【Military Subplane】Author: Lele
A few days ago, the official media deliberately left a section for the J-8F to put a picture of the airborne aviation dispenser. Although this is not the first time that the J-8F has shown its hand, it is indeed worth talking about after its Russian counterpart, the MiG-31, performed brilliantly on the battlefield in Ukraine, and the Russian-made gliding guided bomb also showed the ability to dominate the battlefield.
▲The MiG-31 regained its main position after carrying the "Dagger".
The airborne aviation dispenser sounds a bit confusing, but it is actually a large-capacity square-section submunition. According to different needs, it can be loaded with anti-armor, anti-artillery shells and even anti-personnel ammunition, flying over the target and then throwing, forming a coverage of about 6,000 square meters. The J-8F delivered this time is an upgraded version of the gliding guidance kit, which can improve the accuracy of the strike while ensuring the safety of the carrier aircraft. In fact, the latter point is also the most critical reason for choosing the J-8F as the carrier aircraft. Generally speaking, the low-altitude and low-speed maneuverability of the ground tactical attack aircraft should not be too bad, and the bomb load should reach a certain level, but the J-8F, which is positioned as a high-altitude and high-speed interceptor, is actually not good in both aspects.
▲The J-8 that launched the aviation dispenser
The airborne aviation dispenser is not a high-end equipment, and the J-7A, J-11B and J-16 can also be easily mounted, and even more in number. However, the flight characteristics of gliding guided bombs give the J-8F a slight possibility to give full play to its advantages. The so-called gliding guidance is actually a simple transformation of adding a tail to receive commands, ensuring accuracy by fine-tuning the direction, and adding "wings" in the middle to extend the range. Guidance and fine-tuning, needless to say, the flight of the "wings" is critical for the carrier aircraft. Since gliding guided munitions have no power, they rely solely on inertial flight after leaving the carrier aircraft, and if their flight range is shorter, the carrier aircraft can only risk flying closer and more dangerous areas, and vice versa.
▲A recent photo of a domestic aviation spreader
There are many ways to extend the flight distance, but considering a series of factors such as manufacturing, storage, and carrying, the simplest and most effective is to increase the altitude and speed of the carrier aircraft's launch window. The principle is simple, but it's not simple to use. The wind resistance of gliding guided munitions without spreading their wings is very high, and it is very difficult for the carrier aircraft to forcibly break through the altitude and speed, and it is not small that hundreds of kilograms of ammunition can be attached to the external ammunition and then break through the normal flight state. Therefore, the best way is to directly find a carrier aircraft that is good at high-altitude and high-speed flight. The Russian-made MiG-31 is the last interceptor in the Soviet era, and its high-altitude and high-speed performance is unique in the world, so it was given the important task of mounting the "Dagger" and providing the latter with excellent raw kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy data.
▲The J-8 still has the advantage of high altitude and high speed
The idea of the J-8F to launch the aviation dispenser is similar, but the effect is not so grandiose, but it will increase the flight distance of the dispenser and improve its own safety. Generally speaking, the 500-kilogram gliding guided munition is delivered by the carrier aircraft in the airspace of about 10,000 meters and at high subsonic speed, and the flight distance is about 60 kilometers. At a speed of Mach 2 and an altitude of 12,000 meters, the J-8F can probably extend the distance by 15 to 20 kilometers, which is not very far, but it can be called the first in the whole army, and sometimes it can indeed determine life and death. Compared with the glory of the northern counterpart MiG-31, the application of the J-8F is not very special, and the effect is not particularly outstanding, but there is really no other choice. In the early years, J-8F can also maintain its status as a high-altitude and high-speed reconnaissance, but in recent years, it has been left far behind by UAVs, not to mention that large UAVs often have more than a dozen or even twenty hours of flight time, and J-8F can't catch up desperately.
▲The reconnaissance mission of the J-8 was gradually snatched away by new equipment
When China completed the breakthrough of guided bombs before 2010, the J-8 was also famous for mounting the "Thunderstone-6", but after so many years, it has not seen another breakthrough in this field. In 2020, the news of the J-8F carrying an aviation dispenser came out, and now there is still little change in the past 4 years. How to say it, the high-altitude and high-speed characteristics of the J-8F do have a certain gain for delivering gliding guided weapons, but they have not reached the level of breaking through the boundary. In the final analysis, the J-8 fleet that is still in service today is basically off the assembly line after 2000, and the original design limits the scope of use, but the Air Force does not accept the waste of service life in vain, and tries to find something capable of work. To put it nicely, this is called tapping the potential of equipment, and to put it mildly, it is to repair the old and reuse the waste.
▲The J-8 has unconsciously reached its twilight years
The J-8 is a very story-telling model, but it can't fight against the fate of being outdated. In fact, this is not only the unique experience of the J-8, the US Air Force A-10 attack aircraft, from the Cold War service to the present, the US Congress only relented and retired last year. On the amphibious assault ship of the US Navy, there are still AV-8B vertical take-off and landing fighters produced more than 40 years ago and are known for their frequent flight accidents. No one has unlimited resources, making the best use of things and trying to avoid waste of service life, which is the unanimous choice of all countries. The J-8F is equipped with an aviation dispenser, which is already a good ending.