what is that??
According to the author a WS10A with adapter structure to fit into a fuselage designed for WS15, he speculated that TS=特殊=special.
Shenyang FC-31 / J-31 Fighter Demonstrator
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According to the author a WS10A with adapter structure to fit into a fuselage designed for WS15, he speculated that TS=特殊=special.
escobar
Brigadier
So the J-19 will not have supercruise ability?
Frankly i wonder if this project exist really or it is a bs?
Equation
Lieutenant General
hmmm ... Looks too much pak-fa-like to me ...
Anyway, it's my birthday tomorrow and as such i think i have a wish for free ....
deino
happy birthday deino! Thanks for all your contribution and photos!
No 601 already lost the heavy air superiority fighter competition to 611, what they are working now is 中四 or medium 4th gen fighter, that is a medium size multirole stealth strike fighter for both PLAAF and PLANAF. If it indeed use WS10A and later WS15 then it'll be a single engine plane.
The main u/c members are very far aft, it looks awful.Surely again psed ... but something like that would be nice !
Happy birthday Deino.
escobar
Brigadier
A single engine stealth multirole figther is a very bad idea. The weapons load will be very low.
It is strange that all the cgi we are seeing about J-19 show two engine fighter.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Not really. A stealth striker will want to carry it's weapons internally to maximise stealth. But that greatly limits how much ordinance such a plane can carry on a typical mission. Thus relatively low weapons load would not be a deal-breaker as it were. In addition, having a single engine could potentially leaver greater internal volume for weapons bays to allow a bigger bomb load compared to a twin engined plane.
Single engined would also greatly reduce the size and cost of such a striker.
I know it seems paradoxical for a striker to be smaller than a fighter, but fifth gens are expensive, and if the PLAAF is going to buy a useful number of J20s, they are not going to have all that much cash left for another stealth striker, so a lower cost would increase the chances of the PLAAF buying into the design.
Unlike the USAF, the PLAAF is not going to go all fifth gen, so after stealth strikers have sufficiently degraded enemy air defences enough to start thinking about external stores, you might as well start to use dedicated bomb trucks like MKKs, JH7As and J11BS etc.
Erm I'm sorry but isn't it usually the bigger the plane the bigger the internal volume? F-35 may have an internal volume/bomb load approaching that of F-22 but that's because of differing roles. A twin engined striker designed from the outset to maximise internal volume will almost exceed a single engined striker in that aspect?
I feel that last part is why PLAAF should think about going heavy 5th gen, twin engine striker with longer range and greater capability than single engined strikers ala F-35. PLAAF, like PLAN are looking to expand their reach in future. PLAAF MKKs and JH-7As already have decent combat radii and a future stealthy striker should go to match that while hoisting a similar payload. A single engined plane isn't going to cut it without aerial refuelling, and/or compromising internal payload.
PLAAF aren't going to be acquiring a full 5th gen fleet, realistically ever imo, so it might be wiser to have a limited production run of highly capable, long range stealth strikers (think a strike PAK FA) rather than single engined, shorter legged F-35 like planes. The long legged strikers would only be produced in a limited number, maybe 4,5 regiments worth, and will be used as "first day door breakers" in the event of a conflict by targeting high value assets and or IADS nodes where other planes couldn't go. Then send in the rest of the striker fleet of MKKs, JH-7s and J-16s.
It is a similar idea with the air superiority fleet, where J-20 is produced in slightly larger numbers (~300) compared to the striker, but is still far outnumbered by 4, 4+ generation fighters like J-11B, J-10A/B. Basically the entire PLAAF's combat aircraft fleet will be a high low composition of J-20, heavy stealth striker, and J-11B, J-10/B, MKK, JH-7A, J-16. So only some 500 5th generation aircraft, with the rest being 4/4+ gen. Probably more economical, and if the non 5th gen fleet is upgraded with appropriate radar, datalinks and missiles, it could be almost as capable as a fleet of many hundreds of J-2X/sino F-35 on top of the order of J-20s.
I'd like to know where the idea of the SAC stealth aircraft being a single engined fighter came from, for the last year the consensus was SAC was developing a stealth striker based on their failed J-XX proposal called J-19, and CAC was looking into a single engined fighter ala F-35 being dubbed J-2X? The consensus could change of course, but going from twin engined to single engined is quite drastic...
We'll see I suppose.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Erm I'm sorry but isn't it usually the bigger the plane the bigger the internal volume? F-35 may have an internal volume/bomb load approaching that of F-22 but that's because of differing roles. A twin engined striker designed from the outset to maximise internal volume will almost exceed a single engined striker in that aspect?
