Top picture is a reference to the Chinese cartoon gourd brothers.
J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII
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Top picture is a reference to the Chinese cartoon gourd brothers.
Looks like a for high altitude flight used for flying above the (>18-19km). The visor fully covers the face and suit leaves no gaps.What is this helmet?
The aircrafts that normally cruise that high like and equips their pilots with this.
Wonder what platform in China's arsenal would require this gear?
Okay, it seems like I'm going to have to be the one who starts the wild speculation. That looks like a WS-15 test. The potato quality of the footage isn't helpful, but the engine on the left looks stubbier than the one on the right and the afterburner exhausts certainly look different. The left one looks weaker, which fits the theory since if it's a WS-15, it would have to use less afterburner to match the power of a WS-10/AL-31.
I don't see any reason to think why this is not just a regular Al-31 powered J-20.
More importantly if we did get a picture or a video of a WS-15 tested on J-20 then we certainly won't have to be the ones to do the speculating but the usual suspects on the Chinese boards would be giving us the directions.
I get that you want news about WS-15 but come on...
Can you blame me for going a little nuts? I'm sure you've noticed that the conversations here have taken an autophagous quality from the information deprivation we're suffering. You've been in the game a lot longer than I have, so you have more context about this - has it always been this bad? We're looking at cutesy cartoon helmets and trying to extract meaningful information from that.I don't see any reason to think why this is not just a regular Al-31 powered J-20.
More importantly if we did get a picture or a video of a WS-15 tested on J-20 then we certainly won't have to be the ones to do the speculating but the usual suspects on the Chinese boards would be giving us the directions.
I get that you want news about WS-15 but come on...
When I first got into PLA watching 3 or 4 years ago there seemed to be a lot more information going around. Granted, that could be me looking back with rose-tinted glasses and mistaking a lot of new information to me - since I had a lot to catch up on - for a lot of new information in an absolute sense. But I think there's been an objective tightening of rumour flows recently and I find it very unwelcome. It hasn't been all bad; there's your tour de force article on BSHIC for example, but by and large it's sucked.
As for the WS-15, there's this from @huitong hanging around
Well... where's the test flight?
Well we try to be observers and try to be as even keeled as possible for PLA watching, rather than being fanboys.
As far as waiting for aerospace engines are concerned, for PLA watching that is very much the never ending story, gotta get used to it.
The whole point of why this forum exists is to take what few rumours and hints and obscured images exist, and try to piece things together to form a coherent prediction.
And lol, if you think the current state of things is "information deprivation" then you wouldn't have had fun in the mid to late 2000s.
At present there are more than a few big ticket air and naval projects on the cards for the next few years likely to emerge; J-XY, H-20, KJ/H-600, 003, 054B.
In the mid to late 2000s the only big ticket aerospace projects were J-11B and J-10B to watch and maybe H-6K, and the J-20 (then called J-XX) was treated by half the community like it was a paper plane until late 2009, and 052C production looked capped at 2 hulls and it would be years until hints of 052D emerged let alone 055.
So yes, let's get real, and avoid feeling too entitled.
To paraphase -- the PLA giveth, and the PLA taketh away
That third helmet is definitely a high altitude helmet and suit as Silent Observer correctly explained. What aircraft it belongs with is the question. Is H-20 or JH-xx supposed to be capable/designed to fly above the Armstrong limit? Strange hint for sure.
It could also be WS-10 on the left since WS-10 is slightly shorter and bulkier than the Al-31.
It could also be WS-10 on the left since WS-10 is slightly shorter and bulkier than the Al-31.
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@Bltizo I remember reading on SDF that the PLA really tightened OPSEC a few years ago so perhaps that's what @ZeEa5KPul was referring to?
Anyone's guess. Maybe they ran a test flight with strict opsec so to keep the Americans guessing? Or maybe the info about the WS-15 is wrong? Who knows.
Something I forgot to mention about this specifically: the usual suspects completely missed the WZ-8 drone until pictures of it emerged just before the 2019 National Day parade. So the usual suspects aren't infallible - we have multiple lines of evidence indicating that a WS-15 flight test should be happening around now, so I think it would pay to keep our eyes peeled irrespective of what we're not hearing from our usual suspects.
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