They 100% flew some sort of scale demonstrator otherwise they wouldn't have claimed otherwise. Honestly, attempts to frame it as some sort of deception just reek of an attempt to discredit the US ability to build a sixth gen aircraft.
US F/A-XX and F-X 6th Gen Aircraft News Thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
If you are flying hypersonic this basically means most conventional air to air weapons won't work against you. It would require the other side to either make their own hypersonic interceptors or develop all new air to air weapons.
The Russians basically invented stealth theory. And you can pretty much bet that China can make better radar sensors than the US. Probably better optical sensors as well sooner rather than later. The US is ahead of the game in that they put stealth into practice into actual platforms first. Plus like I said propulsion. I won't even consider the US to have better semiconductors for logic at this point. Because the USAF has always been conservative in wanting it to be made in US factories. Which at this point are roughly at the same skill level as Chinese factories. This will only change after Intel upgrade their factories. But this will happen too late for NGAD first stage.
The thing is we saw an incredible pace where the Chinese went through from flying the first J-20 prototype to serial production in like a third of the time it would have taken the US or Russia to do something similar. While the J-31 project seems to have a much more sedate development I suspect that is because they aren't in any major hurry. It's not like you need the aircraft before you have a carrier to operate them from.
While NGAD should still come out first I wouldn't be surprised if China quickly came up with their own 6th generation aircraft even if it could have 5th or 5th plus generation engines initially. They could just make a tailless airframe with next generation avionics in it like GaN radar.
They are first stage Su-57 aircraft. Not prototypes. They will get improvements just like the F-35 will get improvements for Block 4.
The current head of design for the Su-57 project at Sukhoi, Michael Strelets, did an interview a couple days ago discussing 6th generation concepts. So yes the Russians are doing concept studies on 6th generation already. Depending on how you classify the PAK DP you could even say they are already working on the first 6th generation.
This is a common misconstruction of what they said. The Russians first estimated the RCS of US 5th gens and then they claimed their aircraft fit the same RCS level. The RCS number you see people claim the Russians are using for Su-57 is what the Russians consider to be the RCS of US 5th gens as well. There is more than one way to compute an RCS number anyway and you can't directly compare RCS numbers made using different metrics. RCS depends on radar frequency, sight perspective, etc.
Except they are already building two PAK DA prototypes at Tupolev. The Russians emptied out the building at Kazan where they used to make the Tu-214. With the excuse they needed a new building to make a larger order of those aircraft for Aeroflot. The bombers and the Tu-214 are built at the same factory complex. I wonder what they emptied the building for... It couldn't possibly be for making even more bombers now could it.
Well the US has flown scaled prototypes like the Boeing Bird of Prey or the McDonnell Douglas X-36 before. It is not that there is a shortage of possible airframe designs they could use to make a sixth gen. But if they do go for canards the Russians and Chinese actually have experience with fielding such aircraft and the US does not.
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Why would you assume China can make better radar sensors for aircraft than the United States? They have been continually updating their legacy aircraft with AESA radars, and the latest versions are GaN based. The AN/APG-85 for the F-35 was just awarded its sixth production lot. As it stands, they have the largest fleet of AESA equipped fighter aircraft in the world.
I don't know who is ahead technologically, but I wouldn't assume China can make better radar sensors than the US.
The base technology for making AESA radar is basically the same as the one used to make 5G antennas for cell phone towers. Guess who makes the most 5G antennas. China is also massively ramping up its capability to make GaN semiconductors because of the EV sector. It is used to make fast chargers among other things. A lot of modern compact smartphone chargers also use GaN technology.
China already had an initial head start in GaN technologies as it was. Those are basically used to make white LEDs. And China, once again, is one of the major world manufacturers of those. If you look at it the initial cluster of modern GaN industries in China sprung around companies like Sanan for this reason.
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TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Which is fine for a strategic target. However the speed makes practical air support useless. So you loose most of the missions of modern fighter aircraft. CAS. And air superiority. Missions that require loiter and endurance. A Hypersonic fighter can only work as a hypersonic interceptor. Even then it’s iffy as the speed and distance values mean you get one shot to shoot before you are gone.
No, they didn’t Mr. Chekhov.
The mathematical formula that was published by Ufimtsev was based on even earlier work by James Clark Maxwell. However neither the USSR nor Scotland under Queen Victoria managed to build a stealth plane. The Formula that Ufimtsev created wasn’t considered militarily viable by the Soviets, as such it was published open source in the USSR. A copy made its way into the west and was translated however even as that was happening Work on stealth aircraft was already in place in the U.S. as far back as the 1950s. And NO the Horten brothers were not even remotely close to a stealth aircraft!
