Is This China’s First Stealth Fighter? (Picture)

reply to post by anon72


Thanks. No problem, Anon72.

Some of their test facilities are in remote locations. See following.

geimint.blogspot.com...

For example Dingxin

wikimapia.org...

Image link for size comparison with J-10. It would put the J-20 roughly the same length as an Su-27 Flanker.

www.centurychina.com...

TJ

reply to post by bekod


The aircraft will be far too heavy to launch from a carrier. It appears to be roughly between the size of an F-15 and F-14. You would need a much longer stroke on a catapult with far better control on the amount of force applied to successfully launch such an airframe with any meaningful payload.

China isn't ready to project its influence with naval air power. The U.S. does this because we have a vested interest in pretty much every country on the planet from a military, social, or economic perspective. China is growing their military - but their needs focus mainly on their arms race with India and combating Pirates around Africa and Asia.

Maintaining an aircraft at sea is many times more complicated and expensive than maintaining them on the ground inside of a climate-controlled hangar (far more stable of an environment than the corrosive nature of the sea). They require a lot of specialized design and training to account for this, which is why China is very likely to rely on imports for carrier aircraft. Other countries have already built and found the best way to keep these things in good repair, why go out of your way to do more work than is necessary?

I would expect China to start doing the whole Israeli thing - buying imports and modifying the living poop out of them with their own avionics and EW systems.

As for the aircraft, itself - there's no telling exactly how complete it is, if that is a 'real' aircraft, at all. Many prototypes are just that - prototypes. Avionics are replaced by dummy weights, control surfaces are built in a more conventional way rather than out of the materials and designs that are planned to be built on production models (RCS concerns), standard paints and primers are used, the munitions bay is "for display, only" - if it's even installed on that model.

The Chinese are not quite as digitally advanced as the U.S. is - what we use computer models and simulations to do, the Chinese will have to do far more of the 'old fashioned way.' This will lead to a slightly different design process.



That said - I'm noticing a lot of common features between the F-35 and this alleged J-20, and cannot help but recall the alarm over the possibility that China had acquired a bunch of classified documents regarding the F-35 a few years ago.

The intakes are very similar along with the entire layout of the fuselage - from the nose to the engine layout and blending of the body. The vertical stabs also have a striking resemblance to the F-35. The scaling is altered here and there - but it's a damned uncanny resemblance, if you ask me.

reply to post by Aim64C
well if this is the real deal it would be a run for the money , too bad we got rid off the Tom Cat that is the F14BTW, 72,900TOW, that is 72,900lbs take off weight, at 61ft 9in in length and wing span of 64ft, this bird flew just fine off carriers now compare to the J20, there is not that much difference,so i say yes this bird the J20 is carrier based, and in the fact that they are working on there own Nimitz class carrier, look that up China's new Carrier, add the two together and we have the possibility of a new Pearl Harbor. That and with there new weapons, they could have the Pacific Ocean all to them selves. at least for a short time, just like Japan did in the late 30's early 40's til we get our act together.

reply to post by bekod
yes i do agree that there is a striking resemblance to the F35, and the J20, just how did China do this?I wonder????

reply to post by Aim64C


The Chinese are building their own variant of a naval Su-27 Flanker. This is the J-15. This is a copy of the Su-33 Flanker D currently used by the Russian Navy. The Chinese already build their own land based Su-27 variants much to the annoyance of Russia. This will be the type deployed on the ex-Varyag carrier currently being fitted out.

Chinese test and naval airfields have been fitted out with carrier decks and ski ramps.

geimint.blogspot.com...

geimint.blogspot.com...

Image of naval J-15 on test flight.

www.informationdissemination.net...

More info here.

forum.keypublishing.co.uk...

Some recent images of the aircraft carrier being fitted out in China.

forum.keypublishing.com...

The carrier is an ex Soviet Kuznetsov Class.

en.wikipedia.org...

