CGI
Nice artists rendering of a future role for this little bird, good job, and thanks for posting escobar.
Shenyang FC-31 / J-31 Fighter Demonstrator
- Thread starter RedSky
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Nice artists rendering of a future role for this little bird, good job, and thanks for posting escobar.
RedSky
New Member
Re: this is absolutely NOT to start a tvc argument again, BUT
First hear J-20 look like a Flanker!
That would be KOOL, I guess we'll have to remain vigilante?
Looks like the GPU truck powering up the avionics and systems?
Re: this is absolutely NOT to start a tvc argument again, BUT
Really, I thought everybody said the J-20 and Flanker were twins? But our baby bird here def has departed from the Shenyang Suchoi mode and is in LockMart mode! Ahhh Sooo! my brother. Check out that post, and look at the Flanker that one of our brothers had labeled the J-20. I was just pulling his chain, oh and I suggested restarting Raptor production with a STOVL F-22, so sarcasm does at times help you make your point? Have a good day, I'm the music man at school today if you really want a laugh, and no I'm not being sarcastic. Keep us posted if the F-60 flies today.
Really, I thought everybody said the J-20 and Flanker were twins? But our baby bird here def has departed from the Shenyang Suchoi mode and is in LockMart mode! Ahhh Sooo! my brother. Check out that post, and look at the Flanker that one of our brothers had labeled the J-20. I was just pulling his chain, oh and I suggested restarting Raptor production with a STOVL F-22, so sarcasm does at times help you make your point? Have a good day, I'm the music man at school today if you really want a laugh, and no I'm not being sarcastic. Keep us posted if the F-60 flies today.
Somehow Shenyang is more secretive. Remember how J-20 has a live daily activities report during is early appearance and is easily being view by public. While J-21 hardly has any news or anything besides the clear back photo of it.
Is it just me or does it look like the engine is now fully covered? As opposed to the gap which was present before...
Also the plane has a good looking profile. Part of me is still trying to process that the the Chinese aerospace industry has come out with two stealth fighters within two years of each other.
I wonder if the grey nose is indicative of radar.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
The resolution is too low to tell, but I doubt that the engines have been changed. The engine nacelles were designed for a different engine, and the RD93s are just stand-ins to get the bird in the air and start the ball rolling on flight tests before the final engines are ready, same as with the J20, and the chances that they have swapped the RDs for the final production engines since the first pictures appeared are pretty much non-existent.
Adding a cover for the gap would hardly be a pressing technical requirement, but it isn't a demanding piece of engineering either, so it is entirely possible that they had fashioned some more tight fitting covers since the first pictures came out. They could have literally got a couple of interns fresh out of university to design it and the production people could bash them out in an afternoon. As such, I think it is entirely possible that they have put in new snug fitting covers.
As for the grey radome, well I think that is just a bit of clever theatrics on the part of SAC. They know they have a hell of a lot of ground to catch up with compared to the J20, and evidently believes that appearances matter, so they are making their prototype as pretty and as polished as possible. Note the emblems that they took the time to paint on the tails.
The first prototype needs a lot of test equipment to record indicators and information a production jet would not care about because they need to test and verify a hell of a lot of data to evaluate how well the design flies. That is why the nose of the first flying prototype has always been taken up with flight test equipment in all remotely modern designs, and it would be highly irregular for SAC to break with that well established system.
Theoretically, with 5th gens, I guess it is possible for them to store all the flight test equipment in the weapons bays, and thus not have to use the space in the radome as you would on a conventional fighter, but I really don't see the point in doing that.
They could test out the radar and back end avionics far more efficiently in a dedicated radar testing platform, as we have seen with the radars for the J10 and J11B. Stuffing a working radar in the nose of the first prototype will just add extra complications and likely lead to a lengthy delay in the first flight date, and the first prototype would be so busy with basic flight tests to have any time for radar tests so it all just seem so pointless.
Maybe SAC painted the radome grey because someone thought that would make a favorable impression with some PLAAF/PLANAF big wigs, or they would have just done it because someone at SAC thought the two tone contrast would look cooler compared to monotone (which is does). But I seriously doubt that the first prototype would ever have a working radar in it.
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