Posted on 03/10/2012 6:49:38 PM PST by U-238
New pictures of the China's J-20 Mighty Dragon stealth fighter have surfaced and are making their way across military blogs.
This newest round of photos show the J-20 in the skies somewhere over mainland China.
The prototype is said to be using the Saturn AL-31 turbofan engine developed by the Russian's for their Su-27 air superiority fighter.
Reuben Johnson at The Washington Times reports the Chinese may be as much as 10 years away from producing an original stealth engine to slip into the J-20.
In the meantime, they'll have to take comfort in the fact that while the F-22 Raptor may be more agile and made entirely in the U.S., the Dragon carries more fuel and weapons than Lockheed's fighter.
The J-20's development is also moving along much faster than anyone had expected. Back in 2009, Gen. He Weirong, deputy commander of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force said in a TV interview that the J-20 wouldn't be operational until 2017-2019. That estimate will likely be revised if work continues at the current pace.
Bill Sweetman at AviationWeek points out that for all its headway, no one is yet sure what the J-20 is for. He speculates that given the aircraft's size and weapons bays, it may be used to "threaten intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets and tankers, by using stealth and speed to defeat their escorts."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
That was over 40 years and many technological advancements ago. Do you have anything better? The army eventually had to go from horses to tanks.
A computer cannot mimick the experience and skill of a pilot.
They used to say the same thing about chess players.
That is true. But I do not see Top Gun or Red Flag closing anytime soon.
Perhaps they should, but maybe it's like carrier groups. There are too many careers and too much money involved.
Maybe you will find this article from 2007 interesting.
We will have to see them in combat to make a conclusion.
Good article by the way.
I have wondered about that, although I cannot claim to own the idea since I read about it in some article. About how, in the near future, the war between stealth and sensors will go one of two ways. The first is that the advancement of stealth amongst near-peer competitors, for instance the Chinese and Russians, evolves to a level whereby their level of stealth is roughly analogous - not equal, but close enough - that by the time the USAF fighter and the Chinese/Russian fighter are detecting each other, the speed of the merge is basically bringing both aircraft at, or near, WVR. It is interesting that both the Raptor and whatever the PakFa prototype will give birth to are meant to be very agile in all regimes.
The second evolutionary thread was that sensor technology would outstrip the capabilities of stealth to ensure survivability within viable ranges, and it seems that sensor technology is evolving faster than stealth. A huge caveat to that statement is that it is based on what is publicly available, which means that the statement is worth a bucket of warm spit since none of us knows, with any degree of confidence, what the latest and upcoming developments are in terms of sensors and/or stealth. However, based on publicly available information, the British were (for example) able to track the B-2, and during the Gulf War were being able to easily track the F-117.
Anyways, sticking to the point of my post, going forward it is very possible that maneuverability will be back as a requirement, and looking at all Gen 5 and Gen 4.5/++ air-superiority fighters, all of them have not just maneuverability but extreme maneuverability as a must. Even the F-35, which was originally not meant to be a air-superiority fighter (before the Raptor got deep-sixed and its role got expanded) still has 'synthetic' maneuverability through its ability to target aircraft through its ingenious melding of its distributed aperture system and the HMDS, which can (based on what is publicly available, and assuming some of the issues they are having are sorted out) be capable of some nice piece of work.
But the interesting thing is - if in the near future a F-22C (assuming the next president lets Raptor evolution continue) facing off against (say) a SU-50 (the finished product of the T-50) or a J-23 (assuming the J-20 was just a technology demonstrator), it is quite possible that a 'dogfight' would ensue. Although I would agree that it would be a 'dogfight' in quotes since it would be I-IR missiles fighting it out rather than fighters aiming guns at one another. Although, again, both the Raptor and the T-50 prototype have maneuverability as key, both are able to jam incoming missiles (and, adding the F-35 to the mix, it was shown capable of jamming the F-22's radar), both have extreme maneuverability and not only in the supersonic regime (where it makes a lot of sense) but also in the sub-sonic area that is arguably only good for air-shows and dog-fighting, and both have guns (in the T-50's case there was a write-up saying the finished product may have TWO guns). In a future aerial environment between two near-peer adversaries (maybe US vs China; maybe China vs Russia) there will be constant jamming, all sorts of varied platforms, and a couple of stealthy players mucking about. I wouldn't be too surprised to see an actual dogfight when, in the muck of all the electronic warfare static in the air and fog of war, that two opposing stealthy platforms actually manage to get within WVR range where they are close enough to use I-IR missiles (which is arguably the modern form of the dogfight).
Just a thought.
astute analysis. Though it does not take into account that turreted directed energy weapons are not very far away. Dog fights are going to get ‘interesting’.
Why not fusing the pilot and the plane?
You will get everything in one package. Both the pilots skill,reflexes and the power of the flight control computer connected into one CPU.You will be able to design even more advanced aircraft.
OK. Maybe the J-20 isn’t agile. But in the picture, the canards are set to hold the nose down. What happens when they are trimmed the other way at high speed? I recall the recent P-51 airshow crash in which the horizontal stabilizer trim-tab came off in high-speed flight and the aircraft did a 9-G pitch-up.
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