Proliferation of smartphones does that.
Shenyang next gen combat aircraft thread
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
From this new angle the centerline groove looks much shallower than from some other angles. Still it's going to be hard to tell the actual dimensions until we can get higher resolution image from up close. Anyway this is all still subject to change so it probably doesn't really matter that much anyway.
What if the rear seat is additional space for AI copilot? China has been working on that for a while.
Doesn’t make a lot of sense to put an ai module in the same pressurized space as the pilot when it can be stuffed into basically any free internal space in the fuselage, although having an R2D2 in the back seat is pretty cool
Also, that cockpit dome looks flat enough that a lot of the space in the front and back may be too shallow to actually accommodate a second seat. Couple this with 601’s more aggressive approach on AI (as evident in Sun Cong’s paper as well as the Guancha trio’s podcasts) it’s certainly not inconceivable that the J-XDS may be single seat with some kind of AI assistance
Shallow ditch* but sharper angle will generate high contrast in harsher lighting. It is a curious structural feature though. Honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they added it for yaw stability and will do away with it if they can find a different solution during flight test development.
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Yet somehow the early photos were so blurry that the J-XDS might as well be a cryptid, at least in comparison to J-36. It was almost like looking at UFO sightings until it suddenly wasn't.
The canopy is pretty flankeresque...
BTW, I always wonder why people automatically assume SHENGAD is single-seater. As it is flanker-sized, and as multi-role, drone-controlled as J-36, I always consider that it would be a twin-seater
