This is not the fifth generation fighter
Beijing made the first move in developing its fifth generation fighter. The progress of the aircraft industry in China is impressive, but at the same time, the life of Chinese designers significantly complicates a number of system engineering and technological problems. In the coming years, world attention aviation the public will be riveted on how China will solve this most ambitious task and what it will get as a result.
Last week, an awkward-looking heavy aircraft with two collapsed keels and licked outlines giving out Stealth architecture rose from the runway of the airfield of the test center in Chengdu. Pre-New Year leaks in Chinese blogs, which demonstrated the poor quality of the photos of the new fighter, taken on the camera of mobile phones, have been confirmed. 11 January Celestial sources officially confirmed the fact of the first flight of the J-20, nicknamed in the Western press "Black Eagle" - a prototype of the fifth-generation Chinese fighter. The PRC enters the game of the “big boys”, following Russia and the United States trying to create an aircraft on their own that meets the high technological standards of aviation of the 21st century.
Airplane with a thousand names
J-14, J-20, J-XX, XXJ, “Black Eagle”, “Black Ribbon”, “Mighty Dragon” ... As soon as they did not call this hypothetical machine in the press and on the Internet, which in essence was no one has ever seen it before, being content with scant graphic images of a “probable type” (of various degrees of fantasy). At least some information about the parameters and appearance of the new aircraft was obtained only from visual materials about the first test flight, abundantly presented after January 11, 2011, on the Chinese Internet. And this is despite the fact that the very fact of the development of the “promising fighter” in the Middle Kingdom was known for a long time.
Back in 1995, there were leaks that Beijing is funding research on fifth-generation aviation elements. This information caused a flurry of irony: the Chinese economy of the middle 90-s, with all its undeniable successes, did not at all tally with its technological equipment with tasks of such magnitude. The verdict was unequivocal: First, the Middle Empire would first have to learn how to make the previous, fourth generation aircraft, whose offspring like the Russian Su-27 then had not even been put on a “screwdriver” assembly (Recall, the Middle Kingdom mastered this task only by 2000 year).
In 2005, it was confirmed that the PRC completed research work on the formation of an advance project of such an aircraft. Public opinion was still skeptical, but much more respectful. The term "fifth generation" when discussing future Chinese cars was used, but with the traditional condescending and excusable clause: you see, the generation may have been the fifth, but anyway - this is China, no matter how cool ...
In addition, a number of fourth-generation systems in the People's Republic of China by that time were still not worked out and the country still depended on imports. However, the Chinese economy of the 1995 model of the year was already significantly different from its appearance in 2005: the switching of Beijing’s industrial policy from building up gross industrial production to pinpoint technological modernization was becoming more and more obvious.
11 January China made a new application: the world was shown the first "technology demonstrator" of the fifth generation. It is difficult to deny the huge step forward made by the aircraft manufacturers of the Celestial Empire, led by Jan Wei, chief designer of such aircraft as the FC-1 and the two-seater version of the J-10 fighter.
The “Black Eagle”, apparently, has a length of about 22 meters (there are no official data, it is necessary to make relative measurements on ground-based photographs) and a normal take-off weight of the order of 35 tons. In the layout elements of a twin-engine aircraft, the “on duty” elements of low-visibility are used for modern aviation. Quite interesting and possible device of the machine, "readable" by its appearance: as far as can be judged, it has a sufficiently capacious internal compartment for installing weapons.
Almost all observers note that the fighter came out large-scale: for the aircraft to achieve air superiority, it is clearly overweight. It is obvious that it is premature and difficult to talk about the tactical purpose of the test demonstrator platform, but if you look for the most likely use of a combat vehicle of similar parameters, then this is most likely a strike fighter-bomber like the Russian Su-34. Supposedly, the “Black Eagle” is loaded with anti-ship functions (which may be due to the potential size of the internal compartment), possibly with the installation of large C-802 heavy rockets or their analogues.
"I do not recognize you in makeup"
The aerodynamic layout of the aircraft immediately provides several sources of borrowing. Firstly, the “hand” of the Russian aviation industry is clearly visible. Some solutions are meticulously copied from the domestic “technology demonstrators” of the 90-ies: C-37 “Berkut” from the firm “Sukhoi” and “MiG 1.42” - a competing Mikoyan machine, made in the framework of the project of the perspective multi-purpose fighter (MFI).
The design of the bow produces a "close relationship" with the only fifth-generation serial fighter - the F-22 Raptor. It comes to the ridiculous: for example, the cockpit-free lantern lamp is made almost one-to-one, like on the American "predator", up to the minute details visible in the pictures. But upon careful consideration of the layout of the air intakes, another plane immediately surfaced in the visual memory - the American F-35, which is still not in the series.
If there are still some grounds for a conclusion about the origin of the visually observable layout decisions, then the assumptions about the "stuffing" of the aircraft are sometimes put forward the most contradictory. So, a lot of questions are caused by the motor block J-20. Initially, Western media claimed that the plane was nothing else than the Russian AL-41F-1С, aka "the 117С product" - the standard engine of the Su-35С fighter. However, after analyzing the photographs of the tail, this assumption disappeared: the nozzle configuration clearly did not correspond to the well-known 117 images. And information about the actual supply of this unit in China is missing.
Somewhat helped in the search for the official organ of the Celestial Empire: a published report on awarding the creators of the engines for the J-20 aircraft. It states that we are talking about the WS-10G - the latest modification of the “tenth” family, the Chinese functional counterpart of the Russian AL-31F engines. The G series differs from its predecessors by increased tonnage to 14,5 tons and a new FADEC unit (electronic digital engine management system) of its own production.
However, there remains a number of doubts. For example, some aviation enthusiasts, comparing several photos of the back of the “Black Eagle” with famous engine images, came to a stunning conclusion: the alleged Chinese “fifth generation” flew ... on the Russian AL-31FN, the standard engine of the J-10 fighter .
Be that as it may, it is obvious that the Chinese also did not escape the temporary option: their fifth-generation prototype took to the air on an intermediate engine, like our T-50, awaiting fine-tuning of a regular "127 product." However, in contrast to the Russian situation, this step is due to much more serious systemic problems in the engine industry.
What instead of heart?
Engines are, without a doubt, the first headache of the developers of the Black Eagle and the entire Chinese aircraft industry. Advancement in the field of engine building lags far behind the pace of development of the aviation industry as a whole. Here, the Chinese have rested against a number of fundamental problems, first of all - into the technology of special-purpose materials and alloys that they lack.
You can get (quite legally, under contracts with Moscow) relatively modern (designed at the beginning of 80-ies) engines from the AL-31F family. However, it is not possible to simply copy them and start production. This task requires the creation of new productions in the field of metallurgy and metalworking, capable of supplying designers with modern materials and ensuring the required precision of manufacturing and assembly, bringing the life of the motors to at least the minimum acceptable values.
The slow, painful growth of the WS-10 Chinese motor family demonstrates the correctness of this thesis. Particularly difficult problems are observed with turbine parts. A number of experts point out that China is purchasing in Russia a whole range of components for aircraft engines, but it is of particular interest in turbine blades and disks. Their technology is the weakest link in the PRC's engine building industry. It is quite possible that in the next few years we will see the picture when Chinese engines are basically based on imported “critical elements” made in Russia.
Nevertheless, this industry is progressing. But a few years ago, the products of the Celestial Engine Engineers could only be called “handicrafts”: in fact, their resources did not exceed 20 watches even on the stand. Now these figures have improved significantly, but still far from the hours required by the Chinese military 1000. Recall that the regular life of the Russian AL-31F is 800 – 900 hours, and the version of the AL-31FN produced by MMPP “Salut”, intended for the J-10 fighter jets, according to reports from China, is reduced to 1500 hours (here the question of the real operational reliability - after all, a similar increase in the PRC resource does not come from a good life).