TJ

reply to post by bekod

that is 72,900lbs take off weight, at 61ft 9in in length and wing span of 64ft, this bird flew just fine off carriers now compare to the J20, there is not that much difference,so i say yes this bird the J20 is carrier based,

There is considerable difference between the two airframes. The J-20 is going to be more similar in mass to the F-111, which was abandoned by the Navy because of weight and thrust constraints. Granted - engine thrust/weight have improved considerably over the years, but designs including internal munitions bays tend to get prohibitively heavy. "Stealth" airframes also tend to run quite a bit heavier than traditional counterparts.

The airframe in those pictures would need considerable revisions before it could be made carrier-capable. I'm not going to say that they have no ambitions of making a naval version of this aircraft - but -every- aircraft in use on a carrier is specifically designed for carrier use. Take the Sukhoi designs - every one of them that operates on a carrier was designed specifically to operate off of a carrier. A few were adapted from mainland use to naval variants, and ended up looking and operating like a completely different aircraft.

The U.S. has typically shied away from creating naval variants of non-naval aircraft. They will take a naval airframe and create a land-based airframe out of it, but it's a considerably different thing to make a naval aircraft out of a land-based airframe.

The F-14 came out of the F-111. Case-in-point.

and in the fact that they are working on there own Nimitz class carrier, look that up China's new Carrier, add the two together and we have the possibility of a new Pearl Harbor.

Even the Nimitz would have difficulty handling an aircraft of this weight. The Navy passed up the Naval F-22 variants for a number of reasons - one of which was weight concerns. The other was probably because the Navy passed corrosion control training and realized magnesium panels on a carbon-based composite airframe was the sign of a failure of a design team. (meant to be a little satire).

You would need to extend the catapult (longer stroke) and use electromagnetic acceleration for more precise control. With heavier airframes, the problem isn't so much what the steam catapult can deliver in terms of power, but how much stress is exerted on the components when trying to accelerate large masses. You have greater control over this with electromagnetic acceleration, and can actually hit higher velocities while exerting less stress on the airframe.

But for heavier aircraft with higher stall speeds (like 'stealth' aircraft) would require a longer stroke.

When that's not an issue - landing is. While taking off has the assistance of the forward velocity of the carrier and the thrust of the engines, you, now, have to take all of that force and route it through an arrestor hook and cable. Stopping a heavy, slow-moving cargo aircraft is considerably less taxing than stopping a somewhat lighter, but much faster fighter. Fighters tend to have higher stall-speeds and need to be moving substantially faster to keep from falling out of the sky. E=1/2MxV^2 - wing-loading and meager low-subsonic performance plagues fighter designs, especially the "stealthy" variety.

I'm not saying they can't do it - but they will have to make some considerable adjustments.

That and with there new weapons, they could have the Pacific Ocean all to them selves.

They wish. They don't have the economy to support such a large fleet. They are already dealing with civil unrest, under-employment/unemployment, and a population collapse. They are looking at having to support more retirees per working individual than the U.S. - and that's a truly frightening prospect. The baby-boomers helped considerably in making the U.S. economy as powerful as it was - and now their retirement is going to bust the whole system (no thanks to abuse of the system and unauthorized spending).

Technologically speaking, they are a generation or more behind us. They are catching up - but China couldn't begin to match the U.S. in naval superiority for another twenty years. It takes considerable long-term investment to build a large navy - most of what we have has been built up over the course of thirty years or more. They simply don't have the necessity or the means to challenge U.S. Naval superiority. Most of what they are doing now is geared towards their arms-race with India.

Not to mention that the carrier they are 'building' is a retrofit of a Soviet-era vessel. They simply do not have the experience the U.S. has in building ships - we've been doing it since the dawn of this country and has the most modern naval combat experience. We go so far as to test and simulate various types of damage on the hull and design compartments to slow flood rates and allow for more effective damage control. They have made leaps and bounds in their industrial capability - but they are still decades behind us in regards to in-house design of anything.

yes i do agree that there is a striking resemblance to the F35, and the J20, just how did China do this?I wonder????

