The sixth-generation aircraft of the United States has appeared, will the sixth-generation aircraft of China be far away?
Where are China's sixth-generation machines?
Some time ago, some American netizens found on satellite maps that a strange-looking aircraft appeared in the mysterious "Area 51" in the United States.
Unlike any known aircraft, this aircraft has a sci-fi triangular fuselage. Many people speculate that this may be the long-rumored sixth-generation machine.
(Mysterious plane appearing in Area 51)
In modern warfare, air power has an irreplaceable and important role. How to ensure the superior position of their own air power is the direction that the major military powers have been working hard to study.
The United States commissioned the epoch-making stealth fighter F22 in 2005, followed by the introduction of the F35 multi-role stealth fighter, which was common to the three services, ensuring its dominant position in the field of fighters.
(F22 Raptor fighter)
The Americans did not stop the development of fighter jets. After 2010, Americans began to conduct related research on sixth-generation aircraft.
Subsequently, Loma, Boeing, Grumman and other companies have come up with their own sixth-generation aircraft design plans. Russia and Europe followed suit, launching their own six-generation aircraft programs.
(Boeing's sixth-generation machine solution)
After China developed the J-20, a top-level fifth-generation fighter, it has not slowed down the pace of research on future sixth-generation fighters.
AVIC has a well-known "double division" design team, which has participated in the development of key systems for the J-10 and J-20.
(J-20 "Veyron" fighter)
The team proposed eight design schemes for sixth-generation aircraft, and conducted low-altitude flight tests on four of them to explore the relevant design concepts of sixth-generation aircraft.
Obviously, the research and development of China's sixth-generation machine is already in progress, and in the near future, we can see China's sixth-generation aircraft appear in front of the world. So, what does China's six-generation opportunity look like?
A fighter aircraft is mainly composed of several parts: airframe, power, avionics, and weapons. We can understand what China's sixth-generation aircraft may look like through these aspects.
The skeleton of the sixth generation of the machine - the design of the airframe
Airframe design is fundamental to an aircraft, and the performance and development potential of an aircraft largely depends on the level of airframe design of the aircraft.
For example, the dragon fighter, the early dragon fighter performance is not outstanding, but barely entered the threshold of the third generation of fighters.
However, thanks to the excellent airframe design, the Dragon Fighter can be continuously upgraded, through the replacement of avionics equipment, upgrade the power system, improve the combat effectiveness.
(JF-17Block3 Dragon Fighter)
It is precisely because of this improvement that by the latest Block 3 model, the Dragon Fighter has been upgraded to the level of the third-generation and half-improved model, and the performance and early Dragon Fighter are very different.
Moreover, since the advent of the fifth-generation aircraft, stealth capabilities have become the standard configuration of fighters from the fifth-generation aircraft. Without excellent stealth ability, it will be difficult to compete with stealth fighters on the battlefield in the future.
Among the several key elements of aircraft stealth design, the shape design of the aircraft is the top priority, and the shape design of the aircraft is related to the airframe design of the aircraft.
(Angularity is typical of stealth fighters)
For example, on a normal fighter, the tail of the fighter is vertical. In the stealth fighter, in order to reduce the radar reflection area and achieve the effect of stealth, the tail wing must be designed to be tilted.
And we know that the tail wing has an active wing surface used to control the flight of the aircraft, and the flight attitude of the aircraft is controlled by the rotation of the active wing surface.
After tilting the tail wing, how to effectively control the aircraft requires the aircraft's fuselage design to play a role with the tilted tail.
(J-20's tilted tail)
For example, to achieve a better stealth effect, the surface of the aircraft needs to be as smooth as possible. Some of the equipment that protrudes from the surface of the aircraft has to be hidden.
Like the airspeed tube used to measure the speed of an airplane, the stealth fighter cannot put the airspeed tube on the nose like other aircraft, but instead design a speed sensor on the fuselage to replace the airspeed tube at the nose.
Stealth design has a principle, that is, the fewer the wings of the aircraft, the better. Each wing will increase the radar reflective surface of the aircraft, reducing the stealth effect of the aircraft.
The sixth-generation machine has a stronger stealth demand than the fifth-generation aircraft, so the current sixth-generation aircraft design scheme disclosed by various countries generally uses a tailless layout.
(Loma's sixth-generation model with a tailless layout)
The so-called tailless layout is that the aircraft cancels the horizontal tail and vertical tail, and the whole fuselage has only two main wings. This design reduces radar reflective surfaces and improves the level of stealth of the aircraft.
Will China's six-generation opportunity adopt a tailless layout? The more likely answer is yes. In several papers disclosed by aerodynamic research institutes, several designs for tailless aircraft have emerged.
