Wheels can be added to the sled for moving around. Guess it should become a trolley then.
Chinese UCAV/CCA/flying wing drones (ISR, A2A, A2G)
- Thread starter VESSEL
- Start date
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
There's video of that one right in the beginning here where that screen shot might've been taken from or video that hasn't been shown yet.It doesn't look right. The bottom looks too flat and the shape looks a bit off. The painting is also different.
Plus, the poster posted it along with a couple other GJ-X images... from Hainan
Though, I don't believe this has been posted here before (it's not a new image)
plawolf
Lieutenant General
In what world has a sled ever been used on military aircraft? You have massively increased drag that now need to be overcome in addition to massively more wear and tear on the catapult on top of the already mentioned problems with basic mobility. Additionally, with a sled you are going to have far less directional stability and risk your plane fishtailing as its being launched.
The whole point of a bare minimum ejectable MLG is that the MLG will be ejected post take off. So there is no need for any doors or hatches to retract the MLG into.
As for being left unattended, you realise military aircraft don’t have guards standing literally by their side right? The whole point is perimeter security. You control access to the whole site instead of standing guard next to every piece of equipment on site.
You can add wheels to sleds...or just have wheels?
The sled becomes a "massive drag" only if it is fixed onto the aircraft.
Could be, but logically that doesn't really make much sense to me. If a UCAV is exclusively single use - then it's basically a loitering munition. Or a missile. And for that - it's far too big and complicated. This UAV mockup is like 9 meters long. it's not compact, like a missile, it's basically a whole, small plane. It can't possibly be too light, it probably weighs several tons. I don't really see a need for a loitering munition or a missile that's several tons in weight and 9 meters long. I mean, if you are to use to eject submunitions - then it's better to use multiple missiles than a single plane-like missile.
Most likely use case in my eyes is launch from these kind of modular EM launchers (ship or land based), doing its mission and then returning to home area to be somehow recovered. And given that we're seeing some kind of landing gear - normal landings on airstrips or maybe even roads - seem to be the best way to go about it. EM launcher means the engine can be kept fairly simple and cheap. Yet, given the whole size and configuration of the air vehicle, I doubt it's a dirt cheap, expendable asset.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
The Guancha lot brought up an interesting historical fact that during WWII, the British basically deployed Hurricane manned fighters onboard converted merchant ships as single use interceptors against German bombers. So this would not be without precedent.
Such a large, complex and expensive UCAV would obviously be better served as a normal UCAV instead of an expendable munition, but if you can trade an enemy AWACS, tanker, MPA, bomber or even large UAV like a Global Hawk for one of these, then it’s a hell of a trade. And to a large extent, a big part of UCAVs over traditional manned jets is their expendability. This would just be a step beyond but still not wildly out of the general acceptable use parameters.
In a pacific war, range will be of paramount importance. So both sides will need to rely heavily on long range reconnaissance assets. Having the ability to seed the ocean with many EMAL and single use UCAV equipped converted container ships would be a profound advantage in denying access to the enemy at surprisingly low cost.
If you force opfor to treat every long range recon patrol as a combat patrol needing fighter escort, that vastly shrinks the safe operating range of enemy long range recon assets as well as place an enormous additional burden on enemy tac air assets and pilots.
If you can categorically deny safe access to the deep pacific to opfor recon assets, even cheap container ships become incredibly survivable as the enemy cannot attack what it does not see. And with the array of possible weapons modules already showcased, it’s not even like it would be viable for opfor to just shoot a long range anti ship missile at every container ship it can see on satellite and call it job done, since if the target is a converted armed container ship, then a single tomahawk just simply won’t cut it. Making every container ship a saturation attack target for opfor would be wildly profitable from the PLA’s POV.
CAM ships were an emergency measure during the darkest days of the convoy war and were discontinued once sufficient escort carriers were available. Still, they proved pretty effective, 9 German bombers destroyed (including the Condor shot down by Robert Everett) for the cost of 1 pilot and some obsolescent Hurricanes, not to mention the uncountable merchant ships saved.
Two contradicting ideas came to mind just now: one that assumes everything we are seeing is real and explainable, and another that assumes at least some of what we are seeing is not as it seems.
As for the landing gear, could it just be a matter of how the MLG were wrapped or if they have unconventional door designs? By that I mean, might the doors open/close in an unconventional way such that once covered by tarp they are just not visible, for instance by sliding or retracting inward or something?
Or conversely, might the whole thing be a prop? It may all be an elaborate fake, meant to mislead adversaries about actual capabilities, or it may be a military industrial show piece meant to show off upcoming capabilities to high ranking officials as a proof of concept to get more funding. Or both?
The second idea actually ties into something else that I have been mulling over... the likelihood of the modular EMAL system itself being real given current state of the art. I just can't stop thinking about how precisely the constituent tucks would have to be aligned in order for the electromagnetic rail system to actually work. I mean even a unitary electromagnetic catapult is such a mind-numbing feat of engineering... Now if you break that up into five parts, and have to line them all up PERFECTLY, it is just a lot to take in. It is so much in fact that I am just not sure it is real. Or at least I am not sure we as outsiders have the whole picture. Now, there are also reasons to think it might be possible, for instance the trucks could be equipped with AI guidance systems guaranteeing alignment is within acceptable parameters.
I am undecided though in the end. There is always a high element of uncertainty in deciding what is real, so I just don't know what I am looking until I see more.
Perfect alignment matters more for higher speed than lower speed catapult operations. Drones are lighter so a catapult exclusively for launching them don’t need to be as precisely engineered as for 30 tonne fighters.