Design/ Role analysis of China’s 6th gen fighter jet

on December 26th China's Aerospace sector flew a sixth generation fighter design for the first time this video will go over its most obvious design features and try to deduce their implications it will also explore just where in the design process China is with its six gen fighter and we will explain just what are we actually looking at when we see the strange looking flying Diamond of a plane [Music] a video that's to come sometime later will go more in depth provide historical context and comparison with the US NextGen program and reveal what does the plane's appearance mean for China and what could it mean for the US for some days now the imminent flight of a Chinese 6G airframe was rumored and well it actually seems to have happened the plane seems to have flown over the city of changdu after the aircraft took off from the factory complex of changdu aircraft Corporation that's the maker of China's j20 fifth gen fighter which was appropriately the chase plane for this occasion so what's the new plane like thankfully the j20 chase plane gives us context due to telephoto lenses used over great distances sizes of two planes can be confidently compared and while j20 has a wingspan of around 13 M this new plane is visibly bigger in fact it's wingspan might reach 20 M which would basically be unheard of for a jet fighter even more so when we look at the planes configuration those are highly swept back Wings basically as one would expect for a supersonic fighter jet length can be estimated from other images suggesting 20 to 22 M that's without the nose Peto tube which is required for testing but the final design years later will not have it the wing trailing Edge is swept forward leading to a diamond Wing shape somewhat reminiscent of YF 23 for example though not as extreme in general the theoretical perfect stealth shape for a plane is one of a so-called hopeless Diamond a perfect rmo shape as flat as possible and with as few protrusions as possible it is obvious the volume of the plane is frankly massive its belly intake start quite forward and the body of the plane is very wide it's plausible ch as Air Force requirement was ranged to threaten Guam such requirement would have driven the design to grow so large coupled with a huge Wing area that plane is simply oversized not necessarily in a bad way but it is sized to accept a huge amount of fuel and a hint of the line where the weapons Bay should be suggests its weapons Bay might be almost 6 M long which is coincidentally the length of China's latest long range pl17 missile of course with such a huge body cruise missiles larger than the US jasm might also easily fit what also seems visible are sensor apertures around the nose not just the nose radum but also a few different cheek side arays the plane has a visible cockpit cover so it's manned so far images aren't good enough to deduce if it's big enough to seat two people the rumors before the flight did suggest the plane has side bys side seating meaning two pilot similar to F-111 or s34 that doesn't mean we are looking at the strike aircraft as six generation Fighters are going to wage air Warfare in a different way but given the size of the plane and its weapons Bay it's also quite plausible the shown design is really a multi-roll plane to cover all sorts of Air Combat and ground strike missions but we digress one of the most striking features perhaps unique in the world is its engine Arrangement this plan seems to have three engines lined up in the rear with the side engines using belly slash side intakes and the middle engine seems to have a separate dorsal intake such an arrangement is unheard of for an actual fighter jet that managed to get off a drawing board side intakes seem to be of carette type similar to say F22 and not of the worthless supersonic Inlet type which F35 and j20 use whether that suggests higher top speeds intended is for now unknown certainly the high sweep of the Wings coupled with the even higher sweep of one continuous line of the nose blending into the wing Roots suggests a fairly High theoretical mock figure now why three engines it's too early to tell but off the bat it could suggest designer simply could not make powerful enough yet compact enough engines for such a plane and keep the design confined to the more usual two Engine Solution this thing is massive one can clearly see double wheel Bogies used for main landing gear given its size it seems likely its Max takeoff weight is designed for maybe even 50 tons in the olden era that would be a tactical bomber but planes have been getting bigger over the decades and NextGen planes from all countries are likely to be heavier than their predecessors even so this thing is plausibly so big that even two of China's most powerful engines the ws15 which May in its future variants approach 200 kons of thrust may not be enough to power it hence possibly the need for three engines it's also plausible that the middle engine is somewhat different and that engine usage is managed for various situations and needs it is not known if China is going with variable cycle engines like the us but if it's not China may have optimized one engine for supersonic speed While others would be regular designs compromised to operate both both at takeoffs and supersonic speeds also three engines might be needed to supply the plane with enough electricity modern planes are so full of power demanding features that the power generation is becoming more and more of a bottleneck imagine a laser self defense feature is also added in the future that too would require tons of electricity finally the whole design should be a pretty big jump up in terms of stealth in 2022 US general Mark Kelly said China was on track with the development of their sixth generation fighter and that China is eyeing to make its stealth exponentially better it's a contextless statement but the plane we are looking at is clearly what a lot of six gen proposals have been proposing a tailless shape of simplified geometry the fact it doesn't seem to have any regular vertical control surfaces is very likely going to make it harder to control than previous gen planes almost certainly impacting its maneuverability but six gen designs don't seem to be about maneuverability that will likely be the job of unmanned drones flying in front of these big manned Fighters it's possible that three engines are also in some way there to help stabilize the plane certainly the split flaps near the wing tips are there to help control the plane the B2 bomber uses a similar concept but in a cruising stage of the flight those would close shut and be flush with the wings it's too early to speculate much more about this plane but it's seems to be a big step up in China's capability so we will leave that speculation for another video coupled with comparisons to us 6 gen and what all this might mean for both China and us right now it's just a prototype actually if rumors are to be believed it's more like a demonstrator kind of like yf-23 was or yf-22 was or the X32 and x35 War and rumor has it that China hasn't yet decided on the final manufacturer so this may be in fact a proposal from changu aircraft Corporation with another six gen plane proposal demonstrator plane from shangyang aircraft Corporation to fly soon some early images May indicate that has already happened but that's another story depending on where us 6G program is at China might have leaped frog the US Air Force a little bit if this is indeed a pre-selection prototype and if us has so far FL only concept and six gen technology demo planes then China might have actually flown the world's first six gen fighter [Music]