with internal carriage. Though I guess if one uses the landing gear solution from your first pic in the last post, then that too would be solved. Gear is apart enough there, right?

Nose inlet is a nice idea, (when used a la f8 or x32, not like mig21) though i've often found out it doesn't mesh well with internal carriage of weapons, fully curved intake and a centrally positioned engine.

I'm with Totoro here thinking that a too bulky design with lots of internal volume for a single engine airframe is a bit problematic. One would really need a very powerfull engine. And such a design might be less agile. When it's purpose is to be a strike plane with a good payload that can hide from enemy detectors, that way is probably fine. But I don't think it would make too good a fighter.
There probably should be a dedicated medium - heavy A-A fighter with a limited frist strike capability, a heavy strike fighter, and a medium multi-role fighter focused a little more towards strike.

Starting with planemans Draken like design, I've made it less bulky trying to get something that could be a step further from a FC-1.
16m long, maybe 14t empty.

Nice bird. By the time you've added conformal tanks.,....