Is this the first time China has two competing designs with flying prototypes? During J-XX competition Snowy Owl never left drawing board.
PLA next/6th generation fighter thread
- Thread starter Blitzo
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Yes, frankly speaking.
I think so, in previous cases the loser gets dropped while still in drawing stages, eg Snowy Owl, J-13 etc.
But I think that's a cost thing. Back then China couldn't financially support multiple prototypes proceeding to physical flying article stage, but today things may be different. It's like how US is rich enough to have many X planes - one off prototypes that lets you learn a lot in the process of building them without them being intended for production. Yankee has argued that China has reached this stage and he points to CAC's J-20S as an example of Chinese X plane (not intended for production at onset of project, laid the foundation for later WS-15 powered J-20). So if you take that view then competing 6th gen prototype seem plausible.
J-10 TVC I think would be another good example of a Chinese X plane.
Just bear in mind that GaN is a lot more efficient at converting electricity into RF energy, so cooling requirements are a lot less than for GaA.
If they did go with 3000 T/R GaN modules, it could track many more targets simultaneously which would be useful for directing CCAs.
Or alternatively, let's say they divert all that extra energy to detect a small number of targets. I'm thinking this gives it significantly more detection range against opposing stealth 2 engine stealth aircraft.
okay, I have not seen this before, but now I'm thinking that maybe 1 MW power requirement is too conservative. Maybe the DEW and additional EW system placed in other part of the aircraft will take up a lot of power too.
but one thing clear to me is that F-35 is really going to suck in a few years. 80kW is nothing. That's at most 4x the power supply of the radar.
but if you compare a 1MW radar unit vs 17kW radar unit for peak power. That's 58x more
range will be 7.6x longer vs same target
Your processor will be processing 58x more information. Which for modern processor actually isn't so difficult actually.
google AI says
and it already had 175m parameters. Many of the modern large open source models, you can run on 1 or 2 4090 as long as you have enough VRAM.
even if we 2x that, you are looking at most 15kW for computation. Still just a fraction of the radar power.
Hello. I'm new here and I'm mostly a reader. But the discussion here is interesting. Aren't the radar power electronics and its processing system one thing and the mission electronics another? Also, they're talking about integrating AI to manage everything and graphics processors as the engine for that. Is this (broadly speaking) correct or is there some conceptual error? I understand that the normal thing is to have hardened but modular electronics for the systems and integrate them with a system that manages them. Everything around a data bus. Flight electronics are one thing, mission electronics are another, etc. Are they talking about integrating everything with a dedicated AI that can manage everything? I thought the current focus of AI was something around process automation and support in pilot decision making. Greetings to all and apologies for the bad syntax, Google translate has a tendency to talk like Tarzan and my English (zero) is insufficient to correct it.
Yes, a target would be painted with the same amount of RF energy (and at a wider range of frequencies) at a distance 7.6x further away.
But the return signal would also be 7.6x weaker and presumably there is no difference in receive module sensitivity.
So the same amount of information is being processed, but you need better algorithms to pick out such weak signals from the noise.
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In any case, my guess is a bare minimum of a 2x improvement in X-Band detection range against something like an F-35.
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In a combat scenario, you want as much thrust as possible.
Given a heavy airframe and 3 engines, then you want all those engines to be capable of low-bypass afterburn to maximise available thrust.
Plus presumably the radar (or weapons) are consuming a lot of electricity as well.
But in cruise mode, perhaps only the centreline engine is combusting fuel and the other engines are shut down. But the fans on the other engines are being powered by electricity. So they are also pushing air through the engine and generating thrust.
So you end up with a much higher bypass ratio and therefore fuel efficiency?
You take the fourth root to find the detection range, so the detection range with 58x power is 2.76x.
If PLA is able to introduce and fly two prototypes for a 6th gen fighter, they should keep both; to complement each other.
Like currently many in the US are regretting ending the YF-23 development after it lost to YF-22. The YF-23 could have solved the range issue that US faces in the Pacific with its nearly 3K miles and 65K ft ceiling versus 2K miles and 50K ft ceilings for the F-22.
I don't know but having two competing air frames would keep both industry busy as well. It would be short-sighted if they just picked one and left the other into the dust.