Chinese UAV/UCAV

At Zhuhai 2006

A UAV from the Chengdu Aircraft Company - makes of the J-10



A Chinese style Global Hawk



The Chinese DarkSword, looks quite impressive

Chengdu's UAV/UCAV at am earlier event

Nice pictures chinawhite.
I like the look of the black one. reminds a little of the Sukhoi S.54 mini Flanker in general appearance.

I see that Chengdu read this site as they stole my, and Planemans, idea for an efficient joined wing

does any of the chinese UCAVs carry any weapons or have the capibility to carry them?

Any idea on how far the development has reached on the real thing?
Those aren't life size models obv!

The Dark Star one is clearly labelled as a UCAV, they are clearly concepts for public consumption. Whether they exist as secret prototypes on test or went no further that the models in the pictures is something we can only guess at, likewise the actual capabilities they might have. I think this is most likely all about showing those 'arrogant Americans' that China is right on their tail more than anything else.

The chinese really have some impressive development in their military aviation. The design of the first model must has been heavily influenced by global hawk and will probably serves the same propose. And the one in the background looks like one of those Israel has. Technology transfer?

How big is darksword and what is its payload? Are those canards? Very unconventional design.

Interesting models, there seems to be a long endurance high altitude design and a short range high speed design as well. It'll be interesting to see what actual UAV's and UCAV's China will produce in the futre.

Thanks for the pictures.

I wonder what China's current progress is with respect to scramjets..
I don't recal them having an active program..

Take a look at the design of the air intake... anything familiar? Remember the online 3D artist impression about JXX that looked like a J10/F22/Mig1.44 combination?



I wonder if this reveals any new ideas that will be used on their new generation of fighters.

The tail design looked familiar too...



[edit on 10/30/2006 by warset]

Originally posted by waynos
Nice pictures chinawhite.

I like the look of the black one. reminds a little of the Sukhoi S.54 mini Flanker in general appearance.

I see that Chengdu read this site as they stole my, and Planemans, idea for an efficient joined wing

Oviously they stole it from here. Correct me if I'am wrong but the greatest plane fanatics are in ATS.

Great pics. I love that black one.

But of course FIN

I noticed something else too about the Dark Sword (not Dark Star as I said earlier, doh, I was too busy admiring it to read the label properly).

If you removed the wings and canards it forms a perfecr, very highly swept delta from nose to tail. This started me pondering on retractable wings and hypersonics and such. Not that there is any suggestion this is a feature of the design, but it looks as if it could.

I just, read some information on this new concept, that it designed for high maneuverbility in supersonic condition. The concept is for unmanned fighter jets.

the fighter jets today are maneuvered by pilots, but there is a physical limit to human beings that they can only tolerate so much G force. But for unmanned jets, there is no such physical limitation, so they can go for more.

The information also suggest that unmanned jets are lighter and smaller because of the removal of the safty equipment for pilots, they are also cheaper to use because there is less need to train pilots, which is every expensive and often take many years.

Originally posted by waynos
But of course FIN

I noticed something else too about the Dark Sword (not Dark Star as I said earlier, doh, I was too busy admiring it to read the label properly).

If you removed the wings and canards it forms a perfecr, very highly swept delta from nose to tail. This started me pondering on retractable wings and hypersonics and such. Not that there is any suggestion this is a feature of the design, but it looks as if it could.

Snap, great minds think alike mate. I think we are looking at swing wings, or at least swing canards - see, proof that the Chinese only copy the US (Tomcat...).

In order to carry a meaningful weappons load, given its compariatively large exhaust and inlet (implying a fighter-plane scale turbofan), the production UCAV would be very big, at least the size of the Neuron, though probably much less wingspan, shorter range, less bombload and more speed.

[edit on 30-10-2006 by planeman]

Originally posted by chinawhite
A Chinese style Global Hawk

This is the face of things to come. The choice of part-span upper wings with perpendicular joint and conventional wingtips, albeit with winglets, is a bit conservative.... This arrangement does not lend itself to stealth unless the verical serfaces can be made entirely of radar transparent materials - relative to the more Globalhawk like configuration. But this is more aerodynamically efficient, which counts for a lot.

Originally posted by planeman

-F111 has swing wings too.

-what is a neuron???

I suppose its actual size should be somewhere between a FC-1 and a F16.

Fighter jets with internal weapons are big in size and have small bombloads, cuz there aren't a lot of room for that.

Originally posted by warset
-what is a neuron???

French UCAV

The Darksword and Neuron differ in concept very greatly. The Neuron is a subsonic design with thick wings to accomodate lots of fuel and a large weapons bay. It will have long range but definately not agile or fast.

The Darksword has thin wings, large "vertical" tail and large intake (=compariatively large engine) = fast. The underfuselage intake also allows greater agility and angle-of-attack flying than the Neuron. but it reduces the possible volume of the weapons bay(s).

lets face it, the Darksword winds the cool contest hands down....

Are these planned projects or concept models from companies? Anyway, those canards do look as if they are meant to swing, hence the curve at the end.