Chengdu next gen combat aircraft (?J-36) thread
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
Can we please STOP posting idiotic what if images? Posting realistic CGs is surely fine given that not many photos are available but there is a clear line between realistic ones and nonsense!
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You forgot the human factor. Full blown war is unlikely, so career consideration predominates. Hence any intelligence will tend to tilt toward what the prejudice of the bosses.
Flexibility is the big one. The crew can selectively choose and drop/fire any individual munition in the entire rotary mag in any order they please. Each mounting point being functionally independent means the entire launcher can have any combination of munitions in any order. The only limit is maintaining center of gravity which isn't too big an issue.
They can also potentially carry more overall munitions, depending on the exact plane and munition type. Off the top of my head the B-52's were upgraded with rotary mags, increasing up to 60% more bombs. Or in the earlier image where the rotary mag could carry cruise missiles.
Beyond that it simplifies loading/unloading for ground crews. Once the math is done on weight the crew just needs to load the bombs in order. If they make a mistake it's fairly straight forward to correct.
Most missiles are designed with a single concentrated stress zone on top of them. Rotary launchers are very reasonable choices for most missiles just because of this reason. They are also easier for ground crews. The launcher can wait prepared in the base and be loaded as a whole with 6 to 8 missiles attached. Also, as said, they let the pilot to chose what to launch in the cases the bomber is loaded with more than one type of munitions.
I seriously doubt the J-36's weapons bay(s) is/are deep enough to incorporate a rotary launcher. My example was in reference to actual bombers like B-52s, B-1Bs, B-2s, and B-21s. Their bays are absolutely deep enough for rotary launchers, but the J-36 isn't going to have anything deeper than for a pair of large missile like YJ-21 or AKF-98"B".
I don't imagine rotary bays to use the space as efficiently as say a magazine launcher like the ones designed for the YF-23. The YF-23 was designed with a much deeper bay than that of the YF-22's. Something like this would be more space efficient for an air to air loadout, making use of all the possible depth that could exist on the J-36. However one problem was that if a missile got jammed on the lower levels and could not be ejected, it would potentially block the entire rest of the magazine. That was one of the major drawbacks of such a design.
First appeared on the B52 in the 80's as a way on putting cruise missiles on the B52. I remember it in the news flow at the time. I think it was a consequence of medium range missile ban in one of the SALT treaties.
Sure, but that's something that's not really meaningfully quantifiable and can make the bias lean both ways. It's equally credible to me, for example, for a USAF officer to really want to hear about how inferior and robotic and cowardly the Chinese are and that they'd be easily stomped, or for them to say that the PLA is 10 meters tall and made of pure adamantium and would easily crush the entirety of the western world's combined military in a lazy afternoon and therefore more money than ever is needed to fund the increasingly underfunded US military. As we can't really test the hypothesis for sure I don't think it's meaningful to dive too deeply into such arguments.
