Yankee & Co. in their
on Bilibili have some interesting information regarding the (manned fighter component of) Sino-NGAD.
(My own comments are in
italic.)
Some key points include:
- Revelation/first flight possible within the next couple 10s of days (几十天内/后);
- System-versus-system combat (e.g. MUMT collaboration, family of systems) will be the absolute defining nature, not unit-vs-unit and platform-vs-platform combat anymore;
- Dimension (and thus, internal space) will be greater than 5th-gen fighters;
- Range (and combat radius) will be greater than 5th-gen fighters;
- High speed at high altitude operations will be important;
- Having larger weapons bay for larger/longer-range AAMs;
- Side weapons bays and SRAAMs (e.g. PL-10, AIM-9X) will become increasingly redundant, as the probability and viability for fighters to get within the range of use of the SRAAMs will become much lower (and that SRAAMs will become more of a deadweight onboard than being actually useful);
- Possibly having some kind of active protection system onboard (such as for shooting down enemy AAMs).
Yankee & Co. also mentioned that the Sino-NGAD can be described as:
- "If there is a parallel timeline where no 5th-gen fighters of our timeline (F-22, F-35, J-20, J-35 etc) exists, then the J-16 (and J-15B) will be the 5th-gen fighters instead."
- "This will be the first time where the US will be negated the long-held advantage of being constantly one generation ahead of their peers/competitors since the Korean War (i.e. "How nice of you to have Su-27s in production/entered service for several years now. Would be a shame if our (Y)F-22 just had its first flight.)."
- "How the Americans will react to the Sino-NGAD could be similar to how the Soviets reacted to the existence of the USN's F-14 during the mid-Cold War (i.e. the Soviets initially believed that the newly-introduced F-14 is just another F-111B.)."
By this point, it is reasonable to believe that the manned fighter component of the Sino-NGAD will become some kind of J-20/J-35 Pro Max Plus Ultra, with the main objective of surpassing every parameter of the current 5th-gen fighters. Namely, China's (manned component of) 6th-gens will be more of evolutionary progress from 5th-gens, rather than how 5th-gens are revolutionary progress from 4th-gens.
In the meantime, they also mentioned that the J-10CE has earned three more foreign orders (not including Pakistan).
We already know Egypt is a potential customer, but which two other countries?