Chinese 5th Gen Fighter Photo - Aviation Week

[Phoenix10]

They have this lead exactly because planners never arrived at a point where they thought they had enough lead.

Amen to that. I hope this is remembered.

[Phoenix10]

News is popping up all over the web. A few sources say that the test pilot has been announced.

Better image of Chinese 5th Gen J-XX emerges , Preparation on for first flight , First sight Analysis

Alert 5 » Blog Archive » First XXJ test pilot: Liang Wanjun - Military Aviation News

[Phoenix10]

Bill Sweetman article with a good side shot and a few other pics:

China's Stealth Striker

[gunnut]

Xinhui beat me... the engines are going to be a problem. Until China can produce an engine suitable for their latest airframes, they will be held somewhat hostage by Russia.

The other issue, harder to define and visualize, are the machining tolerances necessary to produce airframes that truly drop RCS. Minute gaps, uneven panels, improperly executed radome (one of the harder parts of modern fighters); all might contribute to increased RCS despite a pleasing shape on a macro level. Putty or coatings cannot correct these despite wishful thinking.

That said, it'd be stupid to underestimate Chinese engineering in areas like this.

highsea would say Chinese machining process and QC aren't quite up to par yet. If they are up to par, they would be incredibly expensive for the Chinese to mass produce.

It's one thing to manufacture consumer electronics. It's another to mass produce heavy machinery and precision tools for industrial and military use.

I would say the inability for the Chinese to produce a high performance engine to power their own fighters is indicative of this problem.

That's what I have gathered from the gist of highsea's posts.

[Skywatcher]

Did a bit of research for a think tank I'm interning with several months back: I speculated that China probably can build the J-XX to spec, the problem is that they'd have to essentially rebuild the airframe every hundred or so flight hours (the Chinese can build precision parts, they just don't build long lasting precision parts very well, see their nuclear submarines), so compared to the F-22, the maintenance costs will be astronomical.

America can a more reliable 5th generation fighter because we spent 16 years refining the F-22, while the Chinese have 7 to 8 years at best. Lot of shortcuts being taken on their part.

[Phoenix10]

Anyone else think that this could lead to a lot more countries becoming interested in the F-35? Aircraft like the Euro-canards and latest F-15/16/18 are great but have the drawback of no (or very limited) stealth. I can easily see this as a possible boost to F-35 sales, especially in the Asia/Pacific region.

[xinhui]

Bill Sweetman article with a good side shot and a few other pics:

China's Stealth Striker

China's Stealth Striker
Posted by Bill Sweetman at 12/27/2010 4:57 AM CST
Hot from the fence-line is what looks like the best image yet of China's Chengdu stealth fighter, identified so far as J-20.

blog post photo

Remarkable indeed - and at the rate we're going there will be a three-dimensional animated cutaway of this beast by 2.30 Tuesday afternoon, so we can safely stick to what we can see here without having to speculate too far. (Note: this photo appeared on the China Defense Forum. All I've done to it is rotate it and adjust contrast and brightness.)

[xinhui]

a while back, I spoke with a Phd from Precision Castparts (who owns the market on engine blades) on the challenges of building a high temp engine. He is well-informed about the progress (or lack of) China is making at that front. Most of the technical details were very over my head. Just don't expect the WS-15 will enter service anytime soon.

[FJV]

For all I know it could be a full scale mock up for study purposes.

If that is the case then it could be a long time before we see this flying.

[Skywatcher]

So "soon" is in the next 4 to 5 years, or 6 to 8?

[xinhui]

Did not ask

[Skywatcher]

For all I know it could be a full scale mock up for study purposes.

If that is the case then it could be a long time before we see this flying.

But most mockups don't have engines installed inside them for taxiing tests.

[FJV]

I need more information to make such statements, all I see are some vague photo's.



Can you really tell based on these kind of photo's whether engines are installed or not?

[Skywatcher]

My point is that its not a mock up, as a mockup wouldn't have engines that are capable of powering it to go around on taxiing tests (we've already seen photos of the J-XX on the runaway, so it must be using its own power unless you think there's a hidden truck towing it around).

[kyli]

I need more information to make such statements, all I see are some vague photo's.

Can you really tell based on these kind of photo's whether engines are installed or not?

Better pic.