How do we separate 5th and 6th gen though?
Almost evil party forcing engineers using 1990s chips at gunpoint.
China's V/STOL studies, concepts & considerations
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Almost evil party forcing engineers using 1990s chips at gunpoint.
All aspect stealth, high composite usage if not fully composite skinned, high use of metamaterials etc
I don't think 2/3 will ever be skipped, especially on VTOL
1 - it ultimately should serve the purpose...stealth can easily be harmful to the purpose of airplane, all aspect one more so.
How so? With more and more advanced radars becoming widely available, all aspect stealth should now be a priority. Especially for a strike aircraft that is meant to be deployed alongside the initial landing force
It'll surely incorporate 6th gen tech, I guess what I'm trying to see is it'll be any noticeably different from current 5th gen designs instead of just a "5.5"th gen/Super F-35 type aircraft. It absolutely needs all-aspect stealth, and it needs VTOL obviously, that alone informs most of its physical design. Having a single powerful engine (like that one where we saw a document for a 180kN-class engine on this thread a while back) capable of producing ample thrust would work, but those powerful onboard electronics (if it is to incorporate 6th gen tech) would probably require more power than a single engine could produce (the F-35 is already struggling with this, hence the engine issues).
That leads us to a twin-engine design, but making VTOL work well and having a mission-ready platform with that kind of design is going to be one massive headache, this is basically uncharted territory as far as military aviation is concerned. China could probably figure it out, but still, it'll be a headache. The only reasonable solution is to go full balls-to-the-walls on engine design and make basically the most powerful single military turbofan in existence today in a reasonable form factor which could single-handedly power both the aircraft sufficiently as well as its avionics lest they want an F-35 situation too. But a 250+kN turbofan in the form-factor of an F119 is something not even GE and PW could do right now.
Really, this might turn to be THE single most complex project the Chinese military develops so far.
That leads us to a twin-engine design, but making VTOL work well and having a mission-ready platform with that kind of design is going to be one massive headache, this is basically uncharted territory as far as military aviation is concerned. China could probably figure it out, but still, it'll be a headache. The only reasonable solution is to go full balls-to-the-walls on engine design and make basically the most powerful single military turbofan in existence today in a reasonable form factor which could single-handedly power both the aircraft sufficiently as well as its avionics lest they want an F-35 situation too. But a 250+kN turbofan in the form-factor of an F119 is something not even GE and PW could do right now.
Really, this might turn to be THE single most complex project the Chinese military develops so far.
250+kn thrust engine is easy just increase the size of machine like NK-32/NK-25.. but the real deal is compact size propulsion with this kind of thrust.
Yes, you could theoretically just scale up a WS-15 to produce 250kN rather easily. But good luck actually putting that on any reasonable sized aircraft.
200kN single engine is sufficient enough for STOVL aircraft ??
Engine and lift fan system has been assembled.. it will be interesting to see which Engine they have choose. seems like 178kn or maybe an upgrade variant.
There's a massive difference between an engine doing 250+kN in F119 form factor vs an engine doing 200kN in F135 form factor. I'm pretty sure the engineers over at Xian probably modified and tested a WS-15 producing 200kN too. But that's not really the point here. The point here is that, for an aircraft of this kind, PLAMC has two choices. Either deal with the massive headache of operating a twin-engine VTOL design, which no one has done before basically (no the Harrier doesn't count), or go all in on a radically new engine design and the most powerful of its kind ever.