The purpose is different. CH-7 and other flying wing types are high altitude penetration strik aircraft. Loitering time may not be as important for the purpose.
Chinese UAV/UCAV development
- Thread starter AssassinsMace
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The purpose is different. CH-7 and other flying wing types are high altitude penetration strik aircraft. Loitering time may not be as important for the purpose.
I am entirely for flywing type of design for ucav. I am just not for ch7. Thankfully, they do have gj11, which should be a lot more capable.
I guess I'm just trying to think of operational scenarios. WL-3 is advertising basically 40 hours of 250 km/h for 10000 km range. That is crazy long range. I'm willing to bet that it can probably cruise at 400 km/h (GJ-2 is at 370 km/h) for maybe half that range/endurance, which would be almost the cruising speed of CH7. On top of that, WL-3 can go internal payload only, which would significantly cut down its RCS. IIRC from 2018 Zhuhai air show, CH7 average frontal RCS was said to be 0.01 sqm, which isn't that great. So now you have situation where CH7 is more costly and have much shorter range, but isn't noticeably faster or more stealthy.
So I think when you put something like WL-3 in service as GJ-3, it will significantly raise the bar of what's expected out of a high end flywing UCAV and also MUMT drone.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
I think this year’s show is a good indication of what lessons China is drawing from Ukraine, where it seems to be going heavily into drones, both airborne and land systems, both in quantity and quality.
That contrasts quite starkly with the direction that the majority of western MIC seems to be going, with super-duper tanks in (inevitably) ever smaller numbers.
To me, it’s quite clear who is drawing entirely the wrong lessons from Ukraine and who is moving in the right direction. But to be fair, the principle objective of western MIC is to maximise profits and not to actually win wars, since one of the baseline assumptions they are operating on is that victory is taken as a given.
That contrasts quite starkly with the direction that the majority of western MIC seems to be going, with super-duper tanks in (inevitably) ever smaller numbers.
To me, it’s quite clear who is drawing entirely the wrong lessons from Ukraine and who is moving in the right direction. But to be fair, the principle objective of western MIC is to maximise profits and not to actually win wars, since one of the baseline assumptions they are operating on is that victory is taken as a given.
by78
General
Almost all of the drones, loitering attack munitions, SAMs, AA guns, and laser weapon systems have been shown in past shows, which took place long before the war in Ukraine.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Most of which appeared as stand-alone items, more like proof-of-concepts designs that show promise but isn’t really ready for mass fielding.
Whereas the big stand-out this year is how much they have evolved and been developed into operationally deployable packages and also the widespread way they are being incorporated into other systems suggests to me widespread industry acceptance, which strongly hints at PLA orders.
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