Shenyang FC-31 / J-31 Fighter Demonstrator

ougoah said:

I remember hearing of a really good reason why J-20 actually couldn't be fielded on a carrier. This was a while back and I can't remember the reason but do recall it having convinced me that making J-20 carrier borne would be a monumental task in compromise. Does anyone know of any good reasons why J-31 would be the only choice for carrier if they went with a LO platform?

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I can see no foundamental problem that would stop the J20 from being developed into a carrier bird.

It’s size is a little large, but on par with the J15, so not a deal breaker.

The main landing gears are a little forwards compared to most carrier bird, but that could be moved a little further back since they will need to do major structural strengthening work anyways.

Deltas are not ideal for low speed high AoA flight as would be required for carrier ops, but the J20 is a canard delta so that doesn’t really apply because the canard addresses most of such problems with pure deltas, and as the Rafale shows, that’s not a deal breaker for carrier ops either.

If the reason you heard was not one of those, then it is an obscure one indeed, so would be interesting if you could remember it.

ougoah said:

I remember hearing of a really good reason why J-20 actually couldn't be fielded on a carrier. This was a while back and I can't remember the reason but do recall it having convinced me that making J-20 carrier borne would be a monumental task in compromise. Does anyone know of any good reasons why J-31 would be the only choice for carrier if they went with a LO platform?

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I think it is very easy to understand why J-20 has less chance to be carrier borne unless a tremendous change. Without going into details, think about F-15 not going to the navy for a reference, one-for-all is not very practical even today.

As of J-31 being the only choice, I think it is too early to say that. It is the front runner according to open infor we have, but the only runner? I will wait a little longer.

J-31s with WS-13 engines, now that's interesting news. I wonder the performance stats are like for WS-13s. Whatever the case it's good to see that J-31s are progressing in their development. Doesn't matter whether they will or won't be in the Navy. It makes up for an interesting read.

Ali Qizilbash said:

Rumored to be FC-31 Grey Falcon 5th-Gen Stealth Fighter Test Flights with WS-13 IPE Engine yesterday - Courtesy of Pak Def poster Daniel 808

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To admit I don' know if the rumour is a fact ... and esp. at PDF some of these guys usually add a certain "important"-sounding detail like this to their post.

Deino

SAC design "X93", said to be a 1990 era design, no known prototypes made. It becomes the foundation and the predecessor of FC-31.

kurutoga said:

SAC design "X93", said to be a 1990 era design, no known prototypes made. It becomes the foundation and the predecessor of FC-31.

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This was one of the earliest proposals for a 5th gen fighter ironically which came from SAC. 1st appeared in 1997 IIRC. It was meant to be an F-22 equivalent and had many short comings. And off-course CAC completely crashed SAC's party

Here are some of the early wind-tunnel models. You immediately notice several problems:

^^^ Continued...

Ali Qizilbash said:

Rumored to be FC-31 Grey Falcon 5th-Gen Stealth Fighter Test Flights with WS-13 IPE Engine yesterday - Courtesy of Pak Def poster Daniel 808

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Those photos were first posted on Sina Weibo 20 days ago, hardly from "yesterday" as you said. Furthermore, there hasn't been a test flight in the past week. How do I know? I know because I follow Weibo users who live near the test field and who always post photos of test flights as soon as they occur.

Please keep content from PDF to a minimum because we don't want fanboy content here.

Hyperwarp said:

This was one of the earliest proposals for a 5th gen fighter ironically which came from SAC. 1st appeared in 1997 IIRC. It was meant to be an F-22 equivalent and had many short comings. And off-course CAC completely crashed SAC's party

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From what I read X93 is a further development of SAC's JXX competition design (which is shown by US intelligence as JXX). The SAC JXX design has canards like Su30 MKI. X93 does not and it is a project SAC designed afterwards but never materialized. X93 looks very much like a stealthified, J13 design SAC had once in the 1970s

Until they had a chance to simplified X93 further, and produced the first FC31 prototype. This lineage means the entire "copy from F35" story may not be completely correct.