Blitzo:
Yeah, I'd agree that the windows on the side of the nose are contenders, but they don't seem to be evident all around the body like the 360-degree EODAS system of the F-35.
With regards to Engineer:
You have a condescending or didactic air that makes people dislike arguing with you. If you're going to call me out for flaming, your attitude is getting to me and I am going to call you out for it.
I'm not equivocating, but I said portholes for EODAS. We saw portholes on the aft of the aircraft, but people decided that those were maintenance portholes or vents for the engine as on the F-22.
Judging by this image, at least one of the details on the aft belly does not seem to be an exhaust/maintenance port. That said, I'm not entirely sure you can determine 360 EODAS capability by examining the surface of an airplane. Maybe you know better, but I can't seem to find details on the F-35 that would indicate an EO aperture.
TVC provides additional maneuverability by allowing a fast change in the direction of thrust, which is probably more useful for instantaneous turn-rates than sustained turn rates as it entails at least a temporary reduction in the rear 0-degree thrust vector.
As far as not affecting turning performance, let's do a thought experiment. An F-22 or Su-35BM is locked to a point in space and all rearward thrust is negated by an equivalent to Laplace's Demon exerting a countervailing pushing force. We assume that magically the airplane can sustain the complete push against its thrust force without falling apart. With the forward thrust vector completely removed, the upward or downward thrust vector while TVC is active and forces the F-22 to do somersaults. That's considered a turn. You can tilt the plane on its side and do the same thing. That's still a turn, even with a turn radius of 0 feet.
I think the physics you've mentioned is sound. The question is what is the utility of such a maneuver, and whether the trade-offs/benefits are worthwhile in a scenario where such a maneuver would apply. As this debate about TVC continues, I'm finding the discussion revolving far more around strategy and tactic than around hard performance numbers. Context is far more important to figuring out combat performance than numbers are.
Personally, I find the argument that modern day dogfighting is about energy management convincing. From that angle, TVC may not be as beneficial, since the trade-offs for a tight instantaneous turn are slower airspeed and lost energy, which handicaps your agility for later maneuvers. If you sacrifice all that energy and airspeed for a good angle, and you don't make the shot, and your opponent has conserved more energy than you, you're basically dead. This IS less of a problem if you have a powerful engine with a quick spool time/acceleration to max thrust, and a good T:W, but it is still a problem. I'm still convinced that there is a utility to TVC, but I'm no longer sure whether the PLAAF would find that utility worthwhile given potential costs in development time and weight. That said, my inclination is that if they can guarantee a powerful high performance engine they will go with TVC, since the penalties in the performance tradeoffs would be greatly lessened.
EDIT: I should mention that one take away for agility and dogfighting performance from the energy management perspective is that it's not simply about how quickly you can turn, roll, pitch, etc, or how high an angle of attack you can reach before stall, but more importantly how efficiently you can maneuver. The less the drag penalty when executing a maneuver, the better for survivability and performance.
Traveling waves that hit the canard eventually reach the rear of the canard and rescatter, creating unwanted emissions. With planform alignment, these waves can be mostly absorbed by the wing or other aspect of the aircraft and reduce the return emissions to the original source. But this is not superior to having a single wing, with a LEVCON attached in front, providing a single continuous structure.
I do admit that the canards are superior for vortex control and for the fact that the LEVCONS under some conditions can block engine air flow, but canards are inferior for stealth.
Again, solid points on physics. However, as somewhat implied in my earlier response about TVC, this is where physics and engineering diverge. Engineering is ultimately about taking knowledge and using it to solve problems. That means that the science itself matters less than the solution derived from the science. Canards may present a more challenging problem than LERXes in terms of signal management, but that does not preclude a better solution. This basic fact of engineering is why no one should trust armchair quarterbacking...and why all this talk about such feature being worse or better than such other feature is a waste of time. Engineering is about results, and therefore specific measurements, and not about which general principles of physics are evoked to their benefit or drawback.
My argument has never been that wing-loading is the sole determinant of airframe performance, but rather that wing loading is one aspect of airframe performance and that other aerodynamic features can add to maneuverability despite having a poor wing-loading.
In the case of the F-22, the F-22 is augmented by having TVC nozzles to increase pitch control and increase turn rate, as well as having LERXes to enhance body lift. Comparing the F-22 and the F-15, the lower wing loading is compensated for by aerodynamic bells and whistles.
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And as far as claiming that wing-loading is something completely irrelevant, we can make a determination of this quite easily.
Let's say, we have a J-10 loaded with 100% fuel and 50% fuel. The one with 100% fuel has higher wing loading, as it has the same wing area os the 50% fuel J-10, but also has higher weight. The one with higher fuel quantities will be less maneuverable than J-10 with lower fuel quantities because the lift force is acting on a lighter weight than the one with the full fuel.
All other factors being equal, the aircraft with the higher wing loading is less maneuverable. This can be compensated for by aerodynamic bells and whistles, of course.
And I think Engineer's point is that wing loading is simply not a significant factor because it's a heuristic measurement for lifting force/area (pressure exerted through lift). I'm somewhat doubtful that the F-22 achieves greater turning performance than the F-15 simply because it has TVC, since TVC aids instantaneous turn rates but not sustained turn rates. My inclination (and I'd need to find evidence for this) is that the predominant reason the F-22 has a better turn rate than the F-15 is because despite the F-15's wing loading, the F-22 simply generates more net lift force per area of wing in the full flight envelope of a turn (considering the full flight envelope is important since lifting force won't stay consistent at all alphas!). Ultimately it's about pressure distribution to weight (and the momentum from those two interacting! Where a force acts is just as important as how much force!), of which wing area and weight only play a secondary role in determining.
The J-10 example addresses the weight portion of the benefits of wing loading, but all it really points out is that for a given amount of applied force on an object, objects of lower weight will be faster/quicker than objects of higher weight. It's not wing loading that's creating the performance difference between a J-10 with 50% and 100% fuel loads, but the amount of force applied to the specific weight. That's not really an argument for good wing loading, but good weight. Ultimately the reason wing loading is used is because it is a (I would argue sloppy) heuristic to determine net lift force over area (where area, depending on other factors, may have a negative effect on lifting force), which is what makes it a bad measure of performance for advanced aerodynamic bodies.
Shielded or not shielded, the presence of edge alignment on the canard will ensure radar wave to be reflected away from the source. Counting something that doesn't register on the sensor is silly, and is no more than a poor attempt to portray J-20 RCS to be bigger than what it truly is.
I think the point he makes is fair. There is going to be back scatter from creeping waves when you have more surface discontinuities, which could make it more difficult to manage reflections at the relevant angles. The question is 1)whether those angles are relevant to detection (as you suggested), and 2) whether the consequences are negligent, either because of the inherent physics involved, or because of some solution that effectively mitigates the concern.
