The Chinese J-10 at one point was experimentally fitted with a 3D TVC engine. Why did the program not flourish?
>>64964440It’s a single engine aircraft with canards, it’s not like it needs any more maneuverability. Especially since the orientals are full in on fuck dogfighting. There’s a price to be paid there in money, space, and weight, and super maneuverability is not worth a ton when modern IR missiles can hit over the shoulder shots. Thrust vectoring will stick around for 6th gen fighters, but that’s mostly because control surfaces are being done away with wherever possible and you still need a way to actually make the damn thing maneuver.
>>64964463>control surfaces are being done away withlol. try harder, pimples
>>64964440J-10 is already the best of the hot triangles. Besides, dogfighting is dead and will never come back
>>649644403D trust vectoring is a meme because left / right vectoring just induces side slip drastically increasing drag.2D thrust vectoring makes sense for nose authority on single engines and nose authority + rapid roll on twin engines.
>>64964488Boeing is currently working on an X plane that maneuvers entirely through bursts of air. The stealthiest drones since the turn of the century have all been tailless, manned aircraft are following suit. Every control surface that can be done away with seems to be going, all in the name of reducing possible radar reflectors.
>>64964537X-Planes are concept test platforms not fighter prototypes, if they are playing with cold gas thrusters it'll either be for extremely high altitude flight or a future VTOL.
>>64964541They aren’t all fighter prototypes but if DARPA’s website is to be believed we are two for two on this century’s awarded fighter contracts coming out of competitions of X designated planes. Even discounting that, the general trend is towards fewer control surfaces. Every CCA bar Anduril’s abomination uses ruddervators instead of traditional tail controls. B-21 is tailless, as is everything we’ve seen flying out of China recently. Whatever was photographed on the Groom runway a few years back looks like it should be tailless, which would track with released renders for F-47 and F/A-XX, which we apparently might be hearing about the contract do pretty soon.
>>64964567I should have said I'm not >>64964488 and think most control flaps will be replaced with wing deformation to minimize drag losses and RCA.
>>64964577Ah, fair enough that’s on me too. Regarding that, I have seen some people speculate that the canards on the F-47, again assuming the render is at all accurate, may actually be flexible and not pivot like traditional canards. They’d posted some patents Boeing has, a couple of them relating to flexible airframe structures iirc. It has been a minute. In any event I’m very excited to see what they’ve been building, hopefully they execute and it doesn’t disappoint
>>64964587Honestly the airframe I'm most looking forward to is the F-15 replacement that has to happen sooner or later.High speed and altitude are so useful for long range standoff munitions I could see the replacement being non-stealth just to maximize kinematic performance. It might also be unmanned because you don't need a man-in-loop if targets are being designated by other platforms.
>>64964440I think they used it as a testbed to test out TVC in general, but not with the intention to ever fit it with a J-10.People go "hurr china copies" - yeah china copies. They are curious to figure out why others went along a certain path.See the west tested TVC in a similar way with the Rockwell/MBB X-31.The Chinese see that, and do the same thing. Learn the same lessons.They still are likely to discard it just as we ultimately did, but they want to learn the same lesson and get the same experience.>>64964497>J-10 is already the best of the hot triangles. Eurofighter is arguably better kinematically, but J-10 has a better radar for sure.>Besides, dogfighting is dead and will never come backThis.
>>64964440Because TVC is a meme.
>>64964597FWIW, a recent solicitation for SiAW alternatives/supplements suggest F-47 will probably have bays sized to accommodate munitions that fit the F-35A/C, as the solicitation lists the F-35 and F-47 as platforms that need to be compatible, but not the F-22 which is going to stay around for a good while yet but is bay size limited and can’t carry munitions larger than the 1000lb class. I could see a very fast CCA focused around standoff weapons being developed, but that would probably require the $1.5 trillion budget Trump has floated becoming reality since there just isn’t room in the current one with the number of modernization priorities
>>64964663The F-47 is just a Boeing bailout disguised as a procurement project, it could be done much cheaper but Boeing needs every shekel after the 737 Max clusterfuck.
>>64964684No, Lockheed just absolutely fucked the dog on F-35 program management and has burned any good will they had in the Pentagon for a generation at least. Boeing(McDonnell) is the only company that could reasonably execute during the period the contract was being competed.