These tailless aircraft schemes have typical fighter design characteristics, such as large swept-back wing designed for high-speed flight, which is likely to be some of the mainland's early research schemes for sixth-generation aircraft.
The core of the sixth-generation aircraft - the power unit
When an airplane flew overhead, apart from the light and athletic figure of the plane, the most impressive thing was the huge roar of the aircraft engine.
The power unit, or engine, is the core of an airplane. Only when the engine is continuously powered can the aircraft continue to fly in the sky.
(WS10 "Taihang" turbofan engine)
Especially for fighter jets, the performance of the engine is crucial. The main task of the fighter is to seize air supremacy with enemy fighters.
An engine with excellent performance can give the fighter a higher thrust-to-weight ratio, which will be better in maneuverability and speed, and can quickly seize the dominant position to attack when facing enemy aircraft.
Fifth-generation aircraft are generally equipped with a new generation of turbofan engines, such as the F119 and F135 engines in the United States, the Project40 engine in Russia, and the WS15 engine in China.
(F135 turbofan engine)
These engines have some common characteristics, the first is that the thrust of the engine is very large, such as the maximum thrust of the F135 reached 18 tons, and it will be further increased to 22 tons in the future.
The second is that the thrust-to-weight ratio is very high. As the name suggests, the thrust-to-weight ratio is the ratio of engine thrust to weight, and the higher the thrust-to-weight ratio, the better the performance of the engine.
The turbofan engines of these fifth-generation aircraft generally achieve a thrust-to-weight ratio of about 10, which can provide sufficient power to the fighter.
Will the engines of the sixth generation be the models for the further development of these engines? Possibly not.
Why? Because the technology of this generation of turbofan engine has encountered some bottlenecks that are difficult to overcome, it is difficult to have a greater breakthrough in performance.
For example, the F135 engine is currently the best fighter engine in the world. Its combustion chamber turbine blade temperature has been achieved to the extreme, only a few dozen degrees from the melting point of the material, there is no room for further improvement.
The development of new materials is a long and difficult task, and the development of a new generation of fighter engines in a short period of time also relies on existing material technology.
(Variable cycle engine)
Under the premise of no breakthrough in material technology, in order to have a relatively large breakthrough in engine performance, it is necessary to use some new engine types, such as variable cycle engines and pulse knock engines.
The United States is studying the XA101 variable cycle engine, which is more fuel-efficient and has more thrust than the F135, and is said to be able to achieve a thrust-to-weight ratio of 15.
Unlike the Americans, which studied variable-cycle engines, China studied another route, pulse knock engines.
China once converted the combustion chamber of a WS9 turbofan engine into a combustion chamber of a pulse-knock engine and placed it on the test bench for testing.
The test results show that this modification greatly increases the thrust of the engine. The maximum thrust of the WS9 engine before the modification was only more than 9 tons, and the maximum thrust of the engine after the transformation exceeded 17 tons.
(WS9 "Qinling" turbofan engine)
The so-called pulse knock is to replace the traditional subsonic combustion through controlled supersonic combustion pulses.
In the traditional combustion chamber, combustion can only be carried out in a subsonic state, otherwise the phenomenon of combustion instability will occur.
Therefore, an important job of the compressor in the turbofan engine is to change the supersonic air flow coming in the intake tract into a subsonic air flow.
The combustion chamber of the pulse knock engine, through the special design of the combustion chamber shape and fuel injection device, so that the combustion can be carried out at supersonic speed, improving the combustion efficiency, thereby greatly improving the thrust of the engine.
For the future Chinese sixth-generation aircraft, the pulse knock engine will be a good power unit and can provide sufficient power for the Chinese sixth-generation aircraft.
The soul of the sixth generation of aircraft - avionics system
For modern fighters, an advanced avionics system is essential. Only with an advanced avionics system can fighters avoid becoming "headphoneless", "blind", and "dumb" on the modern battlefield.
The avionics system of modern fighters mainly has several aspects, one is the detection system, the other is the communication system, and the control system of the fighter itself.
The most well-known fighter detection system is the radar, which has a history of hundreds of years and is still the backbone of search and detection to this day.
(Phased Array Radar)
Beginning with the fifth generation, active phased array radar (AESA) gradually became standard in fighter jets. AESA radar performance is powerful, in addition to having a stronger detection capability than traditional radar, there is also a certain degree of electronic warfare capabilities.
However, with the advent of sixth-generation aircraft, the existing AESA radar may not be able to effectively detect sixth-generation aircraft.
In addition to the aforementioned airframe design is more conducive to stealth than the fifth-generation aircraft, there are many new stealth technologies that may be applied to the sixth-generation fuselage.
For example, paints that can achieve full spectrum stealth can absorb radar waves of different wavelength bands. There is also the possibility that plasma stealth technology can be applied on sixth-generation machines.
