The J-20 has revolutionised the force relationships in the Western Pacific!
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LearningTranscript
00:00hey welcome this is a long format video of all our previous production about the
00:05J-20. I'm doing this because YouTube is not very kind with older videos but
00:10there are no particular updates about the aircraft save for the fact the
00:14Chinese are ramping up the production and an increasing number of units is
00:18swapping their old aircraft and or in some cases even J-11s for the J-20.
00:25The dual seater prototype keeps flying but still we don't know any detail about
00:31this new variant. So with no further ado here is the J-20. Enjoy!
00:55so here's the thing we don't know much about the J-20 and probably we won't
01:20know much for a while however there are several analysts that are following its
01:26development and now there is enough open source intelligence to have a
01:32reasonable discussion even without Hotties hacking into Chinese computers
01:38the beginning of the development started in the 90s the first flight
01:43happened in 2011 the first delivery started in 2017 the first combat
01:50brigade was formed in 2018 but in 2019 the J-20B started being delivered since
01:59then it is estimated that two more brigades have been equipped with the
02:03aircraft which this would mean probably between 120 and 150 units yeah I know it
02:12seems a lot but Chinese do everything very quickly so it's probably not
02:18impossible anyway we don't know the mix between the two versions and exactly
02:23when I am preparing the video here it appears the first good look at the dual
02:30seater version
02:33the configuration is twin-engine Delta Canard with a long and slender lifting
02:43body this is an interesting configuration from an aerodynamic point
02:47of view since it has the potential of still enjoying the advantages of Delta
02:53Canard but also being quite efficient because the aerodynamic surfaces are
02:58kept relatively small the aircraft seems long very long with the wings
03:06placed so far back one might actually question the fact that the aerodynamic
03:11center is actually on the back of the center of gravity which is something
03:17necessary because the design is a relaxed stability design however if you
03:23observe the aircraft's planform and you keep the canards and the lifting body in
03:28consideration probably doesn't seem so far-fetched the aircraft gives the
03:33impression of being long if seen from the side because the canopy is very
03:37small and also the vertical stabilizers are quite small and the vertical
03:42stabilizers are quite small because they are divided in two sets of two there are
03:47two classic stabilizers above the aircraft canted outwards but also two
03:53smaller fins below the aircraft pointing outwards as well from the
03:59overall proportions it seems a very long aircraft but in fact it is shorter than
04:04the Suhoi 35 or the Suhoi 57 well not by much but it is shorter the
04:11canard configuration seems to be a relatively classic loose couple canards
04:16which should provide a good maneuverability together with the
04:20leading edge through the extensions of the small Delta wing overall this
04:25configuration should be relatively resilient to departure however it seems
04:31that the aircraft is not capable of post stall maneuvering and even the maximum
04:38angles of attack are not that extreme as we have seen in other modern fighters
04:50analyzing an aircraft structure from the outside is always a game of
04:55conjectures but we love it so let's do it structurally it seems that the
05:00aircraft is built with a single central torsion box with the bulkheads changing
05:06shape to accommodate the engines and the wingspars are probably blended with the
05:11rear bulkheads the weapons bay is between this central box and the canards
05:18and since the weapons bay is an opening the structural rigidity is actually
05:26compromised by the opening either for torsion or for bending since the canards
05:32impose aerodynamic loads to the structure placing the canard in that
05:37position means that either there have been some weight penalties to add
05:43material to restore the rigidity or maybe there are some limitations to the
05:48use of the canards for example a heavy asymmetric maneuver can place a heavy
05:54torsion load on the structure and basically bend or twist the aircraft
06:00half of the weight of the aircraft is aluminum about 30% is titanium and only
06:0520% is composites so despite the fact that it is a relatively modern design it
06:11is not one of those plastic planes the J-20 seems to be covering some sort of
06:16rather absorbing material but the whole structure is definitely designed with
06:21stealth in mind we have the classical ridge on the forward part of the
06:24fuselage there is plan for alignment there are no straight angles so all the
06:31four tail surfaces are canted outwards the air intakes are diverter less
06:36intakes the surface is relatively smooth panels and openings are all serrated all
06:43of these are classic stealth design features and the obvious question is
06:50why canards on a stealth design these are usually very radar reflective
06:56features because they have a straight angle with the fuselage and when they're
07:00a close couple they promote the bouncing of electromagnetic radiation between the
07:05canards and the wing in the case of the J-20 though the canards have a very
07:11prominent dihedral and the fuselage at the insertion point is inclined downward
07:19so it is impossible to say how stealth an aircraft is just by looking at it but
07:24in this case it seems that the canard problem has been at least mitigated it
07:30is also worth noting that from the side the aircraft profile is quite low this
07:35means that the surface that is exposed to the radar energy is also relatively
07:42low if compared with the overall size of the aircraft
07:52no I'm no I'm really not covering this because there is too much confusion so
07:58it seems that the aircraft is using two different types of engines and probably
08:02a third will be available from 2023 or 2025 but the names the versions and the
08:10features of all these engines are basically all over the place the one
08:15thing that seems certain is that the current aircraft doesn't have the final
08:19engine so it should be considered underpowered however it seems to be
08:25underpowered in the same way the Su-57 is now is very good but in the future it
08:31will become great
08:39we do have some official numbers derived from some signs at the latest
08:45expo where the Ju-20 has been present but that's hardly a reliable source
08:52I still think we should procure the manuals sir
08:55Otis don't you have anything else to do?
