J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII
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plawolf
Lieutenant General
That outline has levcons, which would necessitate a far bigger aerodynamic redesign than the rest of the planeform is exhibiting, so that doesn’t look credible to me.
A strike oriented J20 just doesn’t make much sense since the airframe devotes so much to agility which would be wasted in such a role. That’s like trying to resign a Porsche 911 as a people carrier. Sure, you can do it if you want, but is the juice really worth the squeeze?
It would make far more sense for China to developed a dedicated VLO striker from the ground up, as they are reportedly doing with the JHXX programme.
A twin seat J20 would work best with VLO UCAVs, not conventional fighters.
If you had manned conventional fighters, you won’t need a second seat on the J20 to do the co-ordinating and controlling since those fighters would all have human pilots who can use sensor data from forward posted J20s to devise their own attack planes and organise themselves.
You only need a dedicated manager to co-ordinate if you have drones with limited AI that cannot yet match human decision making capabilities.
And I give zero stock to semi-racist put downs on how no-one else has done something before as to why China cannot do it. That’s just another manifestation of the western racist idea that Chinese somehow cannot innovate.
It people stopped playing the race card and addressed the actual merits of the suggestion, they might be taken more seriously.
A strike oriented J20 just doesn’t make much sense since the airframe devotes so much to agility which would be wasted in such a role. That’s like trying to resign a Porsche 911 as a people carrier. Sure, you can do it if you want, but is the juice really worth the squeeze?
It would make far more sense for China to developed a dedicated VLO striker from the ground up, as they are reportedly doing with the JHXX programme.
A twin seat J20 would work best with VLO UCAVs, not conventional fighters.
If you had manned conventional fighters, you won’t need a second seat on the J20 to do the co-ordinating and controlling since those fighters would all have human pilots who can use sensor data from forward posted J20s to devise their own attack planes and organise themselves.
You only need a dedicated manager to co-ordinate if you have drones with limited AI that cannot yet match human decision making capabilities.
And I give zero stock to semi-racist put downs on how no-one else has done something before as to why China cannot do it. That’s just another manifestation of the western racist idea that Chinese somehow cannot innovate.
It people stopped playing the race card and addressed the actual merits of the suggestion, they might be taken more seriously.
Actually, jamming is already installed onto the F-35I. The F-35 is slated to get jammers.
The point of EW on a stealth plane is multi-fold. First, detection range is normally modified by RCS^4. Jamming changes it to be modified directly by RCS.
Second, jamming can be turned on and off on a stealth aircraft. Jamming is only non-stealthy while the jammers are active, and even then, techniques like beamforming and LPI can reduce the non-stealth qualities of jammers.
Third, EW is not merely jamming. For instance, the F-18 apparently lacks the ability to triangulate the location of an emitter on its own, only detect it. The EA-18 in comparison has enough jamming equipment to present a location track onto the emitter via triangulation. Other uses might include such on the F-35, such as hacking enemy systems, directly frying enemy systems via concentrated EM bursts, and so on.
Modern AESA-type jammers can also selectively jam specific emissions sources to render them useless. A dedicated UHF / VHF-band jammer can be used to disable enemy sensors without needing to hard-kill them with a missile.
And as I've said a dozen times, drone control is better left distributed and to AI-schemes. A dedicated drone controller just means that your drones are useless the moment the drone controller is shot down.
Weapons systems always have to keep attrition and redundancy in mind.
Redesigning the J-20 for strike is simply a question of modifying the internal layout. The reason the J-20 is not a suitable strike platform right now is the weapons bay layout. The weapons bay is currently set up in such a way that the J-20 cannot load large strike missiles. By moving the landing gear, space is freed up for such and strike missile load-outs are now viable.
Moreover, strike platforms are intended to be highly survivable. The F-15, for instance, kept a philosophy of "not a pound for air to ground" for most of its existence, but eventually was modified for strike in part because the kinematics of the F-15 made it a highly survivable strike platform as well. The F-16 started out as an agile dogfighting specialist, but evolved into a strike platform that could take advantage of its strong agility.
That said, the J-20 as a strike platform will necessarily compete with the JH-XX, which, being designed from the ground up as a light bomber / strike aircraft, will be better at the task than a J-20 striker.
Brumby
Major
One of your main point in support of a twin seater is the notion that such a set up will "enhance" C2 in the immediate battle space of operations. Unfortunately you have not actually explain what those enhancements might be and their corresponding benefits to justify such an investment. Can you please put some content behind your argument for the sake of the discussions.