In 1962 Boeing built a subscale model for testing the Model 853-21 That model was built at the same time Ufimtsev’s work was being published in first draft, with some guys at Langley trying to translate it. It was using a process of trial and error but it was in fact being done.
Lockheed Martin Skunk works engineers working with then state of the art computers created viable stealth technology.
Really thats a bold claim. With nothing to back it.
Wow! Especially considering the number of known incidents of Chinese sourced chips that have caused issues with legacy hardware. Those chips by the way often being scavenged chips that were sold as new old stock for basic functions. Also wow as most the High end semiconductor companies that make the good stuff are not in the PRC but the ROC.
Next the thing is that no one country actually makes chips from front to back they are one of those products that jumps boarders like a cat begging to go outside. US security laws on strategic materials don’t lock US supply only. They have carve outs but for close allies.
Yes they did but they didn’t buy building prototypes after prototypes. With the first J20 looking nothing like the production models. It was a matter of trial and errors. J31 is more sedate yes but that’s neither here nor there.
Again your forecast is on the wrong track. Tailless doesn’t make 6th gen, it’s the total packages. The A tailless fighter is still a fifth generation fighter if it doesn’t have the total package
At less than a dozen. They are prototypes. Just as the Chinese J20 first dozen. It’s not a combat fighter until it’s got the mission systems.
I am sure they will but with the drain on resources the Russians have today and the pace of progress not likely before the end of the decade.
Oh I am sure they have made that claim. But it’s a question of if they have anything to actually back it.
it was their own marketing claims. Which is weird as the US RCS claims of the time were still microscopic by comparison.
Again they claim to be.
You are correct.
However just because the U.S. has little experience in manufacturing canards doesn’t mean they can’t. But even that’s a big if as this is Boeing one of the bidders not the only one and it’s entirely possible not the winner.
Not to deviate too much from the topic but the microscopic RCS claims are for specific angle in the frontal area. It is the lowest RCS the plane could have at a particular frequency. Even Rafale designer claimed that they plane has 0.01 M^2 RCS. Is it true? Maybe. But it is not really relevant in an operational sense.
A good analogy is that Elon Musk has a huge net worth but is no way reflective of the average American net worth.
A good analogy is that Elon Musk has a huge net worth but is no way reflective of the average American net worth.
China has a massive thriving industry for GaN AESA radar, considering weather radars and agricultural drones have them and you can directly order GAN AESA modules off Alibaba for $8000.
The theory used to design stealth aircraft was indeed created by Pyotr Ufimtsev. And the US came up with no good theory of their own.
Pyotr Ufimtsev openly published the formula for how to compute the RCS for planar surfaces in the 1960s. He later extended this work with formulas for computing RCS for surfaces of revolution. This work on non-planar surfaces was initially kept secret in the Soviet Union at the time. And is what you would need to use for aircraft surfaces. Using planar surfaces in aircraft makes it impossible to design a shape without instabilities and vortices.
The US engineers just brute forced it in the late 1970s/early 1980s and used supercomputers to compute the RCS with the planar surface formula. This resulted in a faceted aircraft shape i.e. the F-117's. It was unstable but they managed to get it to fly properly thanks to fly-by-wire. Which had been developed for aircraft like the F-15. So the US design only worked because they had supercomputers to design the shape, and compact flight computers to do active control for the fly-by-wire. None of which would have been available in the 1960s.
The Soviets wouldn't have needed to do either of those things since they had the formulas for surfaces of revolution (i.e. smooth round shapes). They could have just designed a smooth shape without the use of supercomputers. Which is what they did in the MiG 1.44 where you had a stealth aircraft shape without facets.
When the B-2 was designed, the US had basically came out with a formula for computing RCS for hemispheres, which is why the B-2 has a smoother shape than the F-117. Some claim this was independently derived, others claim it was based on Pyotr Ufimtsev's work as well. But they still lacked the formulas for the other surfaces of revolution which were only made available after Pyotr Ufimtsev's work on those got published as well. This was basically near the Soviet Union collapse. And that is why the F-22 looks like it does.
If it wasn't for Pyotr Ufimtsev's work the US would have had stealth technology similar to the one they had in the SR-71. i.e. not that great. If you don't believe me just look at Lockheed's initial proposal in the ATF competition.