08:58no sir
08:59okay while you're here please show the specification but no more hacking okay
09:05so
09:26while some information has emerged during the years about the sensors and
09:31the systems we still have a sketchy picture
09:33for example we don't know about sensor fusions or the electronic warfare
09:37capabilities even though we know that the aircraft is equipped with an
09:42indigenous data link the cockpit is a modern all-glass cockpit with a large
09:48panoramic head-up display integrated with the helmet mounted display the
09:53helmet can be used to display the images from a distributed aperture system with
09:59four sensors two on the front of the aircraft near the cockpit and two on the
10:04back of the aircraft these dash systems are becoming
10:07increasingly common sir yeah yeah it's um it's true Otis even
10:13though the pilot's response has been lukewarm
10:17at times the configuration of the other optical
10:20systems is not entirely clear because the sources differ
10:26the aircraft has a chin-mounted optical window that really looks like
10:33the F-35 EOTS but it should house an infrared search and track
10:40because we have chinese sources mentioning
10:43an ERST and there's pretty much no other place
10:47where it could be housed some other sources mention two separate systems one
10:52called the EOTS and the other one the infrared search
10:55and track i personally think the first one is
10:57correct but we don't know for sure the radar is an AESA system credited
11:02with a large number of elements up to 2000 according to some sources
11:07and it is believed to have really good performances
11:13some analysts believe that the aircraft may have
11:16side looking and rear facing antennas but yet we have no confirmation of that
11:23in the same way there are several panels on the J-20 that could be antenna
11:28housing but their function is actually unknown
11:32chaffs and flares dispensers are mounted in the fairings at the root of the
11:38vertical stabilizers and in the same fairings there seems to
11:42be even more antennas that we can only
11:45suppose that are related to the electronic warfare and the
11:49radar warning systems but again their exact function is unknown
12:01the aircraft doesn't have a cannon and all the armament is stored
12:06in the ventral main bay and in two smaller side bays
12:10there are four underwing hardpoints but they have never been seen
12:15carrying anything other than fuel tanks for ferry flights
12:20the main role of the J-20 seems to be air superiority and the weapons of
12:24choice are the PL-12 medium range and the PL-15
12:29long range missiles four units can be carried
12:33in the main bay we know that the Chinese have achieved supersonic payload
12:37separation so definitely these missiles can benefit
12:42from a launch at high speed the new PL-21 which is a
12:46long range air breathing weapon seems also to be
12:50compatible with the J-20 the two side bays
12:54house one PL-10 each it is a infrared guided short range weapon
13:01there is a curious detail here the side bays
13:05close immediately after exposing the weapon leaving it
13:09hanging from the side of the aircraft just before the launch
13:13the air-to-ground weapon seems to be limited to the
13:17smaller representatives of the LS family these are pretty much the standard
13:23guided bombs in service with the Chinese air force
13:26these are gliding bombs and there are various versions
13:30either with inertial guidance gps guidance or laser guidance
13:35you may have noticed that the panoply available to the J-20 is actually
13:40relatively limited from this relatively limited variety of weapons it seems
13:45justified the assumption that the J-20 is designed
13:50to snipe at the high value assets of the western air forces like the oaks the
13:56electronic reconnaissance aircraft the tankers
14:00and so on it really seems reasonable that the main mission of the J-20
14:05is to attacking the typical force multipliers available to a modern air
14:11force and another possible target to snipe at
14:15long distance are the air to ground assets of an
14:19attacking force which won't be capable of defending
14:22themselves at long range in both these scenarios the
14:26capability of getting relatively close to the target
14:30thanks to stealth but also using long range weapons
14:33well just makes sense in the same way makes sense to use the aircraft
14:37to attack high paying ground targets with precision guided weapons which is
14:43basically also the mission where stealth actually shines and the flip side of
14:48this approach is that the actual air combat is probably best left to the
14:53flankers and china has a lot of them
15:04stealth yes stealth again yes because stealth is the obsession of so
15:11many air forces but it is also the obsession of so many
15:16enthusiasts but the point of view is different yes
15:20because the enthusiast wants to know if an aircraft is more stealthy than
