J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII

Deino said:

Can anyone who reads and understands Chinese can help with either a confirmation or correction ... allegedly there is rumour concerning a towed decoy pod (?).

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Could be translated:

Technical Research on Modification of Towed Decoy Pod.

The adjective 'technical' is here to restrict the word 'research'.

or

Research on Modification Technology of Towed Decoy Pod.

The real meaning depends on how the authur reads it.

Tow decoy.

siegecrossbow said:

A towed decoy fools enemy missiles into attacking it instead of the fighter aircraft. Surprised that it took China this long to develop it.

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This is a perfect example of why it’s foolish to assume China doesn’t have something just because they don’t report on it being equipped.

This is them working on a modified/improved towed decoy, so the current model much be in operation. Yet we have had zero report of that.

siegecrossbow said:

A towed decoy fools enemy missiles into attacking it instead of the fighter aircraft. Surprised that it took China this long to develop it.

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It actually showed up at 2016 Zhuhai Airshow, and there are lots of papers about towed decoy on CNKI.

Then let's review what Yankee said two years ago

In the military field, the purpose of "counterfeiting", from tactical to strategic levels, is to deceive the opponent and benefit oneself as well. So with the increasing variety of such "counterfeiting" methods, it is only natural that the fervor of targeted "fight counterfeiting" on the side of the opponent has increased rather than decreased. Of course, the "fight counterfeiting" here refers to how to identify and respond to the opponent's use of false targets and other means on the battlefield, and not really the "fake" to play. For example, two years ago, the U.S. Navy's "Super Hornet" fighter jets with its most advanced AIM-9X fighting missiles fired at the Syrian Air Force Su-22, but was lured away by its infrared jamming bombs, the U.S. aircraft had to make up a round of AIM-120C "shot close to hit "The AIM-120C was shot down by an old fighter that had no power to fight back, and this "fake" was definitely a failure.

In fact, not to mention the missile tiny guide head, the general antenna diameter of more than 700 mm modern fighter radar (including photoelectric radar) suffer from false target interference that is also commonplace, even if the radar power is strong, with "Clairvoyant" called the airborne early warning aircraft, sometimes it is inevitable that The "counterfeiting" is not a good idea. For this point, our PLA has a firsthand experience. As the most important part of the "995" project, from the late 1990s, we developed a set of "early warning aircraft jamming system", including 1 type passive detection and positioning station, 2 types ground jamming station, and with it the RKL165 dummy target drone system. The latter mainly works in the L/S and UHF bands to create false target signals against Taiwan's pseudo-Air Force E-2T/K early warning aircraft and ground-based early warning radars. According to several rounds of combat against Taiwan, the number of batches of Taiwan's pseudo-air force increased significantly when this "early warning aircraft jamming system" was activated. While developing replacement products according to the actual application effect, the AF also used this type of jamming system in the "red sword" exercise, which was just starting at that time, and successively carried out inspection confrontation tests with the newly commissioned KJ-2000 and KJ-200 early warning aircraft. Although limited by power and other reasons, this system is still difficult to deceive large early warning aircraft of the level of air police-2000, it can still produce a certain deception effect on air police-200. The experience of "cracking down on counterfeiting" of the first generation of practical early warning aircraft has also been used in the development of air police-500 early warning aircraft that are being delivered to our army in batches.

In the "fight counterfeiting" in the field of aviation weapons, another topic often discussed in recent years is the permanent equipment of foreign military aircraft, but it is rare on Soviet / Russian aircraft - towed active radar decoy (Trad). The basic principle of towing decoy is to use the towing device on the aircraft to tow the decoy, so that the decoy is not only separated from the aircraft, but also has the same motion characteristics as the aircraft. It will not be recognized by the active radar seeker of modern missiles as soon as chaff. In fact, the towing device itself is very similar to an old friend in the field of aviation weapon test and training - Aviation towing target, which is not complex; It is not technically difficult to replace the target with an angle reflector that increases the signal strength of the bait itself, but the angle reflector is difficult to "play the real image" from multiple angles and is easy to be recognized by modern radar seeker. Especially in the face of incoming missiles, a "wingman" who will not release interference is obviously deceptive, In addition to dragging down the mobility of the carrier, it does not play much role. So now, generally speaking, towed decoy refers to the trad with its own jammer. The principle is that the jamming signal to be transmitted is transmitted through the drag line between the carrier and the decoy (the power supply required for the jamming signal is also transmitted by the carrier), and the transmitter on the decoy simulates the radar signal characteristics similar to and stronger than the carrier and with jamming conditions. In this way, trad and the carrier that is also releasing jamming form a pair of "virtual wingmen".

For the F-35 with both stealth performance and strong EW capability, trad is an alternative countermeasure in case of "failure"; Then, for most of the third-generation aircraft carrying trad, it is necessary to combine the countermeasures such as electronic warfare pod on the aircraft in order to give full play to the effectiveness of the bait. For example, on the new f-16v (block 70) that it plans to put in place in 2023, the Taiwan puppet air force originally planned to introduce the latest alq-131a pod exported from the United States to be used together with trad. As a result, the United States informed this model was cancelled two days ago...

