Your position that they needed a full scale mock up to test RCS is inherently contingent on the assumption that the aircraft has an airframe where RCS reduction is so important that a full scale mock up is necessary in the first place.
Z-10 clearly has some RCS reduction measures, but most recent attack helicopters these days do.
1: no proof that Project 941 had "major" RCS reduction requirements. We can clealry see it has some LO characteristics, but it clearly was never that extensive to be called a VLO design and we dont' know how important it was
Not a single other attack helicopter either from NATO or non-NATO countries have an enchanced stealth requirement. We are not speaking about VLO or LO but we do speak about much more significant stealth capabilities than any ever produced in NATO or Russia or whereever. Stealth capabilities are not meant to say that its Commanche like that would just not be good for many reasons specially one requirement is definetley that china wants a major helicopter to be fielded in big numbers and such an enhanced stealth like RAH-66 had wouldn't be the point they would try to get there.
Furthermore, you make your argument about a full scale model even weaker by bringing in materials, because from all accounts Kamov wasn't contracted to do materials research into RCS reduction. Furthermore, materials technology would have moved on from 1995 anyway, and China's own materials industry could have provided better RAM coatings in future anyway.
No, i did not made it waeker i made it more clear, if i had some issues to express myself or its on your side to understand what i was trying to make or both sides fault doesn't matter right now. The point of Petr Ufimtsev stealth technology lies in two major points. I think you know Petr Ufimtsev the father of Stealth.
To make an object stealth the biggest and at the same time most important part is the shape of the object that it allows to scatter radar waves to such an extented degree that the waves that would reflect the source would be not sufficient enough to conclude or calculate where this object is.
This is the philosphy of a full scale stealth aicraft (VLO or at least LO) WZ-10 didn't had such requirements but it had indeed higher requirements for some stealth capabilities than Ka-50/52, Mi-28, AH-64 or any other aircraft. Other Helicopters measurements to reduce RCS were painting and use of composite materials only, which is the less important part of "stealth capability" in an object.
What is needed in testing of RCS is either materials or scattering, the chinese needed only scattering, but both would be more precise and in the west and in russia so far the Heicopters projects took only the less important attributes to lower the RCS (materials).
All this means one thing the RCS of WZ-10 is lower than any current dedicated Attack Helicopter, that doesn't mean by any meaning it is a VLO /LO aircraft. You should try not to think always in black and white there is a big grey zone between this colors.
I'm sure I dont' need to point out how a bullet proof vest is different to a helicopter and how testing a helicopter is different to verifying the preliminary design of a helicopter.
Actually not at all, tests in both need to be done in a natural environment. It's the same like aerodynamic shapes, in a computer simulation you can optimize it but you have still to test the shape in real life with a scale model and the bigger the scale or better to say the closer it comes to the orgininal the better. If you make anything bulletproof you test them in real life for their attributes, if you make anything to test any attribute that has any value in real life like in aircrafts, aerodynamic,bulletproof, RCS,balance, downwash or anything like that you always test it in real life to verify that your "paperwork" has actually any value. If companies would work only with computer simulations they wouldn't be in development.research and procurement companies but in video game companies to make simulators like DCS.
On the contrary, mock ups made of non representative materials are made all the time for display reasons.
Of course, I've seen nothing to suggest that Kamov built anything like a full scale mock up.
And you really find that suprising? The entire programm was kept for almost a decade as an high priority secret and even today we are almost unable to tell simple things and to take it for solid. We still have no idea and no certain information has been liked about if this weapon is for certain an Type-23-1 and what exact alterations had been done on the Type-23-1 to make it suitable for helicopterborne firing. Actually the secrecy kept around anything on WZ-10 is astonishing high which was only the case during cold war for high priority weapons projects like T-95, Akula,F-117 or any other project that was leaked decade or several decades after.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. It's difficult to follow.
I sume it up for you, i did over one year research of kamov company because i was and still i am very interested in Ka-50 co-axial design. So i researched lot of data and gather more than 1.6 gb data of txt and pdf files around Kamov alone.
Every work they have done, regardless if this projects were paid by costumers or only work initiated to have advertizing the civilian market and lot of work like projects V-100, V-200 or V-40 never even came abroad blue prints, but they still had made mock ups and scale models. Mil company did a mockup of UH-1 when it was announced that the military wanted an attack helicopter, so they first tried to rely on experience of bell company, it was useless and didn't met any requirements.
