Blackstone
Brigadier
The sad thing is I'm so jaded about pictures from China fanbois, I automatically suspect the picture is fake.
Chinese UAV/UCAV development
- Thread starter AssassinsMace
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shen
Senior Member
My guess would be the twin fuselage design offer the best rigidity to weight ratio, to support that high aspect ratio wing.
by78
General
From this photo, you can see a Flanker variant sitting on the left. Could indicate Shenyang indeed.
rick fisher has noticed this... he must be a reader of SDF or CDF.
Images emerge of new Chinese twin-fuselage HALE UAV concept
Richard D Fisher Jr, Washington, DC - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
26 May 2015
Images have appeared on a Chinese website of a new large twin-fuselage turbofan-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that could serve as a new high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) multi-mission platform.
Reportedly produced by the 601 Institute of the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC), the large twin-fuselage UAV concept, called 'Project 973' or 'Shen Diao' ('Divine Eagle'), has been the subject of speculative conceptual drawings since 2012.
These drawings showed a leading-edge mounted canard-wing configuration, but indicated platform was to perform as a high-altitude near space vehicle conducting surveillance, cuing, and communication missions.
What may be the first actual images, however, show the UAV employs two bulbous-nosed fuselages while the canard wing is mounted between them but not at the leading edge.
Images emerge of new Chinese twin-fuselage HALE UAV concept
Richard D Fisher Jr, Washington, DC - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
26 May 2015
Images have appeared on a Chinese website of a new large twin-fuselage turbofan-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that could serve as a new high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) multi-mission platform.
Reportedly produced by the 601 Institute of the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC), the large twin-fuselage UAV concept, called 'Project 973' or 'Shen Diao' ('Divine Eagle'), has been the subject of speculative conceptual drawings since 2012.
These drawings showed a leading-edge mounted canard-wing configuration, but indicated platform was to perform as a high-altitude near space vehicle conducting surveillance, cuing, and communication missions.
What may be the first actual images, however, show the UAV employs two bulbous-nosed fuselages while the canard wing is mounted between them but not at the leading edge.
The original proposal seemed to desire a 360 degree conformal arrangement of an X band and UHF band radar... even assuming they kept at least one set of those, I doubt it would have been feasible to place such an arrangement on a global hawk or xianglong type of main fuselage. Lack of volume being a big issue.
One solution is to have a very flat, solid fuselage like B-2... that will provide more than enough internal volume for a radar and its back end equpiment I imagine that's a lot of extra weight to support.
So the compromise is a double hull where there's enough volume between the two hulls to support the radars, with a bridging wing connecting the two hulls also providing additional lift, but with a lot of empty space between the two hulls compared to say a flying wing, which decreases weight.
Equation
Lieutenant General
Even the vertical stabilizer looks to be a flanker type as well.From this photo, you can see a Flanker variant sitting on the left. Could indicate Shenyang indeed.
Global hawk is powered by a 35-ish kn engine. That would suggest a 40-50 kn engine is needed for this. i dont know of 40 kn engine available to china, but a 50ish kn engine might be a non afterburning variant of rd33 or even ws13 if it is still alive. It could be that the uav was sized a little bit to fit the available engine....
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
What I've been reading it's powered by a WS-11.
Yeah, that's what huitong is claiming but personally I think it's a bit light for a plane of this size.
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