>>64964440The Chinese are a monkey see, monkey do kinda people. "It doesn't have to work it just needs to be one of our perceived capabilities"
>>64964440Not really worth the price and maintenance.Except for that one Airshow performance, the J-10C TVC was deemed to be not really necessary for the BVR-focussed fight that China envisions.Pakistan-India War gave them right. Not a single plane was shot down in WVR. It was a BVR only fight.
>>64964684I just hope some lessons will be learned for the F/A-XX. I feel like it's retarded to spend so much time on aircraft that will likely never see peer on peer action compared to naval aviation which will always the tip of the spear unless the US fundamentally moves away from the "away game" concept of where it wants to fight
>>64964497>Besides, dogfighting is dead and will never come backIt will if stealth aircraft become so stealth that the only way to score a kill is to crash into the enemy by mistake.
>>64966832It isn’t the Air Force’s fault that the Navy has the worst program management in the country, and potentially in the entire west. Pentagon could’ve reversed it’s priorities for the 6th gen programs, but I’d still put $20 on F-47 beating F/A-XX to IOC if the latter were awarded last year and the former still up in the air. MQ-25 got a contract award coming up on 8 years ago and a production airframe still hasn’t flown off a carrier for fucks sake
>>64966893I just want the navy to unfuck itself bro. It's all so tiresome.
>>64966943Me too brother, me too. I’m looking forward to the F/A-XX contract award and hoping they’ve rounded a corner and will get their act together. But only time will tell
>>64964440They’re heavy and chinese engines are famous for being a little down on power for any given size. The plane is very agile already, i expect the extra weight and complexity didn’t add terribly much for a whole lot more cost and maintenance.
>>64964440Horrible idea on a manoeuvrable jet.If the engine goes out you can't just glide to safety.
>>64967081Are you retarded? Thrust vectoring doesn't preclude control surfaces.
>>64964440Because TVC is kinda pointless compared to making better missiles.
>>64967898the more manoeuvrable a jet is the more unstable which means they cant stay upright without constant thrust
>>64967901There's missiles and then there's jets.There's benefits to making your 100M jet more survivable too.If militaries just picked one type of weapon to wage war with their enemies would have a much easier time coming up with ways to deal with them and the weaknesses inherent to relying solely on that tactic.
>>64966054Counterpoint: When was the last time an American aircraft was shot down BVR?
>>64967972Stability is still totally independent of an aircraft having thrust vectoring or not and relaxed stability and unstable aircraft can still be controlled without thrust, see any F-16 that's landed with an engine out or the space shuttle. SYBAU for several years until you have even the most basic comprehension of aircraft
>>64967988a day ago
>>64968038Proof that it was BVR?
>>64968047you think someone got close to that tanker and gunned it down?
>>649644403D TVC is a meme. In no combat situation that exists in the modern BVR dominated air combat meta does super yaw authority or knife edge flight benefit you enough to accept extra complexity and weight.Plus, that's basically just a restomodded X-31 clone. A concept ditched by the Americans decades ago.
>>64968050It was probably a crash but possibly shot down by Iraqis on the ground while it was flying over Iraqi airspace. It's not impossible that it was BVR, but neither scenario implies that it was.
>>64968059How do you explain the pics of the other aircraft involved in the collision with part of its vertical stab chopped off but zero fragmentation damage?
>>64968072I explain it as probably being a collision, like I said. Which doesn't imply that it was shot down BVR.
>>64968015Yeah i was mistaken. I was making assumptions bc most jets are front heavy
>>64968111>I explain it as probably being a collision, like I said.No, you said >>64968059>It was probably a crashAll collisions are crashes but not all crashes are collisions, you can crash due to a missile taking off your stabilizer or running out of fuel. Unless you're on some bollywood shit I don't see how a BVR shootdown winds up sending a second aircraft back to base with a couple feet of vertical stabilizer missing and no other damage. If they're close enough to collide both should have fragmentation damage.
>>64968126Okay, I misspoke, whatever. When was the last time an American aircraft was shot down BVR?
>>64968148ukraine
>>64968219Specifics?
