Now, let's see that airframe at Zhuhai, fully painted in splinter camo...
And a dragon on its tail ....
J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VI
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And a dragon on its tail ....
Posted by Deino and by78
Typical of him
Photoshopped - look at the edges of the dragon.
Yes for sure, but he had to wait until it popped up at Sina featuring the typical Sina-stamp/-watermark on it.
Yes, already discussed when these image came out.
by78
General
Could you have the post deleted? I ask because the poster is doing duplicate posting a lot, despite our advising him to check before posting.
my apology to everyone, i referred back 10 or more pages but didn't see those posts....
Yep, don't worry about it Bub, and I hope you won't let this discourage you... pictures of this aircraft are actually quite rare these days, and heck, I NEVER look back through most of these posts, so I actually kind of like seeing them again, as long as someone brings a few comments or observations
I think a lot of people miss what the deal is about the Su-57. Ever noticed the amount of movable surfaces it has? Not only does it have 3D TVC engine nozzles, it has all movable tailplanes, and moveable surfaces both on the back and in the front of the wings.
The Su-57 is likely designed for super-maneuverability and WVR fighting at high angles of attack. It is hardly surprising it has taken them this long to design it. Just imagine the complexity of the software avionics to do fly-by-wire on it. It is also expected to have side and backwards radars. At short enough ranges even stealth fighters like the F-22 and F-35 will become visible on either radar or IR. The F-35 clearly should have much worse maneuverability than it.
In an aircraft like this the pilot will be the limit. So things like the pilot suit and the pilot controls of the aircraft will be of vital importance. Russia has fallen behind the West in terms of helmet mounted sights despite their initial advantage with the MiG-29 helmet sight system. The radars, they might be bad on the onset, due to the limited production capacity and poor manufacturing tools available to the Russian semiconductor industry. But I think if they are desperate enough they can source those from China semiconductor plants. It's not the signal processing performance that I think will be the problem. Russian can manufacture CPUs more powerful than the ones used in the F-22s avionics. The problem will be in the T/R elements for the radars themselves.
A lot of people think the Russians cannot compete with the F-35 in terms of software complexity. But the Russians do not need to reach that level of complexity in the first place. The F-22, for example, is much less complex and has all the capabilities required for the air superiority mission. Also I suspect a lot of the required work done to port the old avionics from analog to digital on modern hardware have already been done with the Su-30 and Su-35 and that work will be used in the Su-57. i.e. things like the digital HUD or weapons control software.
I think it is a pointless waste of time to critique the Su-57 engines for their perceived lack of stealthiness:
a) These are not the production engines.
b) There are ways to increase frontal engine stealth other than S-ducts. For example the F-117 did not use S-ducts. It used grills over the engine intakes. To some degree the Russians typically already put some sort of grills on their fighter engine intakes to prevent particle intake (they typically can operate from rougher airfields than NATO fighters). It then becomes a matter of redesigning these to increase frontal aspect stealth.
c) S-ducts take up valuable internal space which can be used for either fuel or stealth weapons.
With the J-20 I think the Chinese had different requirements. Deep long range strikes at the control systems and AWACS of the enemy. Yet with enough maneuverability to win against with the F-35 (which is what the Japanese and South Koreans will have). The F-22 does not exist in enough numbers and the US will to spread them on both the European and Asian theaters of operations. Not to mention that due to the maintenance requirements most of them will be back in US air bases for national defense in the initial stages of a conflict.
The radars on both the Su-57 and the J-20 will, I suspect, evolve over time. The Russians made painstaking work converting their avionics from analog to digital, like I said, they tested these on their older Su-27 derived platforms. Now they want to design a new more maneuverable and stealthy hardware platform with enough performance that uses those avionics. What will be truly interesting is the Su-57M whenever that comes out with their next-gen avionics.
Currently the F-22 does not have all-aspect missile support nor helmet sights (supposed to be done in an upgrade) and if the F-35s helmet was so good which has it gone through two separate vendors already and another version has been ordered from the same vendor? Even if the F-35 gets to have more situational awareness due to the helmet the IRST sensors it has have worse range than even the ones the Russians use in the Su-35. Now, the F-35 also has less IR emissions, so that might make it a wash. But once the Russians have the production engine for the Su-57 it will supercruise without afterburners. Already we see the J-20 with an engine exaust with a petal design similar to the F-35's which was designed to minimize IR emissions as well. So until we see the final production fighters, say, in 2020, I wouldn't do any comparisons between those platforms.
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