J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VIII

[siegecrossbow]

According to Yankeesama they contemplated using handpicked WS-10 (most reliable ones they had available) for the maiden flight and decided against it. It would’ve been a case of good optics but terrible practicality since they’d need to move to AL-31 eventually.

 

[learner123]

You do realise you can’t just swop engines like you change underpants right?

It takes a lot of time to redesign the airframe to take a new engine, even when provisions were originally made in the base design. Once you have installed the new engines you need to re-do a lot of the test flights for evaluation and validation. All of that can take years.

When you put a fighter into LRIP, the base design would need to be frozen, with the focus on quality control and production ramp up.

ok understood, so the original j20 were designed with the al31 in mind since the ws10 was still new and unproven. so the initial batches were produced with al31s before the airframe were re designed to incorporate the ws10 which takes time, even thought the ws10 proved to already be quite reliable when the first batches of j20s were built?

 

[latenlazy]

So to draw a conclusion, later variants of the al31s were more reliable then the initial ws-10b on the frist few batches of the j-16? or were there other reasons as to why the first two batche of j-20s were produced with russian engines?

By the J-16’s introduction the WS-10 was reliable enough for mainline service but the J-20s were flying on custom AL-31s that China had indigenously uprated on their own.

ok understood, so the original j20 were designed with the al31 in mind since the ws10 was still new and unproven. so the initial batches were produced with al31s before the airframe were re designed to incorporate the ws10 which takes time, even thought the ws10 proved to already be quite reliable when the first batches of j20s were built?

When the J-20 did finally adopt WS-10s they were significantly uprated variants.

 

[siegecrossbow]

AL-31 used on initial 30 or so J-20 have been pretty thoroughly rehauled to fit the plane. Even so it cannot match the WS-10C2 in raw performance or power generation capabilities. That’s the limitation of using a foreign engine not designed for the target aircraft, even if you dismantle and reassemble them Ship of Theseus style.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

Not that I'm explicitly challenging the authenticity of this (as timing of the release of such imagery and the quality of this imagery are reasonable), but who was the original poster of this?

It probably circulated via 牧星观海天; there is a gif of it. I suspect it came from a recently released video somewhere, but I haven't seen anyone link the particular video.

Via 052D成都舰: The vertical tail hasn’t had its corners clipped, the insignia sits higher up, the exhaust/nozzle is painted white, there’s a number on the nose, and there’s a pitot tube on the tip—this is an ancient clip of prototype No. 2002 doing bomb-release testing.

https://imgur.com/a/617TGNY

The original poster of the clip is the official Weibo account of Chengdu AC.

The clip is part of a promo video commemorating the 15th anniversary of the J-20's maiden flight:

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[Blitzo]

The original poster of the clip is the official Weibo account of Chengdu AC.

The clip is part of a promo video commemorating the 15th anniversary of the J-20's maiden flight:

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That's good to know.

Unfortunately, it doesn't decisively prove the veracity of all of the clips in the video shown -- there have been use of CGI footage from official promotional videos as well spliced with real footage.
I wonder if anyone recalls the PLAN J-15 promotional video from about 5 years ago where there was some rather dynamic J-15 clips that were CGI interspersed among actual real footage.

 

[latenlazy]

That's good to know.

Unfortunately, it doesn't decisively prove the veracity of all of the clips in the video shown -- there have been use of CGI footage from official promotional videos as well spliced with real footage.
I wonder if anyone recalls the PLAN J-15 promotional video from about 5 years ago where there was some rather dynamic J-15 clips that were CGI interspersed among actual real footage.

While your skepticism is extremely justified I do think it’s worth mentioning that the production quality of state media has improved immensely since we were pups in this hobby

 

[Blitzo]

While your skepticism is extremely justified I do think it’s worth mentioning that the production quality of state media has improved immensely since we were pups in this hobby

Yeah, their CGI quality has gotten a fair bit better.

In all seriousness, their taste has improved somewhat, but for "dynamic" or "cinematic" air to air video clips of aircraft, I think a baseline level of skepticism is warranted if not prudent until such a point that they explicitly make indications that all footage is real, or alternatively even showcase brief behind the scenes footage of how such footage was taken.


Abiding by the rule that the worst thing that can be done in this hobby is to have to walk things back if things are proven to be false, this level of caution imo is essential.

 

[karaway]

Is this CGI?It looks a bit like that J-20A equipped with the WS-15.

 

[Deino]

View attachment 168072Is this CGI?It looks a bit like that J-20A equipped with the WS-15.

Care to post the source? It looks indeed strange and totally different to the WS-15‘s nozzles we know so far.