15:24another so today we are having a look at the
15:28chinese J-20 let's start
15:38yes Otis it is indeed a game rule number one
15:42it is not possible to numerically assess how stealthy an aircraft is
15:46just by looking at it you need to make proper simulations
15:51to have a quantitative measure rule number two
15:54however if we look only at specular reflection stealth
15:58we can assess if that specific geometry is there
16:02or not so no diffraction no radar absorbing materials no infrared
16:07rule number three well it may seem that we are ignoring a lot
16:11but geometry is the main contributor to stealth
16:15and it is the only one that you can really see clearly
16:18from the pictures radar absorbing materials have evolved a lot since
16:23their first aeronautical use but they still are
16:26not the main contributor to stealth rule number four since the united states
16:33are the country that has invested the most
16:37on stealth today we are comparing the J-20
16:41to the F-22 and the F-35. J-20 cockpit F-22 cockpit as you can see
16:48the profile is similar so the performance of the
16:53canopy should be similar both for aerodynamic and stealth
16:59canopy stealth is important because radar radiation entering the canopy
17:05will bounce around inside the canopy and then it will be reflected
17:10outside magnificated so in absence of a canopy capable of
17:17reflecting the energy itself the cockpit is quite a big reflector
17:23second element this edge on the side of the aircraft
17:27which is common to pretty much every stealth design
17:31we'll see better from a different point of view the radome interface with the
17:34aircraft is not perpendicular with the axis of
17:38the aircraft this is a stealth feature radar antennas
17:42since are good emitters are also good reflectors if the radome is
17:48inclined in this way the radiation coming horizontally will be
17:53reflected away this serration exists because the rim
17:58of the fuselage around the antenna is quite a powerful
18:02reflector we may imagine that on the F-22
18:07there is a different solution not based on serration
18:10but rather on radar absorbing material from this front of view we can
18:14see quite clearly the fuselage edge in both aircraft this is a typical
18:21stealth feature it has several functions but it also
18:25splits the fuselage side into two sections
18:30inclined in different ways if radar radiation
18:34is coming horizontally which is the case for
18:39most of the times and in general it is the case
18:43for any far away emitter then it is specularly reflected away from the
18:50direction where it is coming because here we have the
18:55emitter but in general we also have the receiver
18:59so the radar radiation is reflected away from
19:03the receiver and the same is true for the J-20 that has
19:07a similar configuration as we can see here
19:11in literature you find bistatic radars as a way of defeating stealth a bistatic
19:18radar is a radar where the receiver is not
19:22co-located with the emitter this is by no means
19:26cutting-edge technology the first radars ever created were indeed
19:32bistatic radars you can also see the two aircraft are
19:36similar in the configuration of the canopy
19:40from the front two straight sides portion of the canopy straight and then
19:46with a curved connection between the two is not a
19:51bubble like in other aircraft for example the
19:54F-16 this is working in the same way as the
19:57side of the fuselage and the radiation that hits this curved
20:01path will be reflected away as well in a
20:06specular manner these two angles will be the same
20:10an extremely important feature as we can see on the F-22 we have a very
20:15shallow angle like this and the same is true for the
20:21J-20 even though the angle is not as shallow as the F-22
20:27the mechanism at work here is always the same the radiation is coming from the
20:31side and reflected away and the same as you can see maybe true for
20:36the J-20 if the side of the fuselage was vertical
20:40the reflection would have been directly toward
20:44the emitter so an important geometric stealth feature
20:48is not having vertical surfaces on the aircraft obvious consequence of
20:55this geometric arrangement is that if the
20:58aircraft is banking maybe this side of the fuselage becomes
21:04vertical and then stealth is greatly reduced so
21:09stealth aircraft tend to have their best performance in terms of
21:14reduction of radar return when they are flying
21:18straight also the J-20 has canards and as we can
21:21see the angle that the canards are forming with the fuselage
21:24is quite shallow as well normally canards
21:28are not conducive to stealth because they introduce an
21:32extra interface between an horizontal surface
21:36the fuselage and since they are in front of the aircraft which is the area
21:42where you want your aircraft to be more stealth they are normally avoided
21:46here on the J-20 we can see that some care has been put in minimizing