The same way they do just about anything. Become some of the best damned patent violators this side of Alpha Centauri. I know a few people will get fairly upset about me saying this, but almost all of China's "in house" designs are clones, or altered clones, of products made elsewhere. One of a company's largest expenses is in the design and development stage - many companies will race to complete a product ahead of each other, just to enjoy a few months of exclusive market share. China invests heavily in industrial espionage and has a network of informants and 'hackers' that take the work other companies have done and apply it to their own industry.

In a sense - this is much how a lot of countries start off. The U.S. had some huge ship-building industries going on in the colonial times due to our vast timber resources. Most of those were essentially clones of existing designs (though this was just about the way everyone built them). Korea has LG and Samsung making cars that are almost part-for-part clones of various models from around the world. It's frustrating for those in industry - but it's part of the game.

A number of reports indicated that China had gotten away with some classified documents regarding the F-35. While the notion was denied by the administration at the time - I would wager that this really was the case, and China has had just about enough time to go over those documents and start cranking out a prototype.

reply to post by tommyjo

The Chinese are building their own variant of a naval Su-27 Flanker. This is the J-15. This is a copy of the Su-33 Flanker D currently used by the Russian Navy. The Chinese already build their own land based Su-27 variants much to the annoyance of Russia. This will be the type deployed on the ex-Varyag carrier currently being fitted out.

Obviously, if they are building a carrier, they would make something to fly off of it. There is a difference between having a carrier, however, and being ready to project power in any meaningful way with it. They will spend about five to ten years learning a lot of lessons from this new adventure they are embarking on before they will really be ready to look at expanding their carrier fleet or trying to conduct many operations.

Remember - this is a new thing for them. When we join the military, we are trained by people who know what they are doing (usually) and have a pretty good understanding of what is efficient and what isn't (with regards to operations). At some point in history, we were new at it, too - and it will be quite a while before they are ready to do much of anything with the new things they are building. They'll get out to sea, tear some stuff up, and have to go back and figure out how to prevent that from happening.

They can develop their J-15 - but it would make very little sense for them to try and develop this "J-20" for an entire role they are completely unfamiliar with. Once they get the hang of using a carrier, they may venture into trying to design a low-observable airframe suited to carrier operations. It just doesn't make any sense to do so at the moment, as they would be trying to rid themselves of both Low-Observable and Carrier-ops virginities at the same time. Generally, mixing two first-time experiences is a bad idea.

thank you for your in-depth response, I still think that they could pull this off for we must not be nay Sayers but need to be, could be thinkers, there Varyag air craft carrier is due out this year for trials and they do have the soviet built Su33, i think the J 20 is the remake with some copied design F35 and i use the term copied loosely, we must not under think them, I remember the stories for the old Korea Vets that thought the MiG was a far fetched tale until they went dog to dog, Sabre Vs. MiG. That all said i say by late 2015 early 2016, they could have this bird J20 Carrier Ready, first strike if you will as far as landing well the su33 (Su27K)and tom cat seem to do just fine on take off and landings as for the F111B 7 were built for the NAVY.

what do you guys think about the range of this thing? i'm just thinking about the possible motivations and implications for building a missile launcher/bomb truck/recon platform as huge as this and what it might mean for potential targets.

range: if taking off from an air base, not a carrier

Originally posted by toreishi
range: if taking off from an air base, not a carrier[

I figure maybe 10 feet...

Until I see one in the air I am sticking to this being a deliberately leaked mockup...

