J-20... The New Generation Fighter

Asymptote said:

My apology, I mistaken F-117 / PAK-FA's all moving tailplane for Mig 1.44's. I thought I have seen that somewhere...

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Asymptote said:

No, I am not saying that, trust me.
What I am saying is, I felt its a little premature to show off the piece.

Allow me elaborate. When I look at design, I look at the lineage, and when you look at lineage, you look at the most variants a design can offer - And currently J-10/J-11B seems still fresh off the production/under production line, with almost no variants to speak of. The last fighter that seems to me to be very well understood by the Chinese aviation industry seems to be the J-7 and J-8, with almost hundreds of variations. It shows the level of confidence and understanding in modifying the design because of the thorough understanding and knowledge gain in those design.

Just imagine if you design something, let's say a car, and because its a new design, you are just happy it "works" (magic!) and is afraid modifying it will result in failure - and that's normal in almost every field of engineering/design process. And it took a long time until designers thoroughly understood the principles of the design, that they start really tearing engine again, examine every parts and redesign every part to have next generation design. Along the way, you have hundreds of modification/variation of original design. And this usually starts from the outside - the shell of the design - the body/structure frame of the design. So the car usually get a different look first, while the engines and the innards get change much much later.

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Asymptote said:

I am just curious why the body of J-20 is so smooth, and painted black all over as if its a production run fighter. The body material reminds me of the Anjian "Dark Sword" UCAV presented back in 2007 that's all.

And would any aviation expert shed some light on this? Why is it most of the prototype planes were painted in either dark green or light yellow, and they all seem to be made of different materials too (perhaps those colours are actually the colour of composite material?)

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Asymptote said:

No, I am not saying that, trust me.
What I am saying is, I felt its a little premature to show off the piece.

Allow me elaborate. When I look at design, I look at the lineage, and when you look at lineage, you look at the most variants a design can offer - And currently J-10/J-11B seems still fresh off the production/under production line, with almost no variants to speak of. The last fighter that seems to me to be very well understood by the Chinese aviation industry seems to be the J-7 and J-8, with almost hundreds of variations. It shows the level of confidence and understanding in modifying the design because of the thorough understanding and knowledge gain in those design.

Just imagine if you design something, let's say a car, and because its a new design, you are just happy it "works" (magic!) and is afraid modifying it will result in failure - and that's normal in almost every field of engineering/design process. And it took a long time until designers thoroughly understood the principles of the design, that they start really tearing engine again, examine every parts and redesign every part to have next generation design. Along the way, you have hundreds of modification/variation of original design. And this usually starts from the outside - the shell of the design - the body/structure frame of the design. So the car usually get a different look first, while the engines and the innards get change much much later.

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terrorhunter said:

the yellow or green are primer paints used by the companies. different companies use different colour paint. it doesnt mean yellow equates a certain material and green another. like i mentioned before from some of the previous photos we can see that one of the j-20 prototypes has exposed yellow panels in the nose and we can also see that the parachute compartment is still painted yellow on the inside. all these points to the fact that CAC gave the J-20 a coat of paint so that it looks presentable as they know that ppl will be taking photos of it and being chinese it has to look good. the j-10 prototype had a white colour paint when it was first revealed and the JH-7 and L-15 were all painted when they were first made public. it doesnt mean that one country has a certain way of presenting prototypes so all other countries must follow-suit, same as with military tech development.

we live in a time of computer simulation and modelling. any defects or design flaws can and will be worked out on the computers - bare in mind that china currently has the fastest super-computer in the world - and the final prototype will be a product of years of ironing out kinks on computers. that is the reason why most planes nowadays do not have many variants. the only reason there are variants now is so that the same plane can fulfill different combat roles, not because there's a problem with it. so by making the assumption that china is still having problems with J-10 and J-11B because there's no variants is flawed and non-congruent with modern day tech development. im quite sure that IF the J-10 and J-11 still had problems the chinese would not be fielding them in the quantity that they currently are.

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AssassinsMace said:

I read over at FYJ that now the Koreans are claiming the J-20 was ripped-off from their KF-X program and the majority of Chinese netziens agree.

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Centrist said:

... ...
I remember an American General being quoted are saying the Pak-fa was a "russian copy'" of the F-22. Any idiot could tell you that they are completely different aircraft, and calling it a copy is a serious dis-service to the Russian PAK-FA T-50.
... ...

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