Chengdu next gen combat aircraft (?J-36) thread

AndrewJ

Junior Member
Registered Member
You’re wrong CCA is a drone and the word drone means cheaper so it must be cheaper you clearly don’t understand anything about the revolutionary future of military hardware.

If front line aircraft are all UAVs for air combat. There're two cases:

1. Man-in-the-loop: Comms will be intercepted & jammed in real combat. How can you guarantee your comm not be jammed? A typical way is to place a man nearby, which is Loyal Wingman strategy, also one of NGAD features. This requires your whole fleet are stealth to some extent. If men are all far away from UAVs, once comm is jammed, you'll lose your entire fleet. These vulnerable UAVs are significantly inferior to manned stealth fighters.

2. Man-not-in-the-loop: That is to say, front line UAV groups are controlled & self-organized by real AI. But sorry to tell you, today's AI is not mature enough, can't make complex & sensitive decisions correctly, such as complying with engagement rules, how to identify friend-or-foe, how to distinguish between enemies & civilians, how to decide priorities of tasks & targets. This is consensus of all powers. That's why current in-service UAVs are all remotely controlled by someone from rear/nearby.

In conclusion, a completely unmanned air force is not feasible. UAV is more of a supplement to manned air force.
 
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AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
@AndrewJ
@latenlazy

My view is that we'll have the following "layers"

1. AWACs and other support aircraft
2. 6th Gen Aircraft (J-36 and SHAD)
3. 5th Gen Fighter Aircraft (J-20 and J-35)
4. CCAs (circa $20-30? Mn)
5. Disposable Valkyrie Drones and High-End Cruise Missiles (circa $1-3Mn)
6. Piston-engine cruise missiles (<$20K)

We can see that CCAs are still a significant portion of the cost of a manned aircraft, so they're not really expendable.

But that Valkyries drones and high-end cruise missiles are like 10x cheaper than a CCA.
So it makes sense to build a lot more of these systems than CCAs.

And then for the cost of a Valkyrie or a high-end cruise missile, you could buy 50+ piston-engine cruise missiles instead. So again, it makes sense to buy many more piston-engine cruise missiles.

Piston-engine cruise missiles have limited uses in an air-to-air scenario. But given that the Chinese Air Force will mainly be on the offensive in the First Island Chain, it makes sense to coordinate an Air Strike with large numbers of piston-engine cruise missiles for land attack. This forces the defenders to use expensive SAMs and AAMs on very inexpensive targets.
 

leibowitz

Junior Member
@AndrewJ
@latenlazy

My view is that we'll have the following "layers"

1. AWACs and other support aircraft
2. 6th Gen Aircraft (J-36 and SHAD)
3. 5th Gen Fighter Aircraft (J-20 and J-35)
4. CCAs (circa $20-30? Mn)
5. Disposable Valkyrie Drones and High-End Cruise Missiles (circa $1-3Mn)
6. Piston-engine cruise missiles (<$20K)

We can see that CCAs are still a significant portion of the cost of a manned aircraft, so they're not really expendable.

But that Valkyries drones and high-end cruise missiles are like 10x cheaper than a CCA.
So it makes sense to build a lot more of these systems than CCAs.

And then for the cost of a Valkyrie or a high-end cruise missile, you could buy 50+ piston-engine cruise missiles instead. So again, it makes sense to buy many more piston-engine cruise missiles.

Piston-engine cruise missiles have limited uses in an air-to-air scenario. But given that the Chinese Air Force will mainly be on the offensive in the First Island Chain, it makes sense to coordinate an Air Strike with large numbers of piston-engine cruise missiles for land attack. This forces the defenders to use expensive SAMs and AAMs on very inexpensive targets.
Don't forget satellites and land/naval OTH radars in layer 1 as well. But yes, this is a good system of systems of view

Returning to the topic, the question for J-36 is whether it should be the primary data node in this "kill web", or whether AWACS should be. J-36 has more survivability and speed but less space and on-station endurance compared to an AWACS. Tough call
 

kyanges

Junior Member
If front line aircraft are all UAVs for air combat. There're two cases:

1. Man-in-the-loop: Comms will be intercepted & jammed in real combat. How can you guarantee your comm not be jammed? A typical way is to place a man nearby, which is Loyal Wingman strategy, also one of NGAD features. This requires your whole fleet are stealth to some extent. If men are all far away from UAVs, once comm is jammed, you'll lose your entire fleet. These vulnerable UAVs are significantly inferior to manned stealth fighters.