After all they faked the Olympic fireworks, faked the singer and faked the ShenZhou7 spacewalk

Not sure if its been posted already? but interesting article here.

www.aviationweek.com.../awst/2011/01/03/AW_01_03_201 1_p18-279564.xml&headline=China%27s%20J-20%20Stealth%20Fighter%20In%20Taxi%20Tests

China’s first known stealth aircraft just emerged from a secret development program and was undergoing high-speed taxi tests late last week at Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute’s airfield. Said to be designated J-20, it is larger than most observers expected—pointing to long range and heavy weapon loads. Its timing, Chengdu’s development record and official statements cast doubt on U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s 2009 prediction (in support of his decision to stop production of the Lockheed Martin F-22) that China would not have an operational stealth aircraft before 2020.

reply to post by toreishi


Range is somewhat difficult to figure. So many factors influence range and so many things change between the start of a project and the final product that it's almost meaningless to try and analyze the design.

I would wager that they are shooting for something similar to the operational ranges of their existing Sukhoi models. In all likelihood, they are trying to counter the PAK-FA being jointly built by India and Russia. India and China have a little arms-race going on, and they are likely to be building this in response to the recent fighter of talk coming out of Russia.

www.globalsecurity.org...

In June 2001, India was offered 'joint development and production' of this new 5th generation fighter by Russia. Russia had been trying to sell this concept both to China and India for some time. It seems probable that China declined to participate in this project given a belief that Russia stood to gain more from Chinese participation than did China. That is, it would seem that China had determined that it could produce a superior product without Russian help. With the first flight of the Russian stealth fighter in 2010, an arguably superior Chinese steath fighter might be expected to take to the skies not too long thereafter.

More likely an act of defiant independence. But it is an interesting note, given this thread.

This is what GlobalSecurity.Org has to say on this issue:

www.globalsecurity.org...

On 29 December 2010, the right estimable China Defense Blog published the first no-kidding photographs of the long rumored J-XX Chinese stealth fighter. Unambiguous confirmation of the existence of this program will require re-evaluation of aircraft modernization efforts in a number of countried, including Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and the United States. Chinese combat aviation has made remarkable strides in recent years, moving from a collection of obsolete aircraft that would have provided a target-rich environment to potential adversaries. Today China flies hundreds of first rate aircraft, and even flies more Sukhoi Flankers [the aircraft the American F-22 was designed to counter] than does Russia. The Chinese stealth fighter has arrived right on schedule. Chinese military technology is generally rated about two decades behind that of the United States. while the advent of a Chinese counterpart to the F-22 fighter might be disconcerting, the first flight of the prototype American F-22 stealth fighter came on September 29, 1990.

There is general agreement in the open literature that China is working on some type of stealthy fighter attack aircraft, and that this program has been underway since the turn of the century. There is very little agreement beyond these basic points. Available treatments of this subject in print
and online seem to represent little more than a confusing jumble of informed speculation, wild guesstimates, and active disinformation. The Chinse government is under no obligation to set the record straight, and indeed has every incentive to add to the general confusion.

To try and challenge the F-22 would be silly. It's not likely to ever be used against China - and any conflict between China and the U.S. will hinge around naval aviation. With no real naval fighter to worry about in the U.S. arsenal, this thing will pack more bite against us than we would like it to, provided we don't pull a proverbial rabbit out of a hat before this thing enters real service.

They are more concerned about the T-50/PAK-FA/whatever the hell it is. Although the thicker body of this design seems to imply a strike role over an air superiority role; like an up-scaled JSF (though we'll have to see if they horribly under-power and under-wing the thing like we are doing). That said - I would imagine it will be developed with a comparable combat radius to the T-50, or as close to it (or superior) as China can manage.

Looks like somebody was playing around in photoshop IMO.

YF-23
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d0eab6de5f35.jpg[/atsimg]

reply to post by SLAYER69


I can't say I agree with you on that. But, I don't know how much someone can do to a photo with photoshop.

I did read in someone post in a thread in one of the source articles and the person indicated the China plane is VERY CLOSE to the US plane-except one thing (you'll have to excure me as I am not into planes but I believe..) those front two little fins.

I am trying to locate the person's reply. It was in an Aviation trade mag I think.