>>64968242r-37m
>>64964696>No, Lockheed just absolutely fucked the dog on F-35 program management and has burned any good will they had in the Pentagon for a generation at least.NTA but I've been hearing for a good while that the F-35 is a good plane but the program itself it's a part of is terrible, what does that mean by chance?
>>64968244As far as I know, Ukraine has only lost F-16s to shooting down sneeds with guns, what other American aircraft do they operate?
>>64968258Chucksneed owns the software so everyone (except the Israelis) is completely dependent on them to integrate new systems and they're taking their damn sweet time about it. The Block 4 upgrade is supposed to introduce a lot of important new features, and while it was supposed to be released last year, they removed a ton of the features from it and it's *still* not going to arrive for another four or five years.
because TVC-based supermaneuvrability is a largely-useless meme. F35 can't maneuver for shit compared to the peak of aerial supermaneuvrability that mankind has achieved so far. that hardly makes the slightest difference to the fact that it's an immensely effective platform. the J-10 is an OK all-purpose light multirole fighter with bargain-bin sale/maintenance prices that can make Indian SU30MKI pilots nervously sweat a fair amount from BVR range before they get into place to launch their standoff munitions. That's all the Pakistanis need it to do. As for the PLAAF, they're going all-in on 5th-gen platforms to the point where rebooting production lines for 4th/4.5th-gen shit doesn't make much sense anymore. In another couple years all the J10 Brigades are gonna have J35s or J20s because the Chinese are well aware that anything that doesn't specifically have stealth characteristics is going to be a sitting duck over the Indo-Pacific before long.
>>64968265the Russkies got an A2A kill against an F16 a while ago, didn't they?
>>64968469Got a link?
>>64968473no i'm going off memory here. But apparently there have been around a dozen UAF aircraft lost in A2A engagements according to Wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aviation_shootdowns_and_accidents_during_the_Russo-Ukrainian_war#Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine_(2022%E2%80%93present)
>>64968481According to this, one of the four lost UAF F-16s was shot down by a missile, but no mention of whether it was BVR or not.
>>64968492If it was A2A I'd assume it was BVR, Russia's got the strategic depth advantage. They can get their planes higher in safety and lob shit from altitude, and the IADS situation on both sides makes me think it's unlikely two planes got within visual range.
>>64967988When was the last time an American aircraft had any non-ancient aircraft to compete with? Your comparison cases either have no air force, don't bother sending what they have up, or send a few ancient planes out on suicide runs (Iranians in trainers).
>>64968050>the tanker that crashed due to a collision totally got hit by my favourite shithole guysyou guys are pathetic.
>>64964440Because TVC is a useless meme about on par in terms of practicality as le epic flanker cobra maneuver
>>64964497Unknown. Since there is no conclusive evidence of what happens when peer to peers match off who have comparable stealth hardware. In theory only confirmed kills can come from visual rangeNon exist right now for western airforce since all opponents rely on dogshit vatnik union derivatives that were always crap in air. And AA as it turns out. Chinks are trying to do something about it, but are plagued by the usual potemkin village syndrome that surrounds their mentality
>>64970294Considering the fact that the burgers have had stealth aircraft for over 40 years, I highly doubt they have no countermeasures for it. The chinese are just now fielding something that is "comparable" to a clapistani jet designed in the '90s, it's highly unlikely it isn't vulnerable to whatever countermeasure there already is in the burger arsenal.
>chinkshit flourish
>>64964440Built for War Thunder premiums
>>64967988>Counterpoint: When was the last time an American aircraft was shot down BVR?1991 mig-25 vs f-18
>>64964625The 'hurr durr China copies,' is because you send over schematics for a Chinese manufacturer to produce a product and an exact copy will be sold by ten different companies on Amazon a week later. However, everything they try to reverse engineer ends up as a hilarious abomination and even layman with no engineering experience can clearly tell they had no idea what was going on. Often they focus on how the copy looks, oblivious to the engineering decisions that made it look that way. Sometimes, they don't even know why they're copying shit. It will never not be funny that they built a whole bin laden compound to roleplay as navy seals.
>>64964440>Why did the program not flourish?Its... Chinese, Anon. Jesus christ, everything they've ever built - the country, the government, the technology, the people - are just awful facsimiles of what they're trying to copy with no substance to them. Always have been.
