There are stealth benefits, potentially quite significant. Deflecting control surfaces can cause complicated and unpredictable interactions that reduce stealth. By using thrust vectoring these movements can be minimized.
J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII
- Thread starter siegecrossbow
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The presumed TVC design being used by the J-20 should have minimal weight and thrust penalties.
I think even if there are weight or thrust penalties, it is simplistic to view the benefit of TVC as only being for WVR dogfighting.
Yes. Lots of benefits even for BVR.
Also the other thing I forgot to mention is that if this is designed to eventually be flown with the more powerful WS-15, this would theoretically allow for higher internal weight. That may allow certain subsystems that would've been appropriate in volume but not weight. It would also allow for maybe heavier material or thicker RAM coasting or RAM coating in more places.
It is less for Airshow poststall and more for reducing control surface movement during cruising flight.
It will also probably help maneuverability and drag in certain flight envelopes (high altitude and high speed regimes)
Or add a laser. Since the canards are still there, TVC doesn't seem worth the trade-offs.
And presumably they want the Ws-15 TVC experience on 5th gen platform to build on from it for the 6th gens that'll start kicking off 10 years from now of not earlier. There is a full speed arms race ongoing.
This design kinda reminds me of J-35. J-35 also has the canopy shrinked under the the chasis. Either that or the back is raised. I remember asking about J-35 prototypes unable to look behind it. This is rather unusual. Usually airframe don't get changes like these.
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