I think the third photo shows that 2051 is landing, so it has made its first flight.
J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII
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I think the third photo shows that 2051 is landing, so it has made its first flight.
Radome profile seems to have changed? I vaguely remember seeing a patent from CAC somewhere talking about a new radome design that can reduce drag, wonder if this has anything to do with it
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by78
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No, the paper never said that.
On the other hand, virtually no space is left empty inside a modern 5th generation fighter - even if you are adding volume for primarily aerodynamic reasons, you will be taking advantage of it for other purposes.
Since its fuselage packaging is virtually the same, the F-22 offers a reasonable clue on the J-20 fuel tank configuration, and that indicates there should indeed be a tank there. There's another reason fuel capacity is the most likely use of the additional volume: fuel is the only component that is "malleable" in shape and scales continuously. As you say, electronics have a limited ability to conform to an aerodynamically determined shape, and you'd have to wonder what the original J-20 was even lacking in the avionics department. Is a seventh MAWS sensor (for instance) really sensible, when the six on the base model already provide full spherical coverage?
The one scenario where I can see the volume being used for electronics is if it is occupied by boxes displaced from elsewhere on the airframe by a new piece of (non-avionics) equipment. Say, this new variant gets a gun, and something which originally sat where the gun now is located was moved into the spine.
Like fuel, more weapons would obviously also be always welcome, but missile payload scales in discrete increments and has a fixed geometry. Additionally, the spine adds the most volume well forward of the weapons bay, approximately above the nose gear well. To gain meaningful bay depth, you'd have to move the intake ducts (which curve inward to almost meet on the centreline over the bay) and I just don't see enough new volume in that place for this to happen.
TL,DR: the spine is not going to be empty, and fuel is by far the most likely thing to occupy the additional space.
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Just a nice PS of what we may have in the future.
Not necessarily. IMO it could also be just a high speed taxi test with lifting the front landing gear and afterwards a regular breaking.
I'm shocked at how much better it looks with a hump.
The hump almost completely eliminates the "it looks kinda weird" feeling that I used to have with the J20
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