Mystery aircraft 4th August 2025: CCA vs other
- Thread starter Deino
- Start date
All I’m trying to do for now is establish its rough size.
Anything J-35 size and above I’d say is definitely manned. However this honestly looks bigger than that to me. Plus the double / triple main landing gear bogie.
For now I’m just going off of what I see, which is a very big plane. I’m not hearing any credible challenges as to its size (caveat being picture quality as usual). If the picture is real and the main landing gear is actually that bulky, then it can only be one thing... I’m just not ready to say it as I / we need more evidence.
Maybe this is an updated prototype of the J-36.
doubt it.. this looks twin engine
J-36 overall configuration means three Engines won't change. it is pretty much confirmed from all source.
I don't see how you can tell it's a twin-engine aircraft from the only photo that we have.
I did the wheel measurements I think it's pretty safe to say this is not a H-20 Variant. The measurements almost match exactly with the J-36 Wheel size to length ratio. And I'd like to point out that the main gears look like the same kind of double bogey on the J-36 but with the landing gear door sticking out ahead, which may make it appear to be a triple bogey.
Thanks. Did you happen to try and do a comparison to the wingspan (at least what we can see of the wings from that orientation)?
If it’s at least roughly J-36 size (and real, of course), then a J-36 with such redesigned wings / a totally new aircraft in the same size category as J-36 would be remarkable.
Would you post your analysis here? In fact i tried the same - albeit not with calculations and measurement, but just by eye-balling the J-36's front landing gear tyre to a size similar to the unknown type.
I'm well aware this inherits several errors from the beginning since we don't know if the size of the tires are the same, eyeballing itself is far from good ... but at least since we are all fishing in a muddy pond! Here is my try ...
I must admit, my first impression was this "thing" is bigger - or at least longer than a J-36 ... so indeed more something big.
Then I found the image in the bottom left corner and my first thought was, these two are too similar, maybe it is a fake too ... if I wouldn't know better and both images were posted let's say about two years apart, I would say that "thing" from yesterday is a dramatically refined version of the J-36, but that does not make any sense at all!
Last edited:
Until the mystery of than new "thing" seen yesterday is solved I think we should separate all "what is it" discussion containing a lot of speculations from the regular "Chinese UCAV/CCA/flying wing drones (ISR, A2A, A2G) thread" and continue it here until we know what it is:
I'll start with the transfer of all posts to this new thread and until then I hope you don't mind!
I'll start with the transfer of all posts to this new thread and until then I hope you don't mind!
Last edited: