【Military Sub-Plane】Author: Le Le
Recently, the news of the first flight of domestic two-seat heavy stealth fighters and new medium-sized stealth fighters has not gone away on the Internet, although the information flowing out is not much, but it is basically true for now. Although these two stealth fighters come from different design units, the combat positioning and design goals are also completely different, but they are the latest models in the field of stealth fighters, representing that after 10 years of rapid development, the design and manufacturing level of AVIC has reached the height of going out of its own way, getting rid of the shackles of others, and climbing new peaks.
▲ Simulation of heavy two-seat stealth fighter
The J-5, J-6, J-7 and J-8 fighters that were really mass-produced by AVIC in the early years have obvious Soviet fighter ideology imprints. When Chengfei developed the J-10, although it melted more than 20 years of design experience into one, it also had obvious traces of reference to the design concepts of other countries. Even the three core fighters known as the "Three Musketeers of the Air Force" today have very good technical performance and a gratifying production speed. But before that, the United States, Russia have gone through the corresponding road, although the domestic design and manufacturing technology is not the same as the United States and Russia, but the design and application concept, can not be said to be completely without reference, and the heavy two-seat, new medium stealth fighter is completely different.
▲ The J-16 has a distinct Russian brand
The U.S. F-22 and the Russian Su-57 have previously planned two-seat models, but even the early design has not been completed, and there is no possibility of copying or borrowing from domestic heavy two-seat stealth fighters. Although there are currently different speculations about its application areas, such as strengthening ground attack capabilities, strengthening electronic warfare capabilities or guiding drone swarms to combat. But in any case, AVIC spent such a large price to improve, it is not a whim, the overall aerodynamic layout of the domestic heavy two-seat stealth fighter has not changed much, and the rear seat layout is very smooth, indicating that when Chengfei was designed in the early days, the two-seat type was planned, and this appearance was completely in accordance with the preset path development. Of course, in contrast, the new medium stealth fighter is a little higher.
▲ Only exists in the imaginary two-seat F-22 - FB-22
From the appearance point of view, the new medium stealth fighter fuselage is thin, the wings are small, and the abdominal shape is very smooth, indicating that it should be a stealth fighter that highlights high-speed performance, especially supersonic performance. Whether it is later developed into a carrier-based, land-based or other model, the basic performance brought by this basic design will not change. Prior to this, only the U.S. F-35, a medium-sized stealth fighter, entered the mass production stage in the world, and the difference in design positioning between the two was too great. F-35 is based on the United States Air Force, when the "vertical and horizontal global invincible" scenario and the project, in view of the two major opponents of the aviation technology level is obviously backward, the United States chose to give up supermanuromanship and supersonic cruise capabilities to a limited extent, with stealth and advanced avionics advantages, suppress semi-stealth fighters like south Korea's KF-X, or Russia's Su-57 this quasi-stealth fighter, from the results, F-35 basically completed the design goals, the only problem is that the times have changed.
▲ Su-57, a stealth fighter with obvious deficiencies, is the target of the F-35's planning
To this day, the F-35 program is still the world's stealth fighter, and even the most successful fighter program in human history. It will not only integrate the needs of the US Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps to ensure the common use of the three services, so as to save a lot of design, maintenance and subsequent software and hardware development funds. At the same time, it has been exported to more than 10 countries around the world, obtaining a large amount of income, while implicitly suppressing the development potential of the aviation industry of these allied countries and further maintaining relations with allies. With a project of unprecedented difficulty, Lockheed Martin is one of the world's top arms contractors. Theoretically, apart from a slight delay in time and a slight increase in cost, the F-35 made only one mistake, but this mistake was so severe that the F-35 was fatally hit.