So far nothing good has come about when copying another family of Russian motors. The already mentioned Chinese lightweight fighter FC-1, better known under the JF-17 Thunder export marking, has not yet been converted to WS-13 engines (they have been in development for about ten years), and production machines continue to fly on our RD-93 - close relatives of the RD-33, installed on the family of MiG-29 fighters. The reasons are exactly the same: the reliability and resource of their own engines are still insufficient for transferring the machines with them into working operation, and even more so for noticeable export deliveries (for which JF-17 is intended in many respects).
Hence Beijing’s persistently declared interest in purchasing the already mentioned “117C product”. It is difficult to judge whether the Chinese will eventually succeed in getting the engine. According to some reports, our country is not fundamentally against such a sale, which was confirmed during the recent visit to China of the RF Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov. However, knowing the well-established rules of the domestic military industry, one can say that “117” will be seen by China no sooner than Russia has at least a proven prototype engine of the next technological level (the “127 product”). But before that, “Black Eagles” will have to be content with small ones: not enough powerful WS-10G or still very foggy and promising WS-15, which are supposed to receive up to 18 tons of thrust.
However, the fact that J-20 took off on "non-native" engines is not so important in comparison with some preliminary conclusions concerning, for example, the design features of air intakes. Some experts indicate that their form is optimized for subsonic, besporsyny mode.
Thus, the Chinese “fifth-generation prospective demonstrator” is, with some degree of probability, not intended for practicing cruising “supersonic” - at least in the currently observed form. This solution is quite logical: the Chinese now and close do not have engines that are capable of producing more than 9 tons of thrust without boost, which is completely inadequate. At the same time, the size of the Black Eagle air intakes further confirms the probability of installing a more powerful engine in the future.
Eyes and ears
The technological level of development of the Chinese electronic industry is also completely inadequate. The Celestial Empire strongly loses to Russia and the United States in the development and production of modern avionics. The maximum that can be spoken of in terms of stable serial production of reliable samples is the “localization of analogs” of the Russian H001 family of radars, which were part of the on-board complexes of the Su-27SK and Su-30MKK aircraft transmitted to Beijing, as well as the Zhemchug radar station, which was delivered later.
As noted by a number of specialists, their own Chinese radars (for example, 149X, lacking even a passive phased array, or having its “1473 type”, created on the basis of the Russian Pearls) have quite ordinary parameters and, despite impressive progress, the lag in the system design of electronic systems is preserved. For example, the radar systems with an active phased antenna array (AFAR), in its reserve, at least close to adoption, the People's Republic of China does not have at its disposal.
This means that in the complex of the Black Eagle avionics most likely there is no equipment ultimately required by him as a fighter of the alleged fifth generation. As we see, here we are talking more about a test plane-platform than about a combat vehicle (even pre-production version) with a full set of required tactical-technical parameters.
Developing the problem of avionics, we can mention avionics. Requirements for fifth-generation vehicles in this area are quite high, and it is completely unclear to what extent China is able to provide the Eagles with powerful information and control complexes, especially in terms of combining with weapons control systems. On the other hand, it should be noted that the Celestial Empire has recently achieved quite tangible success in the development of avionics for its third-generation technology, so this part of the task looks somewhat more solvable against the background of, say, much tougher engine problems.
There are even questions about such a thing as a cabin-free lantern which returns us to the difficulties already mentioned with special materials. The Chinese have for the first time demonstrated that they are capable of producing such products (especially noting that the lamp is made on serial equipment). However, at the moment there is absolutely no clarity on its quality and ability to work in the mode of a long supersonic flight - have Chinese materials scientists mastered the proper technologies?
The same questions remain when we move on to another technological element of the fifth generation aircraft system - the radio absorbing coating. How adequate are the Chinese "stealth materials" to the tasks (and in general whether they are able to solve them at least to some extent), at the moment it is impossible to say.
