Another question, do we even have any picture of the WS-15? Even a static display or something?
J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII
- Thread starter siegecrossbow
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By all means we should be keeping our eyes and ears out for any kind of WS-15 test at present and for the foreseeable future because it is something we are expecting to happen, but the chances of any of us identifying it first is miniscule.
As for the WZ-8 drone -- not really, we had years of prior rumours that a high supersonic drone was in development and testing.
And we even had a satellite picture of it from 2018 during a line up at an airbase.
Sometimes we get completely blindsided by a new development, but it's very much the exception rather than the norm.
I understand you really, really want news for WS-15, but I think you need to recalibrate your expectations a little bit.
Ironically we didn’t totally *miss* the WZ-8 drone as much as we didn’t know what it was when we saw it. We’d known about a low aspect ratio design from satellite photos for a few years before the WZ-8 reveal and we simply had no other corroborating information to know what it was. What that tells us is that the PLA still exercises very tight disclosure for the most sensitive projects.
Engine testing in particular is something that’s very easy to keep away from prying eyes so long as it’s done indoors, and as China seems to have invested a whole lot of money for modern engine testing platforms, this is more the case for the WS-15 than it ever was for the WS-10. For example, before we’d be able to visually identify some stages of testing an engine was in because at some point they would have needed to stick the engine core on an actual testbed plane to conduct high altitude tests of the core, and then again at some later date for high altitude test of the whole development prototype. They may even need to stick the engine into a fighter after not just for integration testing but also to do some of the more complex parts of production prototype testing. Now pretty much *all* of that outside integration can be done indoors in dedicated pressure and climate controlled test platforms that can simulate most flight conditions. The only time an engine needs to be on a plane now is for the integration testing part, so by the time we see it out in the wild, if we get no images of the engine sitting on a platform somewhere, it will probably be in the nacelle of a J-20 maybe 1-3 years away from production certification.
I wasn't really interested in UAVs until recently so my recollection might be a bit hazy, but my impression is that those rumours referred to the Dark Sword and that drone's layout is different - most notably, it has a ramjet engine and not a rocket. I don't recall any rumours about a rocket-powered drone launched from a bomber.
I should have phrased my OP in this way. This also holds for the GJ-11 - we had pictures of the Sharp Sword from 2013 and knew what it was, yet its appearance at the parade was still a surprise. Contrast that with how we all expected the DF-41 to debut.
The speculation around the drone was for a high supersonic recon drone possibly launched from an H-6. For the years preceding its revelation in 2019, everyone thought it would be a ramjet. Henri K's site wrote a few pieces on it over the years and we were definitely aware of it on the forums too.
I.e.: it was a surprise that it ended up being rocket powered rather than ramjet. But the development of a high supersonic recon drone most certainly was predicted.
It's not a strange hint of any kind, it's just posted in the wrong thread. The person who put it here found some pics from a piece about helmets and apparently thought they (all) had something to do with the J-20.
Strange because nothing in PLAAF flies at those altitudes. Yeah I think it's obvious the helmet isn't for J-20 but what is it for?
Sorry, missed it.
by78
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No, you didn't miss it. He never provided the original text (or a link) for the illustrations, which would have been greatly helpful, not to mention required by the forum rules as well as being good etiquette.
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