Secondly I think it is important to actually differentiate between C2, SA, and ISR because by nature they are different but appears to me that there are a high degree of overlap in the discussions. For example, C2 by nature is ultimately about decision making pertaining to the planning and execution of operations. Mission tasking with set objectives are predefined by operational HQ. In every mission what may happen are targets of opportunity and by definition cannot be predefined. The issue of C2 has become a more predominant feature because 5th gen assets has opened up a greater level of previously unavailable opportunities due to its advanced senors and its penetrative capability into contested environment. The question is should such decision making be delegated to the units or be retained by HQ. It is primarily not a technology issue but one of control and command over a battle space and to what extend operational units are allowed to act outside of mission tasks.
Finally, sharing of sensor information by more advanced platforms with those platforms with lesser sensor capabilities will enhance overall unit effectiveness due to greater situation awareness. However this is not a C2 issue but data linking and the question is what would a two seater bring to the party? Are there any evidence that the J-20 has stealthy data links?
You are making specious assertions by mixing a bunch of stuff about DEAD/SEAD which are not related to the conversation of C2. This conversation is OT and I will not labor on it.
Entirely non relevant to the conversation. Whilst there is inherent J/S advantage via a lower RCS, this is typically as a defensive nature and not acting as a dedicated jammer platform. There is no written literature out there that supports such a line of reasoning as you have advocated.
Jamming is independent from any two seater conversation. There is no relationship in your reasoning.
This is OT and i will be brief. Triangulation is a feature of the technology associated with the degree of angular accuracy and sensitivity necessary for SEAD/DEAD missions and are centered around the EA-18 for the USN and F-16CM for the USAF (outside of the F-35 and F-22). Such a capability has no relationship to any 2 seater conversation.
Actually:
Already mentioned by Chinese commentators that a stealth aircraft can become an EW aircraft once it goes to twin-seating. So this is relevant as it's internal speculation.
In the F-35's case, there is ECM already built into the F-35 as well as jamming units integrated onto the F-35. Obviously, jamming on an F-35 is going to compromise its signals stealth, but you have to think of it in a cooperative context where the aircraft conducting jamming duties are out of range and are protecting more vulnerable F-35s that'd otherwise be exposed.
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The notion of a command J-20 is basically having a flight / squadron leader fly in the back of a twin-seater, monitoring the situation and barking out orders. The idea is that if someone can be dedicated to situation monitoring instead of actually flying the plane, the combat effectiveness of the flight / squadron can be enhanced.
The drawback, of course, is that you've just put a non-redundant C2 node right into the fray, in a stealth and maneuverability compromised aircraft, and this is something Blitzo etc refuse to acknowledge.
I've been thinking about a command J-20 for a bit and while I was almost partisan to the idea of it supporting J-20s, here's the big problem: scale.
A command J-20 is not the equal of a normal J-20 when it comes to maneuverability, range, speed, and stealth by virtue of having a second operator. Moreover, a command J-20 is intrinsically more expensive than a normal J-20 due to the different occupant accommodations.
So, let's talk about an actual employment. Let's say you have a flight of 4 J-20s, of which one is a command variant.
Does having a 1:3 ratio between command J-20s and frontline pilots work? Well, you're paying more because now you need 5 pilots per 4 planes instead of 4 pilots per 4 planes and the 4th plane is now more expensive. The command J-20, unlike the other J-20s, can't risk itself because it now carries a precious cargo.
What you're doing here is that you're removing about 25-43% of the combat capability of a J-20 flight because you believe that the command J-20 can add more by virtue of providing the commander with command and control facilities on the front line.
This is just shooting fish in a barrel at this scale.
Now let's move to a 中队, or a current PLAAF flight group. 8-10 planes. When you have 8-10 planes, the command and control needs are going to now be more complex, especially since there are now 7-9 pilots under the control of the commander. It looks way better than a flight.
Here, you can actually see that it might be good to have someone specifically manage these pilots at this size, but in reality the flight group is 2 flights with their own commanders. Someone might end up hanging back to protect the command J-20, which can take the capability efficiency from from a low 10-25% to something around 33-50%, around the same as with assigning a command J-20 to a flight.
At the next level, command J-20s start to make more sense. You have roughly 24 planes per brigade, composed of three flight groups with six flights total. But once you hit 24 planes per brigade, why not just bring a KJ-200/300/500/2000/3000 along? You definitely have enough planes in the air to protect them, and the larger radar (about 3x diameter) delivers far superior detection and imaging to a command J-20.
The only advantage at this point is not stealth, as the KJ-200 can be protected, but speed. The J-20s can presumably supercruise, but then what of the command J-20? Is it going to be able to keep up with the other J-20s?
