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

YankeeWankee

Just Hatched
Registered Member
I'm not sure if this is the right place, but does anyone have any resources/documents on the DARPA Air Dominance Initiative? I've been reading some of this forum, and I've seen NGAD being referred to as a family of systems, supposedly consisting of PCA, P-AEA, P-ISR, and P-LRS. I can't find anything about these proposals/documents. It would be interesting to compare both the USAF's philosophy on 6th gen to where they are now to see how they measure up to the latest offerings from CAC and SAC.
 

Wrought

Senior Member
Registered Member
I'm not sure if this is the right place, but does anyone have any resources/documents on the DARPA Air Dominance Initiative? I've been reading some of this forum, and I've seen NGAD being referred to as a family of systems, supposedly consisting of PCA, P-AEA, P-ISR, and P-LRS. I can't find anything about these proposals/documents. It would be interesting to compare both the USAF's philosophy on 6th gen to where they are now to see how they measure up to the latest offerings from CAC and SAC.

This would be the thread to ask about US programs.

 

tphuang

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
VIP Professional
Registered Member
None of that contradicts what Siege wrote -- the relevant part which I quote: "What got CAC engineers shitfaced drunk with happiness is not so much that their product is combat proven, but that there real life evidence that their interpretation of next generation aerial warfare is correct. J-36’s radical design and combat philosophy is actually the correct path forward."

The best way to view it is that the IAF-PAF skirmish (and the demonstration of PAF capabilities), current PLAAF capabilities, and future PLAAF capabilities inclusive of J-36's conops, all lie on the same concept of how aerial combat will go, but they exist at very different parts of the spectrum in terms of scale, complexity and sophistication.
The question I had and still have is that these concepts are not exactly novel or radical. We've known this is what's needed for future combat for a while. The idea of data linking and sensor fusion under heavy EW environment is something that's been discussed and talked about for a long time.

The things that I think radical about J-36 is its ability to serve as an uber survivable all-in-one aircraft. That brings a whole new set of things you can do up front and what kind of tactics you can employ.
 

phrozenflame

Junior Member
Registered Member
J-36 seems to fill partially roles of F-22 and RQ-180, in some ways it can do more and perhaps in some ways, less. Kind of sits somewhere between tactical and strategic layers. Tbh, it has no clear Western operational or conceptual counterpart.

We have not yet seen the full unveiling of the next gen Chinese doctrine to really pin down where J-36 stands. What we are seeing are just glimpses and J-36 is just one part of puzzle.
 

tankphobia

Senior Member
Registered Member
Serious / professional US defence analysts can even spend time discussing, unironically, secret US antigravity UFO weapon systems, or fleets of 100s of hypersonic SR-72s with added strike capability in addition to ISR… but we’re hesitant to even postulate that China may have loftier ambitions for the H-20 (with the technical and financial capability to do so).
What is the definition of a "Serious/professional" defence analyst? There are those that occasionally write articles on US sites like national interest/TWZ who depend on readership to make a living, so clickbait is part of their work. Any content from analysts under the government payroll i.e academic papers are far more sombre and I doubt you'll actually see a true threat assessment of China backed by hard stats beyond just OSINT satellite images publicized.

For H-20, the strategic situation for the US and China is completely opposite and is unlikely to change in the near future. One needs to fly through an ocean of hostile air space while the other is safe for most of its journey, that consideration alone makes a single instance of detection a death sentence for a subsonic bomber attempting to strike at CONUS.
 

qwerty3173

New Member
Registered Member
I've always wondered where the impression of big=non-maneuverable came from. To my best knowledge, the only thing making planes less nimble is the weight of the aircraft. On the contrary, the larger the wings, the less wing load and maneuverability is increased greatly as a result. From gathered information, this darn thing has the wing load of a ww2 dogfighting propeller aircraft, which is pretty amazing. Without extra control surfaces you can fit much larger wings it seems.
 

vincent

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
J-36 seems to fill partially roles of F-22 and RQ-180, in some ways it can do more and perhaps in some ways, less. Kind of sits somewhere between tactical and strategic layers. Tbh, it has no clear Western operational or conceptual counterpart.

We have not yet seen the full unveiling of the next gen Chinese doctrine to really pin down where J-36 stands. What we are seeing are just glimpses and J-36 is just one part of puzzle.
A little teaser
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1747587202645.png
 
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