Five years in four years
So, what did China get? For starters, this is anything but a fifth generation fighter. At first glance, the “Black Eagle” gives the impression of a “dump” of promising elements of the global aircraft industry, adopted according to the principle “everything will fit in the economy”. It is possible that the creative originality of the Chinese product consists in the unique synergy of the complex of these borrowed decisions, which will yield high tactical efficiency at the output, but it is clearly premature to judge this. It is quite probable that a completely successful machine will turn out from this raw prototype, however its design and potential “stuffing” already cause more questions and doubts than answers and statements.
Steadily and independently, China is now capable of producing only good-quality third-generation vehicles with advanced weapons, avionics and avionics. Already, the transition to fourth-generation technologies is accompanied by a radical drop in the quality of production of components and the weakening of the tactical and technical characteristics of products. The release of the fourth generation of technology, however, is also possible, but it still requires the import of a number of critical elements. The school of Chinese aerodynamics is lagging behind in development, despite the dense and long-term support from high-class Russian specialists.
Under these conditions, it is impossible to talk about the ability of the Celestial Empire to design and sustainably produce the fifth generation air system. Moreover, as we have already said, the Black Eagle, apparently, is not such a system. Most likely it belongs to the generation of "4 +" with some elements of the fifth - and then only if it has successfully implemented stealth technology. Neither according to the characteristics of the engines currently available, nor by the on-board radio electronics, this aircraft cannot be considered a fifth-generation fighter. With a high probability, it is not so in terms of the parameters of the unmanned cruise flight.
At best, they showed us a “demo version”, an empty shell, and in the coming years it will gradually be filled with modern constructive elements, which, perhaps, will dramatically turn the current ideas about the future Chinese car. On the one hand, the absolutely fantastic rates of technological modernization of the Chinese defense industry and Beijing's most active policies in the field of transfer of defense technologies (not always legal, however) are pushing this conclusion. On the other hand, it is equally obvious that there are no miracles and the aircraft industry of the Middle Kingdom will have to go all the way, learning how to make less complex machines first. Until 2020, which American analysts consider the most optimistic term for adopting the Eagle’s heirs into service, is still quite a long time.
Last week, an awkward-looking heavy aircraft with two collapsed keels and licked outlines giving out Stealth architecture rose from the runway of the airfield of the test center in Chengdu. Pre-New Year leaks in Chinese blogs, which demonstrated the poor quality of the photos of the new fighter, taken on the camera of mobile phones, have been confirmed. 11 January Celestial sources officially confirmed the fact of the first flight of the J-20, nicknamed in the Western press "Black Eagle" - a prototype of the fifth-generation Chinese fighter. The PRC enters the game of the “big boys”, following Russia and the United States trying to create an aircraft on their own that meets the high technological standards of aviation of the 21st century.
Airplane with a thousand names
J-14, J-20, J-XX, XXJ, “Black Eagle”, “Black Ribbon”, “Mighty Dragon” ... As soon as they did not call this hypothetical machine in the press and on the Internet, which in essence was no one has ever seen it before, being content with scant graphic images of a “probable type” (of various degrees of fantasy). At least some information about the parameters and appearance of the new aircraft was obtained only from visual materials about the first test flight, abundantly presented after January 11, 2011, on the Chinese Internet. And this is despite the fact that the very fact of the development of the “promising fighter” in the Middle Kingdom was known for a long time.
Back in 1995, there were leaks that Beijing is funding research on fifth-generation aviation elements. This information caused a flurry of irony: the Chinese economy of the middle 90-s, with all its undeniable successes, did not at all tally with its technological equipment with tasks of such magnitude. The verdict was unequivocal: First, the Middle Empire would first have to learn how to make the previous, fourth generation aircraft, whose offspring like the Russian Su-27 then had not even been put on a “screwdriver” assembly (Recall, the Middle Kingdom mastered this task only by 2000 year).