Does that look like an F-22 to you?
SMIC right now can do chips about as good as Intel can. And let's not even talk about GlobalFoundries which can do even worse. Once the new factories by Samsung, TSMC, and Intel become operational then the US might have the advantage again.
As for chip counterfeiting, it's like saying because there are people in China using gutter oil for cooking, that they can't produce soybean oil or something. Of course they can. Most of the world's e-waste used to end up in China and those chips get resold. Sometimes people get "creative" and relabel those chips as something else that is worth more to the final client. Perhaps you just overclocked the chip. Or you just sold a dud as the real thing. This isn't done by the Chinese chip foundry companies. It is done by people in cubicles in Shenzhen or somewhere else. They just sand down the markings on legacy chips, and paint something else on top.
Not really. The US does not put imported components in active duty weapon systems. They license the technology and produce a licensed version of it in the US.
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I am going to have to doubt this claim. Intel not only produces it's own chips but designs them as well. They are a massive company with huge design and production capacity. While they have struggled to keep up with TSMC in terms of cutting edge manufacturing, that doesn't mean they are no longer relevant.
As an aside. I feel like a lot of users don't understand how dominant US based companies are in the semiconductor area. For example, US based companies account for about 48% of global semiconductor sales. On top of that, US semiconductor companies spend more on R&D as a percentage of revenue than companies from other nations. So its not like the US is some 3rd rate country when it comes to semiconductors. The IRA\Chips Act is all about getting manufacturing back state side, or at least making the US less reliant on imports for semiconductor components.
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Again based on the works of Maxwell. The Ufimtsev Formula was a refinement.
Even then This is open to debate by people whom have more access to actual archives. Unlike you and I. Ufimtsev’s work may have been useful in the final product but Like the funny claims of Mr. Chekhov from Star Trek it doesn’t actually hold water.
Ufimtsev’s formula is not the end all be all of stealth technology nor does having it make Russia the Inventor of Stealth as they didn’t produce a remotely Stealthy aircraft or vehicle until the SU57. The Formula works only of a specific angle. To achieve Stealth they needed more than one. Hence the requirement for computers.
He published in 1961 offically it didn’t make it into the U.S. until 1971. The Soviets never built anything from it. The Soviet next generation aircraft have huge radar cross sections same for US fighters like F15 and F14. As stealth of the time was still highly specialized. Still the USSR did not build a Have blue.
You are correct in one aspect it was unstable which is why it wasn’t until the 1970s. However all modern fighter aircraft are unstable by design. That instability allows adgility. However the first fly by wire US fighter was the F16 not the F15. It’s only the latest versions of F15 that have FBW.
Excuse me what? Because Mig 1.44 was in development as a counter to F22 the two programs that created F22 and Mig 1.44 were well established in the 1980s long after the F117 and the development of B2. Even then the stealth level of Mig 1.44 is questionable. And without super computers? The formula only works because of computers. As you need to calculate multiple plains. Even with curves you need to consider the entire shape of the aircraft. That requires thousands of runs of the formula considering aerodynamics well you are at it. Unless you are saying the Russians Brute forced it by having to with slide rulers and pocket calculator on paper do the maths. Infinite Monkey theory!
And in between F117 and B2 were other stealth programs like Tacit Blue. And Again the Ufimtsev’s formula was available in the west by the 1970s with B2 having been developed in the 1970s.
Parallel development is not new. It happens from time to time that two teams completely independent of each other develop simultaneously similar things. Bell and Grey for the Telephone for example. In this case since Ufimtsev formula was based off Maxwell’s earlier formula they have a potential similar point of reference. Whatever the case the invention of a technology is often credited to those who got their first. That was Lockheed not Mig, Suhkoi, Tupolov, Yak or whoever.
As to your table What’s the context? Again Stealth was a very specific technology in the 1970s and even into the 1980s but the technology was such that the F117 is a fighter in name only. It lacks any of the systems found in anything capable of air to air missions and relies entirely upon outside support to assist in the case it actually gets locked on. Mind you only one was ever shot down and it was more or less a miracle to the Serbs that it happened
What we have are a lot of claims made by Authors sometimes those claims are woozles. The claim that Ufimtsev’s formula was even used is a bit of a Woozle. Its back tracked to an Author who wrote about the F117 but wasn’t part of its development.
As to the Chipsets. I recommend doing a bit more research.