J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VIII
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
They need to get flying boom asap. Wonder if that’s an improvement on J-20A/S.
i think it is highly doubtful, switching refueling configuration is a pretty significant effort and i would assume china will be locked into drogue fueling for the forseeable future. the usaf only went with boom fueling because of strategic air command and my understanding is that it was more of a concept borne from sac's ww2 experience of massive formations of heavy bombers. things have changed somewhat in the half century since and i suspect at the doctrinal level china may never be looking at that sort of scaling.
Is it really that much better than the drogue system? I know it has higher flow rates, but the drogue system can refuel 3 aircraft simultaneously, so wouldn't that kind of level the playing field?
Drogue also don't need to have lower flow rate, its just for the same flow rate hard booms are smaller and lighter than soft tubing. If needed there's nothing preventing YY-20 from equipping a larger diameter high flow drogue in the centre.
