I know the history of the J-9 quite well but I thought, the shift towards the J-10 was more a fluid evolution with early J-10 configurations being former late J-9 configurations.
can you please post whatever you have?
J-10 Thread IV
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
I know the history of the J-9 quite well but I thought, the shift towards the J-10 was more a fluid evolution with early J-10 configurations being former late J-9 configurations.
can you please post whatever you have?
I am not sure about ramjet propulsion in air-to-air munitions. It also introduces many negatives that may be canceling the ramjet's effective specific thrust advantage. More drag, higher motor weight, lower top speed, and likely altitude, etc... Ramjet propelled anti-air munitions existed in past. SA-4, SA-6, BOMARC, etc...They disappeared. I wonder why.
Maybe @Patchwork_Chimera will enlighten us.
My amateur understanding is that ramjets really shine in the terminal stage of flight where conventional rocket powered missiles are out of steam energy wise but there is a cost associated with how much Gs you can pull in a ramjet missile. Since it breathes air through an inlet there is also the matter of AOA limitation.
I heard increasingly quasi-ballistic trajectories of anti-air missiles introduced after 1965 made high-speed and low-drag very desirable traits. Most of the range advantage of ramjets were erased. And indeed you can see an explosion in SAM range during the 1965-1980 era despite the ditching of ramjets. I don't know what others think but if minimal gain is true, a ramjet-powered AAM or SAM sounds like a luxury expense.
I also find it interesting Europe was the first to field a ramjet AAM. China, Russia and the United States have a lot more experience with ramjets and US and Russia actually procured ramjet-powered SAMs ~60 years ago. If there is a clear-cut advantage I don't understand how Meteor-like missiles emerged this recently.
Compared to single pulse rocket motors this is accurate, but compared to dual pulse or multi-pulse not as much I think. Dual pulse I believe has a better terminal velocity and acceleration profile which is probably why ramjet AAM development was abandoned.
PiSigma
"the engineer"
It wasn't a smooth transition from j-9 to 10. They were more like competing programs near the end of j9. I was told j9 was considered unsatisfactory, so new specs were drawn up and j10 was started to see if they could come up with something better. A lot of the j9 people got absorbed into the j10 program after j9 got canned. But before then there were only a very small team of people working on j10. No docs to share, all hearsay from the uncles/aunts.
China neither had the economic resources nor the technical knowhow during the 70s/80s so it is no surprise really. Supposedly Song Wencong had to sell tea eggs at some point during his career.
If that tea egg business survived it would have one helluva brand image.
Wtf did I just watch.