Last year, a picture at the Changchun Air Show went viral on the Internet, showing a woman holding a model of a three-plane fighter, the model in the woman's hand looks very sci-fi, and even similar in appearance to the Russian Su-57, with a diamond-shaped nose tilted tail. Speaking of which, veteran military fans should recognize that this is the J-14 fighter that once competed with the J-20 for the fifth-generation aircraft of the Continental Air Force. So why didn't the troops put J-14 in line? What kind of fighter is the J-14? How is it stronger or weaker than the J-20? Today, the coachman will talk to you about the story of the J-14 "Snowy Owl" fighter.
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R&D background
In most of the last century, the fighters that our country researched and developed were first-generation aircraft, second-generation aircraft, and third-generation aircraft, and the United States established the research and development of fifth-generation aircraft in 1977 and successfully flew for the first time in 1997, which was later F22. The mainland is naturally not far behind, and in the nineties of the last century, the mainland also planned to develop a new stealth fighter and conduct domestic tenders. Shenfei Group and Chengfei Group respectively came to bid for their respective masterpieces, Shenfei took out the J-14 "Snow Owl", and Chengfei took out the J-20, which is now the "Weilong".
The J-14 competes with the J-20
So why bid for one aircraft and two design companies? We need to make a breakthrough in the research of such a high-end project, and to ensure its success, we must increase the insurance factor. Such a parallel study allows us to add an insurance factor to the research of high-end fighters. Second, such parallel research on two types of high-end stealth fighters can improve the overall level of research and development of high-end fighters in the continental aviation industry. Third, from an international point of view, it is also a common practice to introduce a competition mechanism in the development process of high-end fighters.
YF-23 drawing
The development of two stealth fighters at the same time has international precedents. For example, in 1985, the U.S. Air Force proposed a new generation of fighter designs to replace the F-15, and while Lockheed Martin and Boeing jointly developed the YF-22 stealth fighter, Northrop and Macdonald Douglas also jointly launched the competitive model YF-23. In the end, the YF-22 won and went into production, which became the famous F-22 "Raptor" fighter.
The J-14 "Snowy Owl" began to take shape
In fact, as early as the early 80s of last century, Shenfei has begun to design the fifth-generation aircraft, and has proposed several design schemes, among which the medium sweep angle cut pointed delta wing layout scheme is considered to be the most promising scheme, and in the following years, Shenfei combined with stealth needs to continuously optimize the original design scheme. After the military proposed the idea of researching and developing fifth-generation aircraft, Shenfei only took 4 years to come up with a design plan, their scheme was a very fashionable three-wing design at that time, the canard wing plus the front side strip wing, the main wing is a double delta wing, from such a shape it is not difficult to see that Shenfei's design emphasizes the maneuverability of the fighter, without using a vector engine can reach a controllable angle of attack of 65 degrees, and even in the limit of 90 degrees of attack There is still a certain control ability, Coupled with the Gallet air intake and full-motion vertical tail with excellent supersonic performance, this design is even more maneuverable than the J-20.
J-14
The J-14 project began to be developed in 1991, the design grandmaster is the famous domestic aircraft designer Academician Li Tian, Academician Li Tian has been the J-8 series and J-11 fighter aerodynamic professional grandmaster, in the early nineties of the last century Academician Li Tian served as the main person in charge of the background pre-research project of the new China fifth-generation aircraft, in-depth research on the aerodynamic layout of stealth fighters.
Performance of the J-14
In some public information, you can see that the J-14 has a slender fuselage, the fuselage is a three-wing surface body layout with canards, and also has a flap design with vortex separation, according to statistics, the J-14 fuselage has a total of 14 large and small aerodynamic rudder surfaces, this layout can effectively enhance the lift of the fighter, and the large angle of attack takeoff and landing even surpasses the Su-27 fighter known for its mobility. However, at that time, there was a lack of engines that could provide high power in China, and in order to ensure that the J-14 could further surpass the high speed and maneuverability of Soviet fighters, Shenfei made great efforts in aerodynamic layout and materials. Looking at the information about the shape of the J-14, did careful military fans find that such a design had a similar design for the MiG-1.44 in the former MiG Design Bureau? The J-14 fighter adopts an air intake design similar to that of a Soviet-made fighter, and the air intake is set under the belly, similar to the Su-27, and the same design has appeared on today's Su-57.
Defeated J-20
Although the J-14 has an avant-garde design, excellent maneuverability, and excellent aerodynamic layout, everyone knows the end of the story, and the J-14 was finally defeated by the J-20 in the bidding. Why is such an excellent J-14 defeated by the J-20? Similar to the J-20, the mainstream canard horizontal tail and double vertical tail are not lacking, and the overall maneuverability is also excellent in fifth-generation aircraft. But the criterion for measuring a fifth-generation aircraft is not only maneuverability, but more importantly, stealth performance, and in terms of the most important stealth, the J-14 can be described as losing to the J-20 in all aspects.
First of all, in the size of the fuselage, the J-14 is much larger than the J-20, you know, the J-20 fuselage is 20.3 meters long, which is a huge existence in the fifth-generation aircraft, and the size of the J-14 is larger than the J-20, which limits the stealth performance of the J-14 fuselage to a certain extent; the J-14 is the belly intake, and the Garette air intake is slightly inferior to the DSI intake design of the J-20. The DSI air intake port has a simple structure, which can shield the fan blades of the turbofan engine to a certain extent, which can make it have a better stealth effect.
Chengye "Soviet-style", defeat also "Soviet-style"
Because the J-14 was inferior to the J-20 in terms of stealth performance, it lost the bid with the J-20. As we all know, mainland fighters have made progress and groping for a long time through the practice of imitating Soviet-made fighters, but Chengye is also "Soviet-style", defeat is also "Soviet-style", and the aerodynamic layout of the J-14 is the effect of long-term imitation of Soviet-made fighters. From the design layout of the J-14, it is actually obvious that there are many shadows of the Su-27 and MiG-1.44, and now Russia's fifth-generation aircraft Su-57 also has similar flaws to the J-14.
It's not so much that the J-14 is not stealthy enough, but that the J-20 is too good. The J-20 designed by Chengfei is much simpler than the J-14 in aerodynamic shape, and the demand for engines is much smaller than that of the J-14, and also adopts a lot of advanced technology, the J-20 not only has a DSI air intake, but also a fully moving vertical tail, wing secondary radar antenna and side array radar. These designs allow the J-20 to have good stealth performance while also having more powerful aerial perception capabilities. In the face of such a J-20, the design of a large number of Soviet-made fighters on the J-14 is somewhat outdated.
Su 57
The meaning of J-14
Although the J-14 project was dismounted, Shenfei did not fail, and they obtained a lot of valuable empirical data in the research of the J-14 project. In fact, Shenfei has made many breakthroughs and advances in the aviation field in recent years, such as the successful development of the mainland's first carrier-based aircraft J-15 "Flying Shark", which provides powerful air power for the mainland naval air defense forces; At the same time, Shenfei successfully developed the mainland's first two-seat stealth fighter J-16, which provides the mainland air force with powerful ground attack and electronic warfare capabilities.
J-15
J-16