We were shown, at best, "demo", an empty shell
In 2005, it was confirmed that the PRC completed research work on the formation of an advance project of such an aircraft. Public opinion was still skeptical, but much more respectful. The term "fifth generation" when discussing future Chinese cars was used, but with the traditional condescending and excusable clause: you see, the generation may have been the fifth, but anyway - this is China, no matter how cool ...
In addition, a number of fourth-generation systems in the People's Republic of China by that time were still not worked out and the country still depended on imports. However, the Chinese economy of the 1995 model of the year was already significantly different from its appearance in 2005: the switching of Beijing’s industrial policy from building up gross industrial production to pinpoint technological modernization was becoming more and more obvious.
11 January China made a new application: the world was shown the first "technology demonstrator" of the fifth generation. It is difficult to deny the huge step forward made by the aircraft manufacturers of the Celestial Empire, led by Jan Wei, chief designer of such aircraft as the FC-1 and the two-seater version of the J-10 fighter.
The “Black Eagle”, apparently, has a length of about 22 meters (there are no official data, it is necessary to make relative measurements on ground-based photographs) and a normal take-off weight of the order of 35 tons. In the layout elements of a twin-engine aircraft, the “on duty” elements of low-visibility are used for modern aviation. Quite interesting and possible device of the machine, "readable" by its appearance: as far as can be judged, it has a sufficiently capacious internal compartment for installing weapons.
Almost all observers note that the fighter came out large-scale: for the aircraft to achieve air superiority, it is clearly overweight. It is obvious that it is premature and difficult to talk about the tactical purpose of the test demonstrator platform, but if you look for the most likely use of a combat vehicle of similar parameters, then this is most likely a strike fighter-bomber like the Russian Su-34. Supposedly, the “Black Eagle” is loaded with anti-ship functions (which may be due to the potential size of the internal compartment), possibly with the installation of large C-802 heavy rockets or their analogues.
"I do not recognize you in makeup"
The aerodynamic layout of the aircraft immediately provides several sources of borrowing. Firstly, the “hand” of the Russian aviation industry is clearly visible. Some solutions are meticulously copied from the domestic “technology demonstrators” of the 90-ies: C-37 “Berkut” from the firm “Sukhoi” and “MiG 1.42” - a competing Mikoyan machine, made in the framework of the project of the perspective multi-purpose fighter (MFI).
The design of the bow produces a "close relationship" with the only fifth-generation serial fighter - the F-22 Raptor. It comes to the ridiculous: for example, the cockpit-free lantern lamp is made almost one-to-one, like on the American "predator", up to the minute details visible in the pictures. But upon careful consideration of the layout of the air intakes, another plane immediately surfaced in the visual memory - the American F-35, which is still not in the series.
If there are still some grounds for a conclusion about the origin of the visually observable layout decisions, then the assumptions about the "stuffing" of the aircraft are sometimes put forward the most contradictory. So, a lot of questions are caused by the motor block J-20. Initially, Western media claimed that the plane was nothing else than the Russian AL-41F-1С, aka "the 117С product" - the standard engine of the Su-35С fighter. However, after analyzing the photographs of the tail, this assumption disappeared: the nozzle configuration clearly did not correspond to the well-known 117 images. And information about the actual supply of this unit in China is missing.
Somewhat helped in the search for the official organ of the Celestial Empire: a published report on awarding the creators of the engines for the J-20 aircraft. It states that we are talking about the WS-10G - the latest modification of the “tenth” family, the Chinese functional counterpart of the Russian AL-31F engines. The G series differs from its predecessors by increased tonnage to 14,5 tons and a new FADEC unit (electronic digital engine management system) of its own production.
However, there remains a number of doubts. For example, some aviation enthusiasts, comparing several photos of the back of the “Black Eagle” with famous engine images, came to a stunning conclusion: the alleged Chinese “fifth generation” flew ... on the Russian AL-31FN, the standard engine of the J-10 fighter .
