Another Chinese program unveiled

_Del_
Also, the "painted canopy" is a radome. It may not even be painted as it is certainly made of a different material than the rest of the fuselage.

If it's anything it's probably the uplink.

Surely its not a radome, its an odd shape, anything sending and receiving in which to fit all those dimensions must be taking up a fair bit of room.

Looking at the size of the engine, the air intake, plus fuel, there is fck all room for many smarts.

Internal bomb bay - 1

Laser designator - 0

Gyro Stablised EO/IR Optics - 0

Piece of crap = yes

Tuttle
I cant wait until China picks a country to invade and occupy so it can rotate soldiers through for combat experience and test all its weapons technology in the field. Would be interesting to see where they are at.

You mean Japan? maybe they'll take Okinawa for practice.

Bedlam

_Del_
Also, the "painted canopy" is a radome. It may not even be painted as it is certainly made of a different material than the rest of the fuselage.

MAYBE, but it's not wise or typical to radiate a lot when you're trying to be stealthy too. Also, a radome pointing up like that - what are you looking at?

comm phoning home to satellites.

You also wouldn't want a big no-RAM area like that - it exposes the internals to a look-down radar.

And also to friendly controllers on a manned aircraft but out of range of enemy.

even on a f-22 there's a "comm port" facing up for the mk-1 retina, right? What's the difference?

mbkennel
comm phoning home to satellites.

Yeah, maybe.

And also to friendly controllers on a manned aircraft but out of range of enemy.

even on a f-22 there's a "comm port" facing up for the mk-1 retina, right? What's the difference?

It's not 25% of the top surface? I'd way rather have something that was concealed if you weren't using it. Or less observable, maybe a laser port. Not something bathtub sized.

reply to post by Bedlam


They actually did something similar with the early Block 10 Global Hawks.

Global Hawk

It was where the uplink is located.

reply to post by Zaphod58


That picture link didn't work. I can see the need for an uplink area, but holy cow, that's a big uplink area on that Chinese drone if that's what it is.

reply to post by Bedlam


The Global Hawk went from the nose, to just a little short of the leading edge, the entire top of the fuselage. They also painted the wings white.

aviationintel.com...

Try that link.

reply to post by Zaphod58


You sure that's not just a decorative paint job? It looks like it wraps around into the diffraction zone from the bottom. A big enough area on the top can be spotted from the bottom, oddly enough. And there's other white areas that are DEFINITELY in an area where I'd expect diffraction returns to be an issue.

reply to post by Bedlam


Part of it was, part of it was for the uplink as well, but later on they just painted the whole thing green.

Zaphod58

_Del_
Also, the "painted canopy" is a radome. It may not even be painted as it is certainly made of a different material than the rest of the fuselage.

If it's anything it's probably the uplink.

It's the radome for the satcom. The Satcom radome on the Global Hawk is a composite/honeycomb.

The up-/downlink to surface or aerial units is a common CDI terminal at the tail of the Global Hawk.

Bedlam
MAYBE, but it's not wise or typical to radiate a lot when you're trying to be stealthy too. Also, a radome pointing up like that - what are you looking at?

You also wouldn't want a big no-RAM area like that - it exposes the internals to a look-down radar.

Not much looking down at you from 45,000+ feet like a Global Hawk I'm guessing the set up in similar. Even the Predator has the same general arrangement -- the array only needs to be about a foot wide for sufficient reception; the rest of the cockpit shape is just so it's sufficiently steerable and aerodynamic. You treat the surface under it as well as you can but you can't hide the array itself. In a happy coincidence it needs to be on top to maintain a field of view to the satellites which leaves it conveniently shielded from below by the fuselage to varying degrees.

Because you don't need a direct return of your signal in this case, your output is pretty low. You only need to radiate a comparitively small amount (as opposed to say a SLAR or something you're going to want a return from -- inverse square law and all that. Keeps the antennae smaller as well).