J-15 carrier-borne fighter thread

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
RainbowBear(彩虹熊 BaiWei)'s artistic impressions of J-15D with improved RCS by changing the angle of the twin vertical tails, engins nozzle like J-20, and Catapult capable, J-11D standard radar and pylons as transitional carrier borne fighter before 5th generation is ready.

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I feel like there is a reason for which the vertical stabilizers on Flankers are all perfectly vertical and not canted for RCS reduction. J-11D and Su-35 would both have went canted if that didn't cause a significant reduction in kinematic capability, in my opinion, since they both try to minimize RCS.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
I feel like there is a reason for which the vertical stabilizers on Flankers are all perfectly vertical and not canted for RCS reduction. J-11D and Su-35 would both have went canted if that didn't cause a significant reduction in kinematic capability, in my opinion, since they both try to minimize RCS.

The Flanker is so big and beasty that canting the tails are not going to make any meaningful difference to its RCS, certainly not enough to warrant the cost and delay of having to go through all the flight testing to validate the new tails and the potential performance penalties it will cost.

That tiny picture may well have been a real feasibility study, but it would not have gotten very far.

The Chinese are done with tinkering and tweaking the Flanker airframe design (probably the same for the J10s now, hence why the twin seaters are all still using the old school J10A airframe rather than being updated with the new J10B design). All the changes and modes they are interested in now are avionics and internal structure related.

The lion share of their wind tunnel time and aerodynamics research budgets would be going to clean-sheet new designs like the J20, J31, next gen bomber and/or striker and all the UAVs they are working on.
 

Deino

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
Hu ... just noticed this artwork ! Any info on how reliable they are ???

To admit I'm a bit sceptical since either I would have expected similar changes - sans the canards - already on the J-11D or only some decent-minor-modifications on the J-15D like seen on the J-11D.
Even more radical DSI-intakes and a single-piece canopy would be nice !

Anyway a nice design ...

Deino
 

latenlazy

Brigadier
The Flanker is so big and beasty that canting the tails are not going to make any meaningful difference to its RCS, certainly not enough to warrant the cost and delay of having to go through all the flight testing to validate the new tails and the potential performance penalties it will cost.

That tiny picture may well have been a real feasibility study, but it would not have gotten very far.

The Chinese are done with tinkering and tweaking the Flanker airframe design (probably the same for the J10s now, hence why the twin seaters are all still using the old school J10A airframe rather than being updated with the new J10B design). All the changes and modes they are interested in now are avionics and internal structure related.

The lion share of their wind tunnel time and aerodynamics research budgets would be going to clean-sheet new designs like the J20, J31, next gen bomber and/or striker and all the UAVs they are working on.
Canting the tails might cause issues with vortices shed from the LERXes downstream. Probably not worth doing.
 

latenlazy

Brigadier
They solved the issue on the F-18.
Original Hornet already had a slight cant, and from what I can tell in pictures vortex flow works differently for the two designs. Specifically the Flanker's vortices seemed to flow more inboard and closer to the tails. It's not an intractable problem, but it's not a straight forward one either.
 
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