Be that as it may, it is obvious that the Chinese also did not escape the temporary option: their fifth-generation prototype took to the air on an intermediate engine, like our T-50, awaiting fine-tuning of a regular "127 product." However, in contrast to the Russian situation, this step is due to much more serious systemic problems in the engine industry.
What instead of heart?
Engines are, without a doubt, the first headache of the developers of the Black Eagle and the entire Chinese aircraft industry. Advancement in the field of engine building lags far behind the pace of development of the aviation industry as a whole. Here, the Chinese have rested against a number of fundamental problems, first of all - into the technology of special-purpose materials and alloys that they lack.
You can get (quite legally, under contracts with Moscow) relatively modern (designed at the beginning of 80-ies) engines from the AL-31F family. However, it is not possible to simply copy them and start production. This task requires the creation of new productions in the field of metallurgy and metalworking, capable of supplying designers with modern materials and ensuring the required precision of manufacturing and assembly, bringing the life of the motors to at least the minimum acceptable values.
The slow, painful growth of the WS-10 Chinese motor family demonstrates the correctness of this thesis. Particularly difficult problems are observed with turbine parts. A number of experts point out that China is purchasing in Russia a whole range of components for aircraft engines, but it is of particular interest in turbine blades and disks. Their technology is the weakest link in the PRC's engine building industry. It is quite possible that in the next few years we will see the picture when Chinese engines are basically based on imported “critical elements” made in Russia.
Nevertheless, this industry is progressing. But a few years ago, the products of the Celestial Engine Engineers could only be called “handicrafts”: in fact, their resources did not exceed 20 watches even on the stand. Now these figures have improved significantly, but still far from the hours required by the Chinese military 1000. Recall that the regular life of the Russian AL-31F is 800 – 900 hours, and the version of the AL-31FN produced by MMPP “Salut”, intended for the J-10 fighter jets, according to reports from China, is reduced to 1500 hours (here the question of the real operational reliability - after all, a similar increase in the PRC resource does not come from a good life).
So far nothing good has come about when copying another family of Russian motors. The already mentioned Chinese lightweight fighter FC-1, better known under the JF-17 Thunder export marking, has not yet been converted to WS-13 engines (they have been in development for about ten years), and production machines continue to fly on our RD-93 - close relatives of the RD-33, installed on the family of MiG-29 fighters. The reasons are exactly the same: the reliability and resource of their own engines are still insufficient for transferring the machines with them into working operation, and even more so for noticeable export deliveries (for which JF-17 is intended in many respects).
Hence Beijing’s persistently declared interest in purchasing the already mentioned “117C product”. It is difficult to judge whether the Chinese will eventually succeed in getting the engine. According to some reports, our country is not fundamentally against such a sale, which was confirmed during the recent visit to China of the RF Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov. However, knowing the well-established rules of the domestic military industry, one can say that “117” will be seen by China no sooner than Russia has at least a proven prototype engine of the next technological level (the “127 product”). But before that, “Black Eagles” will have to be content with small ones: not enough powerful WS-10G or still very foggy and promising WS-15, which are supposed to receive up to 18 tons of thrust.
However, the fact that J-20 took off on "non-native" engines is not so important in comparison with some preliminary conclusions concerning, for example, the design features of air intakes. Some experts indicate that their form is optimized for subsonic, besporsyny mode.
Thus, the Chinese “fifth-generation prospective demonstrator” is, with some degree of probability, not intended for practicing cruising “supersonic” - at least in the currently observed form. This solution is quite logical: the Chinese now and close do not have engines that are capable of producing more than 9 tons of thrust without boost, which is completely inadequate. At the same time, the size of the Black Eagle air intakes further confirms the probability of installing a more powerful engine in the future.
Eyes and ears
The technological level of development of the Chinese electronic industry is also completely inadequate. The Celestial Empire strongly loses to Russia and the United States in the development and production of modern avionics. The maximum that can be spoken of in terms of stable serial production of reliable samples is the “localization of analogs” of the Russian H001 family of radars, which were part of the on-board complexes of the Su-27SK and Su-30MKK aircraft transmitted to Beijing, as well as the Zhemchug radar station, which was delivered later.
