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

4

4channer

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siegecrossbow said:
Real question is how the pilots can get in/out of the plane. Can the canopy actually open or do they need to crawl in from an opening under the plane?
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The same way pilots enter the Su-34:

33268a22fe989d29f5236559d8b94f64.jpg
 
M

mond

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Blitzo said:
If that is the discontinuity you're referring to, well I must say to me it doesn't look like a discontinuity, but rather just a camouflage splodge.

I understand where the logic comes from, but the problem is that from this near frontal angle we shouldn't actually be able to see the taper of the dorsal intake that clearly -- the taper should be mostly obscured by the front of the dorsal intake and dorsal fuselage.

If we look at the perspective lines running front to rear (drawn out in your image as well, based on the weapons bay door lines, which I've also done and duplicated at various parts of the aircraft such that they all run parallel to each other), it somewhat demonstrates just how much of the "rear" of the aircraft we really shouldn't be able to see from this angle -- including the "taper" of the rear part of the dorsal intake blending back into the fuselage.


My view is that the "inconsistencies of the camouflage splotches are a combination of:
- not having seen the aircraft from this angle before
- camouflage inherently being difficult to make sense of, especially in absence of high resolution images of a three dimensional model that already exist
- possible image artefact due to digital zoom or built in AI enhancement causing a degree of fuzziness

I don't actually disagree with much of what you've depicted in your annotations except for the part about the dorsal fuselage/intake -- you've depicted it too symmetrically, whereas from the angle it should look more like this: (my line for overall aircraft silhouette in green)

===

I think this image can depict what I mean most clearly -- with the yellow highlighted bits being the approximate part of the dorsal intake on the new frontal aspect image, corresponding with the side image.

View attachment 153787
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I get what you mean, but at an angle of ~15 degrees from head-on, that is just too wide for the intake to make sense IMO. You will also see that the exhaust arrangement I annotated previosuly would also not make sense if the central intake goes all the way to the left like that, but I'm pretty sure that was about right because you can see the shoulders of both the right and left engine. The only way this would make sense is if the central intake was significantly taller, but we can see from the side-on shot that this is not the case.

I must admit, seeing the reputable sources speculate about the "hatch" does make me feel more confident in my interpretation.
 
Blitzo

Blitzo

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mond said:
I get what you mean, but at an angle of ~15 degrees from head-on, that is just too wide for the intake to make sense IMO. You will also see that the exhaust arrangement I annotated previosuly would also not make sense if the central intake goes all the way to the left like that, but I'm pretty sure that was about right because you can see the shoulders of both the right and left engine. The only way this would make sense is if the central intake was significantly taller, but we can see from the side-on shot that this is not the case.
Click to expand...

I think the positioning of your exhausts in your image are at approximately the right height, but are too central for the photo angle we have. Instead, by virtue of the length of the aircraft, they are more "offset" to the left side of the photo, like this:

Overall, I think the nose of photo is taken some 15-20 degrees offset from the aircraft's frontal perspective, and if we consider the length from the dorsal intake lip to the exhaust itself, the geometry starts to make sense.

1749317747865.png


A good indicator may be this photo of X-47B, which has a prominent dorsal intake as well, and this image taken from a somewhat similar angle -- its exhaust (a proxy for the central exhaust of J-36) is similarly quite "offset" to the left of the image.


1749318147952.png

This image of BAE Taranis is also a useful way to demonstrate how an offset frontal shot can make a dorsal intake look highly asymmetrical from the frontal aspect and exaggerate its "hump"... even though from the side it is not quite that excessive

1749318661237.png

1749318708742.png

mond said:
I must admit, seeing the reputable sources speculate about the "hatch" does make me feel more confident in my interpretation.
Click to expand...

I interpreted that as a joke tbh.
 
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burritocannon

burritocannon

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Registered Member
thank you but at the end of the day it's still just one interpretation of the image. interpretations are not infallible, and are at best only as good as the data set we have at our disposal. images of other vehicles do not represent more and better datapoints of the j-36.
im not sure more information can be extracted from the image at this point. i think we'll just have to wait for new images to emerge.
 
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