Even tho mil company made all the paper work for the Mi-24 prototype they needed to verify it with a mockup design, which in the end proved that this design was worthless and had to be scrapped.
This book on page 4 you see the first Mi-24 prototype that looks remarkably identical to UH-1 but couldn't verify the paperwork and had to been scrapped and further development was based on Mi-8 for the Mi-24 gunship.
To sume it up, no life model = no certainity for the value of the paperwork (computer simulations).
I'll list my problems:
2: even if Project 941 had major RCS reduction requirements, that doesn't mean they needed a full scale mock up to test it -- scaled RCS tests are common place in development cycles. Remember, they were only doing preliminary concept design.
Preliminary work does only exclude prototype phase nothing more nothing less. Kamov did very well scaled mockups in wind tunnel to have the certainity of aerodynamic. Within their requirements was also to give data for the balance of the airframe, meaning they had to make this on paper first and verify it with a mockup design, regardless of full scale or a credible smaller scale to have the balance for further internal technology arrangement since this all has to be preliminary to be calculated and tested, simple alterations in weight of new engines takes an effect directly on the balance of the airframe, meaning it creates vibrations, lowers the max take off weight and so on. RCS scattering had definetley to been tested in a mockup and it doesn't really matter if it was tested on a 1:10 scale mockup or a 1:1. Such crusioul work can not be done without radar labor testing on a natural surface and the level of radar scattering of the object.
3: you've provided no evidence suggesting that Kamov built anything like an airframe or a full scale prototype.
Actually i did give you enough information to conclude otherwise. From Kamovs standard and basic approach of projects and testing. (they never test anything without mockups, nothing) to the actual pictures of the windtunnel tests, even tho they are hard to conclude how big this mock up is, but from my knowledge of the windtunnels on kamov's company premises and the high priority of the project and the secrecy of this project i don't think they did all the work without beeing actually sure about they work and the most important thing that their work has any value for the Chinese contractor to fullfill the deal.
I don't know how you would approach contracts and how small your effort would be to try to satisfy your customers especially under this circumstances and the rather high bill for the work, but i personally can ensure that this wasn't just paperwork without verification in the real life word.
4: all the information we have about the length of time that Kamov was contracted, along with what they've told us, suggests that they had no hand in fabricating anything akin to a full scale airframe
Actually the work they had wasn't anything out of the timespan, lot of the work could be done by just a few heads but this work was done by Sergey Mikheevs department, he has 23 heads to his work.
5: "Verified via testing" doesn't equal "verified via a testing a mockup".
Than what is your conclusion how testings are done to give your data any value that can be quoted as "verification and testing"?
6: if they built a mockup or an airframe they would have most likely revealed that in their conference.
If they worked on Project 941 why didn't they show actual blue prints except the prototype blue print and the artwork and the simple colored picture of the windtunnel tests?
"
"They gave us the desired weight, we discussed preliminary performance parameters, then we signed a contract and we fulfilled the contract," he says.
Meaning they discussed how far the project 941 had to do the preliminary work on the parameters and performance.
If he was trying to take the entire effort of the Project 941 he could do so and wouldn't add
Kamov did not participate in any further developmental work on the WZ-10, he insists.
This outcome on the heli-expo was nothing else but a helpfull advertisement and not an attempt to trying to steal credit for the work on the project. If he wanted to do so he could have shown the entire spanwide of the work made by Kamov company that was definetley more than just blue prints and artwork that would take a bigger impact on the opinions of how far the work of Kamov was on this project, but he insisted otherwise.
If you want to know how companies work on projects you should peak inside the development history of diffrent projects, failed or finished projects, every project has mock up designes, even those who were not fully financed or came further than blue print status. Mockups are not counted as Prototypes, don't get confused with that.
One mayor point that - at least for me - excludes a very deep involvement including comprehensive testing and even the build of anything "substantial" is the limited time Kamov was involved by its own words: 1 year is not really a long time to start from scratch with a new design based on customer's request and foreign requirements ... or Kamov reused an older indigenous design, that was already cancelled and could now (back then) be continued with Chinese payment.
No the project was not based on any soviet era work, it is an absolute new project. 1 year is also to much for just giving some weight balance and aerodynamics, even programms can calculate that and you wouldn't need a year for that and the other point is, what value do you give computer simulations if you can not test and verify this data to be worth anything in the real life?
So how do you test data without making any mockups that still would have given it credibility?