2. Man-not-in-the-loop: That is to say, front line UAV groups are controlled & self-organized by real AI. But sorry to tell you, today's AI is not mature enough, can't make complex & sensitive decisions correctly, such as complying with engagement rules, how to identify friend-or-foe, how to distinguish between enemies & civilians, how to decide priorities of tasks & targets. This is consensus of all powers. That's why current in-service UAVs are all remotely controlled by someone from rear/nearby.

In conclusion, a completely unmanned air force is not feasible. UAV is more of a supplement to manned air force.
He was joking.
 

BoraTas

Major
Registered Member
Well, at least all those claiming the J-36 is just the wildly-rumored JH-XX fighter-bomber can shut their mouth up now.
Ever since these aircraft flew so many people are writing "we don't know what these aircraft are for" and each time I am like "thank you for confirming none of your knowledge on the Chinese military is from Chinese resources". People who have been following these matters knew how sixth gens will look like and that China was working on them. There are articles about spotted subscale prototypes in the American media too.
 

siegecrossbow

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Ever since these aircraft flew so many people are writing "we don't know what these aircraft are for" and each time I am like "thank you for confirming none of your knowledge on the Chinese military is from Chinese resources". People who have been following these matters knew how sixth gens will look like and that China was working on them. There are articles about spotted subscale prototypes in the American media too.

We do live in a world where 98% of China Watchers or Experts are functionally illiterate in Chinese so…
 

AndrewJ

Junior Member
Registered Member
If front line aircraft are all UAVs for air combat. There're two cases:

1. Man-in-the-loop: Comms will be intercepted & jammed in real combat. How can you guarantee your comm not be jammed? A typical way is to place a man nearby, which is Loyal Wingman strategy, also one of NGAD features. This requires your whole fleet are stealth to some extent. If men are all far away from UAVs, once comm is jammed, you'll lose your entire fleet. These vulnerable UAVs are significantly inferior to manned stealth fighters.

2. Man-not-in-the-loop: That is to say, front line UAV groups are controlled & self-organized by real AI. But sorry to tell you, today's AI is not mature enough, can't make complex & sensitive decisions correctly, such as complying with engagement rules, how to identify friend-or-foe, how to distinguish between enemies & civilians, how to decide priorities of tasks & targets. This is consensus of all powers. That's why current in-service UAVs are all remotely controlled by someone from rear/nearby.

In conclusion, a completely unmanned air force is not feasible. UAV is more of a supplement to manned air force.
He was joking.

I'm just refuting Musk's "Manned fighters are junk, drones dominate all" Theory. :p



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The “fifth generation” fighters are designed to absorb and scatter radar waves – making them harder to detect – and have been described as “flying computers” because of software that allows them to capture battlefield data and share it with other military assets such as satellites, ships and ground bases.
Mr Livingston said drones cannot currently match these capabilities – and would be almost as expensive if they could – adding that this was why the Chinese air force is building large numbers of its own stealth fighter, the J20.
And you know, the Chinese are still building their J20 jets.
“Maybe Elon thinks they’re idiots as well, because those are manned fighters?”
Less sophisticated drones would not necessarily be able to “see” the J20, making them ineffective against it as well as vulnerable to jamming, he claimed.
“The reality is if you’ve got a £30,000 drone, that’s not going to have any effect on a platform like that,” Mr Livingston added.
 
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Gloire_bb

Major
Registered Member
A large factory can make thousands if not tens of thousands of drones in a year, while a quality human asset take many years to train to achieve excellent proficiency, and the total costs of training may reach several millions if not tens of millions of dollars. And it only take days or weeks to replace a drone shot down while it takes years or decades to replace a good pilot lost.
Same economy that manages to get millions in pilot costs also produces sea guardians for higher price than F-35(and normal reapers for more than JF-17 blk 3s). If price is the goal, price will be high.
Pilots are still quite trainable, the point is what kind of requirement you place onto them.

Drones aren't there yet to work without human element, so this is a rather futuristic talk.
That modern computing and interfaces can, however, do, is drastically decrease price of the pilot. If ai does the flying, no need to try make everyone to be Bogdan.

I'm just refuting Musk's "Manned fighters are junk, drones dominate all" Theory.
Given that F-35, despite being designed around 2000(i.e. where drone trends were predictable) is required to run a podded(!) server to run drones as virtual machines, tbh, says a lot(and that blk.4 can't solve it). Musk may not be all that into air combat(or warfighting in general), but he also has a very valid point about this particular aircraft in future in particular.

If Germans like to overengineer, Americans really like jumping onto future technologies slightly before it's really possible to get their full worth out of them. It keeps them ahead, sure, but at a price.
 
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