A command J-20 is not the equal of a normal J-20 when it comes to maneuverability, range, speed, and stealth by virtue of having a second operator. Moreover, a command J-20 is intrinsically more expensive than a normal J-20 due to the different occupant accommodations.
So, let's talk about an actual employment. Let's say you have a flight of 4 J-20s, of which one is a command variant.
Does having a 1:3 ratio between command J-20s and frontline pilots work? Well, you're paying more because now you need 5 pilots per 4 planes instead of 4 pilots per 4 planes and the 4th plane is now more expensive. The command J-20, unlike the other J-20s, can't risk itself because it now carries a precious cargo.
What you're doing here is that you're removing about 25-43% of the combat capability of a J-20 flight because you believe that the command J-20 can add more by virtue of providing the commander with command and control facilities on the front line.
This is just shooting fish in a barrel at this scale.
Now let's move to a 中队, or a current PLAAF flight group. 8-10 planes. When you have 8-10 planes, the command and control needs are going to now be more complex, especially since there are now 7-9 pilots under the control of the commander. It looks way better than a flight.
Here, you can actually see that it might be good to have someone specifically manage these pilots at this size, but in reality the flight group is 2 flights with their own commanders. Someone might end up hanging back to protect the command J-20, which can take the capability efficiency from from a low 10-25% to something around 33-50%, around the same as with assigning a command J-20 to a flight.
At the next level, command J-20s start to make more sense. You have roughly 24 planes per brigade, composed of three flight groups with six flights total. But once you hit 24 planes per brigade, why not just bring a KJ-200/300/500/2000/3000 along? You definitely have enough planes in the air to protect them, and the larger radar (about 3x diameter) delivers far superior detection and imaging to a command J-20.
The only advantage at this point is not stealth, as the KJ-200 can be protected, but speed. The J-20s can presumably supercruise, but then what of the command J-20? Is it going to be able to keep up with the other J-20s?
But then I beg your pardon - at least IMO there is a huge difference between what you called a "dedicated EW AEW&C J-20" aka something like the mentioned (by yourself) Y-9 EW types or even KJ-500 and what you refer now to, aka "EA-18 Growler. EA versions of the F-111 Aardvark".
Brumby
Major
That particular article that you referenced said the following :
"China's most advanced stealth fighter jet J-20 could be developed into a bomber, electric warfare (EW) aircraft and a carrier-based variant, Chinese military experts said on Wednesday as latest reports suggested a two-seat version of the warplane is under development."
The problem is the operative words used were "could be". What is conceivably possible doesn't mean it is necessarily feasible or sound. That said, it should be noted that every modern fighter plane (including 4th gen) has some form of self protection jamming (SPJ) capability either embedded or by way of a pod. For purposes of extending this conversation we assume it is a dedicated specialized EW platform. The difference between organic jamming capability and dedicated jamming platforms is the latter has to take on the role of standoff jamming across a wider spectrum of frequencies. It is the reason why the EA-18 has three pods for high, mid and low frequencies. Technically, the EA-18 is designed to carry five but I have never seen a picture with 5 pods. For stand off jamming , you need those big size jamming pods because you need power and you need cooling. Imagine with those pods hanging off the J-20 what effect it would have on its RCS. It is this reason why it does not make sense as it would entirely compromise the VLO feature of the J-20.
Secondly adding a second seat does not necessarily make a dedicated EW platform more effective. I acknowledge that the EA-18 is a two seater and there are benefits of greater workload distribution. That said, modern EW is fully integrated and generally automated. A dense signal environment basically involve detecting, classifying and responding to thousands of signals per second and within a time window measured in nano seconds. A human operator do not add value to such an equation. Why the Chinese think is a good idea is beyond my comprehension but since the article did not make a case as to the reasoning I cannot comment further. I have never seen such a proposal in Western sources though.
Whilst I do not disagree that the F-35 has jamming capabilities, its features are not publicly known as to what those features are. However the nature of cooperative jamming in a 4 ship F-35 formation is known to operate in an interleaving manner between the 4 ship which act as one due to shared sensor fusion and unit linking via MADL. Basically one will sense, another will jam and the third will act as shooter and they can easily interleave between the 4 ship by seamlessly exchanging roles.
Modern technology describes it as sensor fusion and networking cooperatively via MADL. It is embedded in the tactical training. Having a conductor in my view is old school and may not fit a modern tactical environment but that is just my opinion.
Sticking a jammer in a stealth fighter is *very* different from making a dedicated electronic attack version of that fighter.
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