PLA Navy news, pics and videos
- Thread starter Jeff Head
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This discussion is better suited for the UAV thread so I'll keep it brief.
PLA watchers within China have written about this topic. Yes it seems like a good use of old J-6 and J-7, but that's because you're overlooking a very important resource: maintenance and runway time.
To keep a fleet of converted J-6 and J-7 UAV airworthy requires maintenance crew, particularly in the vast numbers often envisioned. You don't want them to be unreliable and blow up on the runway at a time when runway is really busy.
If forceful reunification actually occurs these UAV require even more ground crew time to fuel and attach iron bombs to them. And they have to line up and take off on actual military runways, taking up runway time that may be better off being used to send up actual manned aircraft that are also needed.
On the other hand, if you were to build some new dedicated kamikaze UAV you wouldn't design them like that, instead the result would look more like this IAI Harop here:
While it still kind of looks like a plane you notice it's launched from a boxy launcher and comes in a sealed unit to minimise maintenance. It actually in many ways is more similar to a cruise missile than an aircraft. Given the above mentioned cost in manpower and runway time for converted fighter UAVs, it may actually be cheaper to just build new dedicated UAVs for this purpose.
I agree with your assessment, but with thousands available, I am sure a few can be converted into drones for target practice.
Just because thousands are available doesn't make it cost effective.
1. It is heavier than a purpose built drone (size was designed to support a human)
2. Need to develop all new systems (can't just drop in a radar seeker and call it day)
3. No commercial value (unlikely to be sold on the export market, would normally offset some of the cost above)
These are in addition to the points already raised
Why is everyone always dreaming of the swarm of J-6/J-7? Just use common sense. There are thousands of 1980's American cars in the scrapyard. No one is rushing to buy those up and drop in an Electric motor to call it an EV.
Or just use them as intended?
save the remaining airframe hours, and use as very fast bomb trucks using modern weapons.
It's too expensive refitting such old jets with the modern electronic wizardry needed to operate those weapons effectively.
then don’t fit weaponry that requires such wizardry on the carrier
PiSigma
"the engineer"
There is another reason I mentioned before. J6 and j7 don't have fly by wire, everything is mechanical! To convert them to a UAV would cost more than the plane itself. Will need to strip everything out and put in a more expensive FbW system the plane is not designed for.
So just build UAVs is much cheaper.