That would indeed by the case if you want the two planes to have similar performance. However, if you were willing to accept lower performance, having one engine instead of two in the same sized airframe would leave you greater remaining internal volume for other things like fuel and bomb bays etc.
In addition, accepting reduced AA performance would lower the technical difficulty and more importantly, costs of such a striker. That would allow you to have more funds available to buy more J20s for AA, and more of this strike for AG.
The point I was making was that do you really need your stealth striker to be able to heft 10 tons of ordiance when it can only carry 2-3 tons internally?
The US needs that because they are going full stealth and will have nothing else to use as bomb trucks once the enemy's defenses have been taken out.
However, since I do not think the PLAAF will want to go all fifth gen, why not lower the design requirements for the stealth striker to internal load only? Without needing to worry about massive external loads and cutting-edge dogfighting capabilities, it should be possible to get very decent range out of such a plane. It will be screwed if it ran into an F22 or superflanker in WVR, but then so would an F35 so are you really loosing that much? Besides, with the cost savings as a result of the relaxed requirements, you could afford more J20s to ride shotgun and go take care of any enemy planes that post a threat to you strikers.
Think of this as a modern F117+ in that it will only fly with internal loads, but could also have modest AA and supersonic capabilities.
The PLAAF could get a decent number of them without breaking the bank for first day of war, and high risk missions, and once the stealth striker has cracked open an enemy's defenses, the likes of the MKK and JH7A can move in with the heavy loads and really start to pound them.
That is pretty much what I was thinking in terms of mission. But I question the need for a heavy, top performance expensive plane. Range you need, but that could be achieved by cutting the weapons load requirements as mentioned before. With modern weapons becoming ever more compact, you no longer need a massive weapons load to take out a lot of targets.
Besides, isn't it better to have more planes available to drop more bombs at the same time instead of relying on one plane hitting many targets at many different locations during the same mission?
Think also of redundance and risk.
Stealth fighters, even the best modern ones, are at their best in terms of stealth when going head-on against an enemy emitter. If you have one plane attacking one or two targets close to each other, it will present the smallest possible RCS to the enemy up to the point when it open the bomb bays and turn for home.
If your plane also need to hit another target far from the first, it would need to turn, and present a larger RCS to the enemy, or turn back and re-enter enemy airspace at it's next target, which will take much longer, requiring much more fuel, and also greatly increasing the chance that the second target could have moved by the time the striker gets to it's original location.
With war, there will also be the inevitable losses you need to deal with.
If you have one plane going after one target, loosing a plane before it can launch weapons means one enemy target not hit. If you have one plane going after several and the same thing happened, that is several enemy targets you wanted dead still alive and kicking, and that will pose a much bigger threat of your follow-on assets and overall battle plan.
With a small number of heavy strikers, each loss will also hurt a lot more than if you had more cheaper strikers.
I know it goes against the grain a little when multi-role is all the vogue these days, but the PLAAF is one of the few remaining air forces that could afford speciality, and I feel that cutting some largely redundent or non-critical requirements would allow you to build a far more capable and effective overall air force with the same amount of money instead of wanting top-of-the-line for everything.
I'm not sure where the proposal came from, but I know that if I was in charge of SAC, I would drop the failed XXJ proposal and come up with a brand new design.
If the PLAAF already rejected a design, slapping a JH instead of J in front of it and making small changes to make it into a striker instead of a fighter is hardly going to make the PLAAF less inclined to reject it again.
Since the PLAAF has already chosen the J20, then that is where the lion's share of the future fifth gen budget is going. As the old Chinese saying goes, there is no room for two tigers in the same mountain. If the PLAAF is looking for a hi-lo mix for fifth gens, the high end of that equation has already been met, so another high design is likely to get rejected on principle. That means you are playing for a completely different cake, so using the same design approach as that for the XXJ is plain stupid and lazy.
The new top goals are going to be affordability and commonality. You need a plane cheap enough that the PLAAF can afford a useful number with what is left after the J20 has taken it's cut of the budget. That means deep capabilities cuts to meet the cost requirements.
If they can get this to work, I can actually see it as a surprisingly big success if they can keep the costs reasonable.
Think of something with 1000km+ range on internal feul, with all the BVR advantages stealth provides, modest WVR supplemented by HMS and next gen WVRAAMs and able to hold a couple of thousand pound bombs internally, all for the price of a late block F16. I can think of a lot of countries that would be interested if SAC could come up with something like that.
Hell, it may even be better for SAC to take the JF17 approach and try and find an export customer to co-finance the development of the plane and hope that the PLAAF takes an interest after they get a chance to see what this bird could do.
But alas, I may be asking way too much of SAC for them to be able to pull something like that off.
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