Alright I was just asking if there had been any rumours to begin with.
Good to know I will not be led further astray with the help of discussions here.
PLA next/6th generation fighter thread
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
Good to know I will not be led further astray with the help of discussions here.
Yeah there were never any rumours about space or near space or rocket propulsion to begin with.
It's actually not hard to guess what capabilities China's 6th gen will have: it will have the capability needed to defeat NGAD.
So if the rumor about end of year appearance turn out to be true, and assuming US intelligence has at least basic competency, it could explain why NGAD was sent back to the drawing board: US obviously won't want to spend $200M building a plane that China already has a counter to.
Yankee didn’t say it is ugly. He just said that it isn’t pretty. Huge difference.
Imo a 6th gen/next gen airframe might be able to be pretty reasonably flown as a 2001 esque tech demo airframe.
However the important parts are likely to be subsystems, which aren't going to be hugely present on a tech demo anyway.
Imo the difference is unimportant.
It's just a remark about the perceived aesthetics of the plane, which doesn't really narrow or widen our estimate framework currently.
Yeah I’m not ruling it out. Just the speed at which it’s emerging is a bit surprising to me given all the open questions about what “6th gen” is supposed to entail.
I agree, the speed of it emerging is certainly a bit surprising to me as well (though noises seemed to be pointing in that direction in the last year or so).
However I also think if it were to emerge later this year (or even next year for a first flight), it seems it would be a bit odd for them to pursue an "X plane" style aircraft rather than a "YF-22/J-20 sn 2001" type tech demo. The timing feels like it would be a bit late for them to do an X plane type demo and I suspect they would've done that already.
Meanwhile, if they do have a proper J-20 sn 2001 style tech demo, it could just represent an airframe they feel comfortable with for a "6th gen/next gen" role, while the subsystems defining the generation are rolled into the aircraft over successive prototypes and LRIP in future.
Putting it another way, I wouldn't be surprised if the airframe of a 6th gen/next gen aircraft is actually something easier to define and fly and start to demonstrate, while it's the subsystems that will need more time to iterate, test, integrate etc, and those don't need to be part of an initial tech demo airframe.
Big tailless airframe, dorito shaped, good sized weapons bay and plentiful swap-c, and put in the subsystems over successive years, kinda thing.
SinoSoldier
Colonel
The US has already built an NGAD prototype or tech demonstrator since 2020, so it is not inconceivable that China would follow suit in 4-5 years, given its accelerated fighter development. Huitong interestingly says the following of the Sino-NGAD on his blog:
Nevertheless, the million-dollar question is how closely the Sino-NGAD mirrors the American program in terms of design goals, mission, overall configuration, and technological base. Neither side has an extant frame of reference, so we might see a substantial divergence of such parameters in the two programs.
Well the "fulls scale" tech demonstrator for the US NGAD is also very much unclear what its characteristics and maturity are, so I would treat that with some caution especially in keeping with recent USAF statements about re-evaluating what they actually want with the NGAD platform.
While it's possible that the PLAAF effort could be flying a tech demo that ends up being non committal and not result in an actual developmental project leading from it, that doesn't sound like what we are expecting.
(Not to mention there are indications that some relevant tech demos are likely to have already flown for the PLA effort as well)
No surprise, he reads much of the same stuff we do and he is also on SDF as well.
NGAD has a cost issue. Till now no tech issues have come up. As far as we know.