New Photos of China's Stealth Fighters Have Emerged

originally posted by: penroc3
a reply to: Zaphod58

looking at the canards no matter how level you get them there looks like allot of places radar can do it's thing.

its looking pretty smooth on the other hand, but shape can only get you so far and then material science takes over.

they more than likely have been working on stealth coatings/sub-structures the moment they got their hands on some of that nighthawk.

But as far as i know and that is not very far things have some ALONG way since Bosnia

The canopy to fuselage doesn’t look like a snug fit, bit of a step all around it.

a reply to: Blackfinger
Its funny how after 15+ years of skills and manpower shortages in both pilots and engineers worldwide that the industry is finally acknowledging the pilot shortage with massive hiring and training programs. Even operators who scrapped their own in house pilot training are resurrecting their schools. However I'm surprised that nobody outside the aviation press is talking about the engineer shortage yet. Oh wait,... of course I forgot there is no shortage of engineers because corporate managers have "rightsized" their business! I predict it wont be long before in house training schools for engineers return as well given the average age of engineers in places like the US, Australia, Europe etc is heading dangerously close to retirement age. Watch this space over the next 3-5 years, its about to raise its ugly head in the form of cancelled services and stemming of new routes, actually it already is. Same goes for professional engineers with the manufacturers, China included. That is partly what I suspect is the problem with engine and airframe development, there just isn't enough really good people to go around so you have a development logjam.

a reply to: thebozeian

i have a family member currently in the midst of this issue.

im not going to say where or who he works for but it is a branch of the US military and he says they have a hard time getting guys who have wanted to fly their whole life to sign up for drone training because they wanted to fly for real.

a reply to: Forensick

Looks fine to me when the RAM is applied

originally posted by: E92M3
a reply to: Forensick

Looks fine to me when the RAM is applied

Indeed not a bad looking bird in her ram....

Well it does look nice... but it also looks old school, we've seen this design decades ago. All they did is tweak it a little.

I'm really looking forward to them publicly releasing photos of the H-20. They better have something amazing to show for it considering how much data they siphoned from the B-2 project.

size comparison.

Oh what do we have here?!

Forward weapons bay?With rotary launcher considering that rear bulkhead shape.

a reply to: Blackfinger
No its a nose gear bay. Whats interesting is that it protrudes past the bottom of the fuse mould line. Therefore I'm betting that it has an aerodynamic fairing that sits forward of it. Most likely reason is that they needed to drop the gear bay down in order to give enough depth to the cockpit above, which implies it has a long stroke nose gear, a la the A-330 freighter. Could this be a naval variant?

a reply to: thebozeian

Possibly. I'm agnostic as to that.

I'm more interested in what's happening in the background.

a reply to: E92M3

sheesh what a rip off(obligatory china comment)

looks like they did a good job.


anzha:

there is a mid-body in the background of that picture

a reply to: penroc3

Look closer.

a reply to: anzha

my eyes are going wonky looking at that pic all blown up.

all i see that man looking at something and next to 2 blue fins of something

a reply to: penroc3

You're seeing the trees, not the forest.

Awfull big assembly hall for a couple of prototypes.

a reply to: mightmight

bingo.

And it's not set up for just a couple prototypes either.

Nose wheel bay looks aft of canopy in the photos BigDave put up..

Thats an old photo, V1 J-31 they're up to V2.5 maybe V3 will be spotted soon.