Chinese UAV/UCAV development

Bltizo said:

Big ups to skywatcher for putting out an article so quickly, hopefully when this plane finally catches the attention of other outlets they will source back to your blog!

Although it's probably worth rephrasing the title as "watch this space" or something similar, because we don't actually have photos of the thing yet, nor confirmation that it flew, only that it's probably under advanced development.

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Good job estimating the size of the aircraft too, using the SATCOM dome. A 1 meter diameter for the dome is a reasonable, or even conservative guess -- it's similar in size to that of most MALE and HALE UAVs like Predator, Reaper, Global Hawk, and I think the gleaned length and wingspan is quite reasonable based on that premise.

But god, a 25m long, 50m wingspan UAV would be massive. That wingspan puts it bigger than 737, Global hawk, and up there in the class of B-2...

Bltizo said:

Good job estimating the size of the aircraft too, using the SATCOM dome. A 1 meter diameter for the dome is a reasonable, or even conservative guess -- it's similar in size to that of most MALE and HALE UAVs like Predator, Reaper, Global Hawk, and I think the gleaned length and wingspan is quite reasonable based on that premise.

But god, a 25m long, 50m wingspan UAV would be massive. That wingspan puts it bigger than 737, Global hawk, and up there in the class of B-2...

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This thing brings enormous in an enormous number of new capabilities for the PLA. I dare say it's more impactful than the H-X and the J-20.

latenlazy said:

This thing brings enormous in an enormous number of new capabilities for the PLA. I dare say it's more impactful than the H-X and the J-20.

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That's what I said over on CDF too -- but it really depends if this UAV actually pans out, and how big it is, and what kind of endurance it has. If it really is as big as a B-2, can fly well and can power all those radars, they also have to put it into production and commission them in relevant numbers.
In a way, employing such an aircraft would be more difficult than employing J-20 or H-X. But the capabilities it could provide to the PLA's C4ISR is enormous. A single such UAV could potentially survey the entire air, ground and maritime situation in and around Taiwan, and a small flight of them could cover the entire volume of space up to the first island chain.
It all depends on its size, endurance, and how powerful its radars are.

Thanks for the kind words!

latenlazy said:

Because it wasn't possible to get enough power density on leading edges of wings with vacuum tubes. Miniaturization's enabling this one.

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??? What have vacuum tubes to do with this?
In WWII early radar with long wave length needed large antennae that were mounted in the air flow near the wing tips.Next with shorter wave length we see antennae mounted on the nose of aircraft and later still we see radomes made from wood or plastic covering the even smaller antennae used with centimeter wave lengths.
We've been seeing new types of antennae for years, think of the static radomes used with KJ-200 and KJ-500 so why were such antennae not mounted in a wing leading edge or in a row of antenna elements below the trailing edge as well as above the rear fuselage of KJ-200?

meanwhile...

delft said:

??? What have vacuum tubes to do with this?
In WWII early radar with long wave length needed large antennae that were mounted in the air flow near the wing tips.Next with shorter wave length we see antennae mounted on the nose of aircraft and later still we see radomes made from wood or plastic covering the even smaller antennae used with centimeter wave lengths.
We've been seeing new types of antennae for years, think of the static radomes used with KJ-200 and KJ-500 so why were such antennae not mounted in a wing leading edge or in a row of antenna elements below the trailing edge as well as above the rear fuselage of KJ-200?

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What I meant to say was that given how much space radar machinery used to take you couldn't get as much power density to fulfill the functions that would make radars in those areas worthwhile. That changed with ESAs.

shen said:

meanwhile...

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I can see it now (the future)...fast food for $20(for 1 combo meal) delivery by drones under a snow storm.

UAV are ok but their crash rates are still very very high and also only provide a very narrow field of view

I am not a big fan of UAV but UCAVS yes they could be better if the two mentioned problems are addressed

There is no better fighter aircraft than having a pilot inside the cock pit and not amount of robots can change that

USAF still hasn't yet decided wether their 6th generation fighter is going to be totally unmanned

I don't know how credible the source but supposedly two new UAVs spent the winter in the Gobi Desert under testing it sounds like. One may have been Sharp Sword.