As noted by a number of specialists, their own Chinese radars (for example, 149X, lacking even a passive phased array, or having its “1473 type”, created on the basis of the Russian Pearls) have quite ordinary parameters and, despite impressive progress, the lag in the system design of electronic systems is preserved. For example, the radar systems with an active phased antenna array (AFAR), in its reserve, at least close to adoption, the People's Republic of China does not have at its disposal.
This means that in the complex of the Black Eagle avionics most likely there is no equipment ultimately required by him as a fighter of the alleged fifth generation. As we see, here we are talking more about a test plane-platform than about a combat vehicle (even pre-production version) with a full set of required tactical-technical parameters.
Developing the problem of avionics, we can mention avionics. Requirements for fifth-generation vehicles in this area are quite high, and it is completely unclear to what extent China is able to provide the Eagles with powerful information and control complexes, especially in terms of combining with weapons control systems. On the other hand, it should be noted that the Celestial Empire has recently achieved quite tangible success in the development of avionics for its third-generation technology, so this part of the task looks somewhat more solvable against the background of, say, much tougher engine problems.
There are even questions about such a thing as a cabin-free lantern which returns us to the difficulties already mentioned with special materials. The Chinese have for the first time demonstrated that they are capable of producing such products (especially noting that the lamp is made on serial equipment). However, at the moment there is absolutely no clarity on its quality and ability to work in the mode of a long supersonic flight - have Chinese materials scientists mastered the proper technologies?
The same questions remain when we move on to another technological element of the fifth generation aircraft system - the radio absorbing coating. How adequate are the Chinese "stealth materials" to the tasks (and in general whether they are able to solve them at least to some extent), at the moment it is impossible to say.
Five years in four years
So, what did China get? For starters, this is anything but a fifth generation fighter. At first glance, the “Black Eagle” gives the impression of a “dump” of promising elements of the global aircraft industry, adopted according to the principle “everything will fit in the economy”. It is possible that the creative originality of the Chinese product consists in the unique synergy of the complex of these borrowed decisions, which will yield high tactical efficiency at the output, but it is clearly premature to judge this. It is quite probable that a completely successful machine will turn out from this raw prototype, however its design and potential “stuffing” already cause more questions and doubts than answers and statements.
Steadily and independently, China is now capable of producing only good-quality third-generation vehicles with advanced weapons, avionics and avionics. Already, the transition to fourth-generation technologies is accompanied by a radical drop in the quality of production of components and the weakening of the tactical and technical characteristics of products. The release of the fourth generation of technology, however, is also possible, but it still requires the import of a number of critical elements. The school of Chinese aerodynamics is lagging behind in development, despite the dense and long-term support from high-class Russian specialists.
Under these conditions, it is impossible to talk about the ability of the Celestial Empire to design and sustainably produce the fifth generation air system. Moreover, as we have already said, the Black Eagle, apparently, is not such a system. Most likely it belongs to the generation of "4 +" with some elements of the fifth - and then only if it has successfully implemented stealth technology. Neither according to the characteristics of the engines currently available, nor by the on-board radio electronics, this aircraft cannot be considered a fifth-generation fighter. With a high probability, it is not so in terms of the parameters of the unmanned cruise flight.
At best, they showed us a “demo version”, an empty shell, and in the coming years it will gradually be filled with modern constructive elements, which, perhaps, will dramatically turn the current ideas about the future Chinese car. On the one hand, the absolutely fantastic rates of technological modernization of the Chinese defense industry and Beijing's most active policies in the field of transfer of defense technologies (not always legal, however) are pushing this conclusion. On the other hand, it is equally obvious that there are no miracles and the aircraft industry of the Middle Kingdom will have to go all the way, learning how to make less complex machines first. Until 2020, which American analysts consider the most optimistic term for adopting the Eagle’s heirs into service, is still quite a long time.
Information