The F-35 project is well done and the F-35 performance is two different things
When the F-35 went through a lot of hard work to reach the mass production stage, it suddenly found that the opponents who had not cared about it had taken off into a dragon. Although the F-35 theoretically saves hundreds of billions of dollars (full life range), fighter performance is a more important factor than price, otherwise, propeller fighter would not be cheaper. The user of any fighter is the army, and the purpose of the army to fight is to win, if the performance can not meet the basic needs of the army to win, then the price is not much meaningful. When the United States deploys fighter jets to the outside world, it often needs to borrow other countries' air bases or carry them through aircraft carriers, and the number of deployments is originally limited by politics and aircraft carrier capacity, and the pursuit of high performance is the only practice that the US Navy and Air Force have always been and basically the only way. However, when the performance of the F-35 was significantly lower than that of AVIC's heavy stealth fighter, the original design concept of the F-35 completely collapsed.
▲ Targeting a special U.S. Air Force active propeller attack aircraft
Although the F-35 project management is exceptionally good, the initial positioning error has become a fatal error, which is also after 2012, the attack on the F-35 in the United States has become more and more intense, and all walks of life have begun to cite the important reasons for the F-35's deficiencies, highlighting the huge fear within the US military that the F-35 may lose air supremacy in the case of the F-35's inability to effectively respond to changes in the situation. If the US Navy's aircraft carrier strike group is facing the emerging weapon of anti-ship ballistic missiles, there is still a "distributed killing" road. Then the mistake in the positioning of the entire F-35 fighter program has made all US troops begin to reflect on how to fight in the case of losing air supremacy, which is a difficult situation for the US military to accept and forced to face.
▲ The situation of the US aircraft carrier is slightly better
AVIC first studied from the Soviet Union, then learned from Russia and the United States, and has always been an effective practice of referring to the roads of other countries to avoid waste of resources in the case of insufficient resources and technical levels, but in the new medium stealth fighter, this concept no longer exists. Based on the needs of the domestic navy and taking into account the possible needs of other services, the new fighter has nothing to do with the only forerunner, the F-35, creating a new path from design concept to manufacturing technology of domestic stealth fighters, and completing the transformation from absorbing the design ideas of the United States and Russia to developing its own path based on its own needs and resources, which is both an achievement and a challenge.
The J-10 was the beginning of the soviet influence
The achievement is that AVIC holds two stealth fighters, medium and heavy, and has theoretically reached a juxtaposition with the US aviation industry, no matter what the future development is, the current state of technology alone is basically enough to protect the national air safety. The challenge is that avian industry will no longer have the road that predecessors have taken in the future, and all the future will rely on AVIC to decide what height it can reach according to its own positioning, needs and resources, completely dependent on itself, and no one else can refer to it.
▲The road ahead is in the hands of AVIC itself
Imagine that during the Cold War, the Soviet Union could come and go back and forth with the U.S. aviation industry before the third generation of fighter jets. However, the United States has successively launched four third-generation fighters, F-14, F-15, F-16, and F/A-18, which have long been ahead of the Soviet MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters, and the subsequent F-22 is far beyond the technical level of the Soviet Union at that time, showing the terrible height of the US aviation industry in the Cold War period. At present, the foundation of U.S. civil aviation is still in place, and its fighters still have strong development potential in theory. Although the performance of AVIC this year is very good, but the enemy is widespread, can not always expect the opponent's self-demise and decline, nor can it expect the opponent to make strategic mistakes again and again, pulling up their own level high enough, stable enough, is truly fearless, which is also the biggest challenge for the future development of AVIC.
The F-22 is still a formidable opponent
10 years ago, the U.S. aviation industry held the F-22 and F-35, two stealth fighters, while the AVIC industry only had the J-10 and J-11 to deal with. 10 years later, the domestic heavy and medium fighters came out brazenly, showing the extraordinary and terrifying update speed of the AVIC industry, coupled with the huge mistakes in the US F-35 fighter program, the AVIC industry has theoretically reached a height on a par with the United States. But the road traveled is not replicable, whether AVIC can rely on its own strength to go out of the new road, really rely on its own ability and stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States, that is the real world war to establish the global status of AVIC, today's stealth fighter is just a chase, but also an appetizer, the peak showdown between the next generation of fighters between the two sides, is the real climax.