Noting the purposes of the respective hatches:
Hatch 1 = Engine maintenance bay
Hatches 2 and 3 = Internal weapons bays (IWB)
Hatches 4, 5 and 6 = Landing gear bays
Chinese UCAV/CCA/flying wing drones (ISR, A2A, A2G) thread
- Thread starter VESSEL
- Start date
Noting the purposes of the respective hatches:
Hatch 1 = Engine maintenance bay
Hatches 2 and 3 = Internal weapons bays (IWB)
Hatches 4, 5 and 6 = Landing gear bays
ngl, that dorsal intake seems very uh unnatural and abrupt where it ends and is pretty high up if you get what I mean. But it could very well be the disruption camo tarp working.More, more!
Ok so his one has a dorsal intake? Although what appears to be the LERX is intriguing.
If this is a SAC product, then China's 6th generation program may be more mature than imagined, they considered CCA at the beginning and designed it in tandem, the aerodynamic profile uses a similar scheme, very interesting, not just designing an aircraft but a system
Given that sizing up the US CCAs to Chinese ones is not uninmportant, I went through trouble to actually measure the image more properly. Here are the results:
Given the GA's stated length of the MQ-20 being 13 m, YFQ-42A length works out at 10.39 meters. Give or take, of course. Plus I can't know if the pitot tube is for whatever reason included in those figures.
Feel free to measure yourself if I made some serious errors in the measuring procedures.
Ok, hopefully enough of me on the US CCA sizing up. I don't mean to derail the thread but as I said, putting the Chinese CCAs in proper size context may be valuable down the line.
This is some nightmare fuel for US, 3 6th gen designs in China and theirs is still on conceptual stage.
I really don't get TWZ man, occasionally they do ok with reporting but this time they have to say the stupid "keep in mind, some of these equipment in the parade could be mockups far from service!!!" It's pretty obvious that they don't know the modus operandi of the PLA and are coping that they're beginning to fall behind. Mate, if they're being displayed out in public then they have already reached initial operating capability and beginning serial production. Maybe they should rename themselves to The Cope Zone instead especially given their comment sections under each PLA-associated post.
That's not strictly true tho. NOT all equipment shown are in serial or even IOC but only in service which could mean undergoing OT&E at FTTB units. What is true is that all equipment shown have been delivered to the end user(aka the PLA) hence in service. GJ-11 was stuck in OT&E hell for years as I recall and I still don't think there are any GJ-11s deployed in combat units yet. But if things go well with these drones we could see live units at Zhuhai next year maybe even a flyby.
Strictly speaking, being in IOT&E would meet the threshold for being in service with the end user, even if it is not yet in widespread service.
The issue with some reporting of it like that TWZ article is the level of nuance is lost and instead introduces hints of doubt that insinuates systems are prematurely shown as if implying they are still in early testing or even shown when they have no prospect of service, which is just not the case.