Well, if their plane/aircraft is anything like this, I would say they copied the tech for the West. Why not, who's going to say or do anything to them or about it? Exactly.

Originally posted by anon72
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

I can't say I agree with you on that. But, I don't know how much someone can do to a photo with photoshop.

I did read in someone post in a thread in one of the source articles and the person indicated the China plane is VERY CLOSE to the US plane-except one thing (you'll have to excure me as I am not into planes but I believe..) those front two little fins.

I am trying to locate the person's reply. It was in an Aviation trade mag I think.

Well, if their plane/aircraft is anything like this, I would say they copied the tech for the West. Why not, who's going to say or do anything to them or about it? Exactly.

You're talking about forward canards.

The image that Slayer used is not real. The images in the OP are of a clearly different fighter design and is a bit different in design than the F-23.

Originally posted by anon72
reply to post by Rigel Kent

 

I found these two additional photos but honestly, I don't know if they are that plane. I'll let you look and tell me what you think:

edit on 12/27/2010 by anon72 because: added photos

BOTH of these "photos" are typical Chinese photoshop images of military equipment, especially fighters.
The first one for example looks like an F22 and YF23 merged together with some slightly more 'bulk' in some areas.

Originally posted by tommyjo
New head-on image.



TJ

Yet more photoshop/CGI imho.
Why is there some form of vegetation in the foreground, but the background is void of anything similar?
Perhaps the foreground was an after thought.

Originally posted by BLV12

Originally posted by tommyjo
New head-on image.



TJ

Yet more photoshop/CGI imho.
Why is there some form of vegetation in the foreground, but the background is void of anything similar?
Perhaps the foreground was an after thought.

The vegetation is there because the photographer is located on the western side of the airfield (Chengdu). The background is clear because that is on the airfield. Why would they have trees and other vegetation on the airfield?

Copy and paste the following coordinates into Google Earth.

30 42 21.92N 103 57 02.99E

From the runway markings at Chengdu you can work out those coordinates are the location of where the aircraft was on the runway.

The western side of the airfield is a well used photo location and is tree lined. Rough location of the photographer based on angle of runway markings.

30 42 21.75N 103 56 50.76E

Another image from the western side of the airfield. Note runway markings?

hobbyshanghai.net...

Link to same image with adjusted lighting/contrast levels.

i11.photobucket.com...

Gif showing the J-20 on taxi tests.

www.centurychina.com...

Some other images of the J-20

img.fyjs.cn...

oi56.tinypic.com...

TJ

Some good CGI.

img141.imageshack.us...

Some image links of the J-20 with nose lifted during the taxi tests.

oi52.tinypic.com...

oi51.tinypic.com...

Further image links of the J-20 parked up.

oi51.tinypic.com...

oi53.tinypic.com...

People really believe the Chinese, working a top secret fighter jet, will allow it to be seen so publicly, let alone have photos taken of it?

Be it CGI/Photoshop or mock ups to try/test things or confuse and mislead western intelligence, what you see is in those photos is 99.9% guaranteed to not be a working, flyable aircraft.

Then again, maybe the Chinese have adopted a new tact for this, and decided to let it be "leaked" to demonstrate their perceived power?


At the end of the day though, until there is an official press release from the Chinese, it's all just speculation and rumour.


Oh, and btw, the insignia on the tail is not PLAAF insignia.
THIS is PLAAF tail insignia.

reply to post by BLV12


People were saying exactly the same thing over 10 years ago with the J-10 at Chengdu. It took until 2006 for the Chinese to officially acknowledge the project. Individuals, just like yourself, back then were claiming that all the images coming out of Chengdu were manipulated and fake.

China has moved on since then. In November 2009 the Deputy Commander of the Chinese Air Force announced on state controlled TV that a stealth fighter was being worked on. He announced the time frames of 2010-2011 for a test flight and in service between 2017-19.

news.ifeng.com...

What next? Will you be saying that all the flight test images and videos will be faked too?

TJ