Therefore, China's sixth-generation aircraft must be equipped with new radars in order to have an advantage in the confrontation before the future sixth-generation aircraft.
The good news is that China has achieved considerable results in this regard. As early as the 2018 Zhuhai Air Show, China Electronics 14 institute launched a new optical quantum radar.
(Optical quantum radar of the 14th Institute of Electrical Sciences)
China's 14 Institutes of Electricity is a leader in the field of radar research and development in China, and radars like the J-20 are the products of China's 14 Institutes of Electricity.
This optical quantum radar uses a new signal processing mechanism to process some special signals, greatly enhancing the ability to detect stealth aircraft.
In terms of the communication system of the sixth-generation aircraft, China also has a fairly deep technical foundation.
Fighters communicate on the battlefield, with two requirements. The first is to be safe, not to let the enemy intercept the communication signal and leak the confidential information in the communication.
The second is to transmit efficiently. On the modern battlefield, more and more data provided by various sensors requires communication lines to be able to transmit a large amount of data in a short period of time in order to meet the needs of informationized operations.
In both aspects, China has good technological achievements. In terms of communication security, we have the world's leading quantum communication technology, and quantum communication has eradicated the possibility of eavesdropping in principle.
(Quantum communication experimental satellite "Mozi")
In terms of transmission efficiency, we have advanced 5G technology. Through the research of related technologies, applied to fighter communication, it is not a problem to improve the transmission efficiency of fighter communication systems.
These technologies are likely to be used on China's sixth-generation aircraft, which will greatly improve the performance of the communication system of China's sixth-generation aircraft.
On the J-20 fighter jet, China is equipped with a rare optical transmission operating system in the world. The optical transmission operating system is to use optical fiber as the transmission mode of the aircraft operating system.
Compared with the fly-by-wire operating system, the optical transmission operating system is faster and the data transmission efficiency is higher, which makes the aircraft more intelligent, and even cooperates with artificial intelligence to achieve autonomous flight of the aircraft.
Such an operating system will be further applied on China's sixth-generation machine, making China's sixth-generation machine far better than fifth-generation machines in intelligence.
The power of the sixth generation of aircraft - weapons and equipment
For fighters, various advanced weapons and equipment are the key to the fighter's completion of various combat tasks.
The most important combat task of china's sixth-generation aircraft in the future is to gain an advantage in the confrontation with enemy fighters and seize air supremacy in the theater.
Advanced air-to-air missiles are indispensable to carry out air-to-air missions.
China has installed the PL15 medium-range air-to-air missile, one of the most advanced air-to-air missiles in service.
(PL15 medium-range air-to-air missile)
The PL15 has a diameter of 203 mm, which is a circle thicker than the American AIM120D's less than 180 mm diameter, which makes the PL15's suitability a little reduced, but the thicker body can accommodate a larger rocket engine, providing stronger power to the missile.
According to the public information at the 2021 Zhuhai Air Show, the effective range of the PL15 has reached a distance of 150 kilometers. At the same time, the larger bullet path allows the PL15 to be equipped with a larger radar, improving the ability to lock on stealth fighters.
However, although the performance of PL15 is excellent, its large size limits its actual use effect. In order to obtain strong maneuverability, the PL15 is equipped with a tail wing with a relatively large wingspan.
Because these tails are so large, the J-20, although the magazine size is very large, can only carry 4 PL15 missiles.
(J-20 fighter with PL15 mounted)
Therefore, for the missiles that China's sixth-generation aircraft will use, it is necessary to reduce the size while making the performance better than the PL15.
One likely solution is to use kinetic warheads. Air-to-air missiles have a heavy fragmented warhead in order to ensure the lethal effect on high-speed fighters.
If the missile can be killed directly into the target rather than through fragmentation of the fragmented warhead by using a new guidance system, the warhead can be made very small, or even the warhead does not need to be needed.
This saves tens of kilograms of weight, and the corresponding missile engine can be further reduced.
(Small size using kinetic warhead "peregrine falcon missiles")
At the same time, a higher solid propellant than the punch can be used and a lighter engine housing can be used to further reduce the weight of the engine.
The engine can also increase vector spouts, replace the role of the tail wing, reduce the size of the tail wing and even cancel the tail wing.
In this way, the size of the new missile can be reduced to half the size of the PL15, while the performance is almost or even improved. For China's sixth-generation aircraft, such air-to-air missiles are the most convenient weapons of god.
At present, the international situation is changing, and all countries have accelerated the research speed of weapons and equipment, as are fighters as important equipment for air power.
China's aviation industry has stood at the world's first-class level, and with the efforts of Chinese military researchers, the day when China's sixth-generation aircraft will soon arrive.