CCTV publicly stated for the first time that the official propaganda film of the Navy concealed "easter eggs", and a new generation of stealth carrier-based aircraft was unveiled. And the new generation of stealth carrier-based aircraft naturally refers to the J-35.
In this promotional video, the naval pilot is responsible for piloting the J-15 of the Shandong ship, and then was given a new task - driving a new carrier-based fighter, which also means that the J-35, as a general-purpose carrier-based fighter, will be on the Liaoning, Fujian and Shandong ships.
In fact, the launch of the J-35 is of great significance to the Chinese Navy. At present, the US Navy's F-35 is the world's only stealth carrier-based aircraft, although the Loma company has so far failed to deliver the "big pie" painted by the US Navy, but in any case, the F-35 is still a carrier-based fifth-generation aircraft, and the carrier-based aircraft of other navies have a technological generation advantage. What's more, the F-35 can also form a high and low match with the "Super Hornet" carrier-based aircraft to make up for the shortcomings of the F-35's lack of firepower.
Fallen F35
The J-35 can be said to be the world's largest medium fighter with the highest thrust, and its combat effectiveness is far superior to that of the U.S. F35. Turbofan 19 is the fourth generation of small bypass ratio medium thrust engine developed by Continental for the fifth generation fighter, its thrust-to-weight ratio is more than 10 stages, and the maximum thrust exceeds 10 tons, and the thrust exceeds the F414 engine equipped by the United States for the F/A-18E/F fighter (the most advanced small bypass ratio medium thrust engine in the United States), the F414 engine can provide about 10 tons of thrust, while the most advanced British medium thrust engine EF200 thrust is only 9 tons. China's WS-19 has properly stepped into the ranks of the world's advanced fourth-generation thrust, and is the world's strongest small-bypass ratio thrust engine, and only the United States, Britain, and China have this super thrust of the fourth-generation thrust.
According to the principle of fighter design, the medium-thrust engine is equipped with a light fighter in a single-engine mode, such as the FC-1 Thunder Dragon fighter, LCA Tejas fighter, etc., which are light fighters with a single engine and a medium-sized fighter in a double-engine mode, such as Rafale, EF2000 Typhoon, F-18 and other fighters.
Because of the large thrust, the F35 only uses one F135 engine, and in order to improve the damage resistance of the fighter, the carrier-based fighter is best to use a twin-engine design, and the F35C adopts a single-engine design, which leads to a much greater risk of crash than a twin-engine design, which is a very unreliable design.
In fact, the F135 turbofan engine used in the F-35 evolved from the F119 engine, which further increased the thrust by increasing the bypass ratio and other measures, with a maximum thrust of 191.35 kN. However, the rapid thrust is accompanied by many shortcomings: on the one hand, the engine's high altitude and high-speed performance is worrying due to the huge bypass ratio (0.57, much higher than the F119's 0.3), resulting in the F-35 not having supersonic cruise capability.
In addition, there were problems with reliability, such as excessive sealing of the polyimide plate between the F135 second and third stage integral vane rotors, resulting in frictional overheating, which could cause the engine's three-stage fan blades to fail, and a manufacturing defect in the engine's fuel lines, which broke in flight, causing the engine to lose thrust.
As a result, it is difficult for the F35 to develop a full-fledged combat capability, and the TR-3 upgrade carried out by the F35 has been difficult to produce, including the improvement of the F-35 fighter's avionics and new operating software. The TR-3 upgrade is designed to radically improve the F-35 on-board communications and data processing systems, turning each aircraft into a battlefield node for collecting and distributing information in combat.
According to a September 2023 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), reports on the F-35 reveal some alarming statistics that show that the F-35, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, is not ready to provide real combat power. As of March 2023, the rate of "full mission capability" is about 30 percent, compared to only 15.5 percent for the Marine Corps F-35B variant, according to the report In other words, the F35 has serious quality problems, which seriously restricts the combat capability of the F35, the most significant is that it does not have supersonic cruise capability, because it cannot cruise at supersonic speed, it can only carry 4 AIM-120 medium-range air-to-air missiles, or 2 AIM-120 and 2 AIM-9X combat bombs, which also leads to the poor air combat capability of the F35,
The PLA's J-35 is different, equipped with China's most advanced active phased array radar device, and is also equipped with an optoelectronic aperture system, which can be used for joint reconnaissance, locking and other purposes, with anti-stealth capabilities, thus achieving higher combat effectiveness, equipped with China's most advanced Thunderbolt air-to-air missile, with excellent anti-air combat capabilities, it can be said without a doubt that the J-35 combat power far exceeds that of F35.
As for many people talking about actual combat, in fact, the F35 has no actual combat record, and the F35 fighter has not participated in actual combat for a long time in service. Compared with actual combat, the failure rate of F35 has always been news.
The J-35 ships on the Liaoning and Shandong ships are unexpected and reasonable, the British Queen-class can fly the F-35B by relying on the glide deck, and the Izumo-class and Wasp can also fly the F-35B by relying on the all-through flat deck, so the Liaoning ship with the glide deck and the interception system can certainly adapt to similar carrier-based aircraft.
According to the research of mainland military experts, if the new carrier-based aircraft is expected to have an empty weight of 20 tons, carrying 11 tons of in-flight fuel and 1.5 tons of weapons built-in, the normal take-off weight will reach about 33 tons, which has exceeded the maximum take-off weight of the F/A-18E and is similar to that of the Su-33. If on this basis, carry four 1800-liter auxiliary fuel tanks to take off with full load to carry out long-range air defense patrol missions, its maximum take-off weight will be close to 40 tons, far beyond the weight range that the existing catapult can eject, it is impossible to take off by catapult take-off, but due to the use of high-thrust turbofan engine, the take-off thrust-to-weight ratio of the aircraft can still be maintained at about 0.8, and it can take off by glide jump take-off mode on a long runway of 190 meters.
That is to say, the J-35 on the Liaoning, there is even the possibility of sacrificing fuel, weapons and other reserves, that is, the configuration is the same as that on the catapult aircraft carrier.
This also means that in the future, the carrier aircraft of the three aircraft carriers will be unified. This will not only greatly improve the combat effectiveness of the two glide aircraft carriers, but also provide more landing platforms for their carrier-based aircraft in the event of damage to the aircraft carriers in wartime, and the carrier aircraft on them can still attack normally on other aircraft carriers, so as to preserve combat strength as much as possible and give full play to their combat effectiveness.