Vice designer talks about engine change, testing, and future projects.
J-20 5th Generation Fighter VII
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Does anyone know what he's saying
Basically, this Vice designer is the one who test this indigenous engine of J-20, i am assuming he was talking about WS-10s. since this indigenous engine is not decide for j-20, j-20 have to do some compromise in order for this indigenous engine to fit in J-20. (1:25 on the video.). he also motioned that the j-20 with this indigenous engine go through different test environment like high altitude, high humidity, and cold environmeneniovment.
Seems like a pretty big deal, this redesign.
If there is a new airframe then we can’t really say how many missiles it holds until we see open bays.
Does it use a 3D printed airframe now, after the success of the J31/35?
There may be a lot of thing we need to question.
This must have been the plane the manufacturer was referrring to when they said they could make as many as the PLA needed, so can we assume it is easier to make than previous batches?
Its probably lighter too, we recently saw a paper showing a 15%? weight saving by using 3D printed designs.
Maybe the J20, J31/35 and possibly even H20 all share a lot of sub-components and systems? And methods of manufacture? as they are all being newly designed in the last few years.
This should make manufacturing a lot easier and cheaper for all 3 aircraft, presumably.
I don’t want to cry wolf again, but does this redesign constitute a new class of J20? Or just a new batch?
If there is a new airframe then we can’t really say how many missiles it holds until we see open bays.
Does it use a 3D printed airframe now, after the success of the J31/35?
There may be a lot of thing we need to question.
This must have been the plane the manufacturer was referrring to when they said they could make as many as the PLA needed, so can we assume it is easier to make than previous batches?
Its probably lighter too, we recently saw a paper showing a 15%? weight saving by using 3D printed designs.
Maybe the J20, J31/35 and possibly even H20 all share a lot of sub-components and systems? And methods of manufacture? as they are all being newly designed in the last few years.
This should make manufacturing a lot easier and cheaper for all 3 aircraft, presumably.
I don’t want to cry wolf again, but does this redesign constitute a new class of J20? Or just a new batch?
Those are just describing modifications to the aircraft to accommodate the WS-10s compared to the Al-31s.
I strongly doubt they were anywhere near as extensive or as mission oriented like what you are describing.
That is to say, it isn't a "new airframe" but rather the same existing airframe with some minor modifications to accommodate WS-10s.
Certainly nothing like a change in weapons bay size, and we have no reason to suspect about any significant changes in manufacturing either -- the ability to fulfill PLA orders would naturally simply be a reflection of increasing production capacity that any new aircraft going through its production cycle experiences.
If I had to make a bet I’d agree with where you’re drawing the line but I wouldn’t rule out iterative improvements with structural and manufacturing design that add up to significant differences. We saw this with the J-10 and J-11 after all with each progressive iteration, and the J-20A probably qualifies as one of those.
I do expect there were some small iterative manufacturing improvements that we see between production batches of any type of military aircraft with a long production run (in China and around the world in general), but nothing in the scale that he seemed to allude to.
Hmm. I guess it depends on what we mean by “small”. Like if hypothetically they increased composite share or improved some other structural aspect and shaved off 2-300 kg from an accumulation of small iterations is that small or major? That’s purely a hypothetical of course, not suggesting they did anything like that the J-20A, but curious to gauge and qualify these sorts of things.
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