The picture shows ale-50 attached to the outer hanging point under the wing of Taiwan's pseudo air force F-16 fleet, which was introduced in 2001

Although trad is not omnipotent, with its extensive deployment of equipment in foreign forces, in order to truly "despise the enemy strategically and pay attention to the enemy tactically", it is not enough to rely on theoretical research without actual testing, just as we really understand the confrontation with modern stealth fighters after the j-20 has been in service. Although the domestic trad has been in the state of "only see the dragon head but not the tail" for a long time, its early products have been tested on J-8 and other platforms for hanging, release and recovery long ago; Through the modification of the active target aircraft, both the aviation force and the ground air defense force have gained some experience in using the existing equipment against trad.

In the depths of the desert, J-8 and JH-7 platforms have carried out many unknown test flights of matching external stores

Even for some external stores that have appeared, the specific details are still hidden in the fog. For example, there are still different opinions on the role of the two "long sticks" under the wing of the early j-10b prototype

Although limited by the equipment conditions of the target aircraft, the domestic trad in the early live fire target test can only use the constant power system, that is, it always transmits interference signals at maximum power, it still exposes the shortcomings of many existing equipment against trad. For example, the monopulse semi-active radar seeker of the Russian made r-27re1 air-to-air missile repeatedly "hit the bait" and hit the target unscathed when countering the repeater jamming of trad.

The life cycle of low-cost target aircraft is often very long. For example, ChangKong-1 series target aircraft that can carry different loads after modification are still widely used in the training and testing of air weapons

It is also found in various live ammunition target tests at home and abroad that although the relative consistency of motion attitude between target and decoy makes it difficult to identify even the seeker based on pulse Doppler principle at a long distance; However, as the distance between the missile and the target / decoy approaches, the angle between the connecting line between the missile and the target and the connecting line between the missile and the decoy becomes larger and larger, and the probability of identifying the decoy by some seeker with high speed resolution and large detection range (ensuring that the missile / decoy is within the "field of view") increases significantly.

It can be seen from the figure that the length of the cover area is basically the same as the length of the drag line when the missile pursues the attack; When the missile attacks laterally, the length of the cover area is inversely proportional to the missile entry angle. The larger the entry angle is, the shorter the cover length is; When the missile attacks head-on, there is often a cover blind area, which is also a tactical feature that should be paid attention to when countering trad

However, generally speaking, the detection and tracking radar has greater power, and the main system is fixed on the ground. The modern surface to air missile system, which is easy to measure, has more methods in the confrontation with trad. For example, when trad only interferes with the missile seeker and does not interfere with the ground radar of the ground guidance system, the advanced radar can use the target / decoy and the real-time updated distance data between the missile and the ground radar to improve the midcourse guidance accuracy through calculation and filtering, so that the missile can directly rely on the midcourse guidance information provided by the radar to hit the target aircraft.

To achieve such midcourse guidance accuracy, not only the target's active airspace needs to be "clean" enough, but also the target must be close enough to fire, which also brings great risks to the ground air defence system itself

In live fire confrontation, other surface to air missile systems that still retain command guidance technology use another set of playing method: when the performance of the radar system is not as good as that of the advanced model, the missile can attack the target mounted trad by tracking the decoy jamming source mode and changing the target parameters through command control. The logic is that since it is impossible for the missile seeker to identify the target and bait, and the bait cannot be "towed" in front of the aircraft anyway, according to the length of the towing rope of the existing trad and the heading of the target / bait relative to the position, adding a "advance" while using the front method can theoretically improve the damage probability.

However, when it is impossible to confirm whether the enemy aircraft uses trad, whether this logic is true or not is another matter

Although it sounds easy, it is not easy to let the target aircraft itself "catch the missile" in three dimensions. The limited cases of shooting down the target aircraft are also considered to be related to the lack of damage resistance of the target aircraft, and may not be able to destroy the enemy aircraft in actual combat.However, this innovative combat method still inspired the forces equipped with new missile systems, and carried out research on the application of the front-point ratio guidance law to combat the use of TRAD targets.In short, these preliminary results of "anti-counterfeiting" not only improve the ability and research level of our air soldiers and ground air defense soldiers to respond to the modern air strikes of the strong enemy, but also make all parties fully realize the efficient cost ratio and practicality of TRAD.On this basis, the domestic new generation of practical TRAD has been put into the trial stage, we are expected to see them on the J-16 and other new generation of aircrafts which undertake the ground strike task.

Although the smell of Sukhoi is still obvious, it will not prevent the PLAAF to learn from the western air force in warfare

And the towed decoy belongs to electronic countermeasure equipment, which is very highly secret, I don't think we can see it in official news soon.

Deino said:

Can anyone who reads and understands Chinese can help with either a confirmation or correction ... allegedly there is rumour concerning a towed decoy pod (?).

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I'm not sure if the J-20 in the background is meaningful in anyway.

However, it could relate to the title -- if J-20 was to be integrated with a towed decoy, as a 5th generation fighter it would require some minor degree of structural modification to carry a towed decoy system.

But who knows

by78 said:

Self-explanatory.

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You can see the blow-in doors dangling from the inner nozzle in this view. Clearly WS-10.

Sweet ride!

Does anyone have this image showing J-20A no. 61125 in fully size? (Image via CCTV-7)