21:52problem of canard from this picture we can also see the
21:56shape of the air intakes J-20 has DSI intakes while
22:02the F-22 has conventional wedge intakes at least i believe they are so i think
22:08there is a mobile ramp inside here but for stealth purpose
22:14what is important is that the shape of these intakes is not
22:19rectangular but it is a lozenge this is very important because
22:23straight angles have the property to reflect optically any energy
22:31directly toward the emitter is just elementary geometry so in you will
22:38never see a straight angle on a stealth aircraft
22:42as we can see the J-20 has a lozenge shape as well
22:47this angle is acute angle is acute this angle here is shallow this angle
22:53is acute as we can see the air intakes are quite different because the J-20 is
23:00using DSI intakes so it has a small bump here
23:05it shows us that the aircraft have a different optimization the F-22 is
23:11optimized for high supersonic speed the J-20 for transonic speed even though
23:17this doesn't mean that the aircraft could
23:19breach Mach 2 however this bump on the DSI intake
23:23is actually helping for stealth since short wavelength radar for example the
23:30X-band or Q-band radars that are used by other
23:34fighters or some surface-to-air systems cannot penetrate inside
23:41the intake and be reflected or better this bump is actually
23:45masking a little bit the inside of the intake contributing to stealth
23:51not massively but it is an extra contribution
23:54in this picture we can see even more clearly the intersection between the
23:58wing and the fuselage in both this region here is very clean
24:03in both the aircraft the J-20 has this small bump in here there is another one
24:10on the F-22 here but it's small stuff another feature that is actually
24:14visible from here is this flat area a flat lower fuselage is another stealth
24:21feature because with the same logic that we have
24:25described before it reflects radiation away now in this
24:29picture you can see the aircraft while it is rolling and so
24:35the side of the fuselage is vertical in this case the reflection
24:39will be specular and toward the emitter so
24:43if the aircraft is banking is less stealth
24:46we can also see that the two aircraft have pretty much the
24:50same configuration the same tunnel between the engines
24:54which i believe it is a concession to aerodynamics this
24:59should reduce drag at subsonic speed at least it seems so
25:04you can also notice the difference in the nozzle configuration
25:09the F-22 has the well-known B dimensional nozzles
25:13J-20 has classical nozzles we'll we'll get back to this
25:17later from this point of view we are also seeing another
25:21typical stealth feature which is the inclined vertical empennage which is
25:27true for both aircraft as you can see the F-22 has
25:32bigger vertical empennage than the J-20 and this is due to the
25:38fact that the J-20 also has these fins down here
25:44so the total vertical surface is splitting
25:47two on the F-22 but it's splitting four on the J-20 again the mechanism is
25:54always the same radiation from this side reflected away
25:57now notice how the F-35 is different from the J-20
26:01here in this region that we said it is critical
26:05we have a very clean interface a very clean side on the F-35
26:09is exactly the opposite we have this structure here which is curved
26:14actually that well don't know exactly what it is will contain
26:17something and also the rest of the fuselage
26:20is sort of rounded here which is good for aerodynamic reason probably
26:26better than the flat surfaces on the J-20
26:29but is definitely less stealthy from a geometric point of view
26:34if you have a curved structure and some radiation impinging
26:38well you will have reflections away obviously
26:41perpendicular to the curved surface but you are guaranteed
26:45here there will be a point where the reflection will be
26:49straight toward the emitter which is exactly what we don't want
26:53this is the reason why we try to limit this
26:57kind of curved surfaces now the consideration
27:00behind this type of rounded shapes used on the F-35 is probably that the
27:07F-35 uses rather absorbing materials to a much
27:12larger extent as the J-20 or the F-22
27:16the rather absorbing material is actually integral
27:20with fracture so these materials probably
27:25reduce the amount of energy being reflected much
27:29more than on the J-20 or the F-22 so basically the designer can get away
27:34with a geometry that is not stealthy
27:38however this is conjecture from this point of view we can see another
27:43feature that is typical of stealth which is
27:45platform alignment on the F-22 we can see that
27:50this line is aligned with this line this line
27:54is aligned with this line and even the serrations and
28:00air intakes are pretty much aligned in the same way
28:04what is the logic? pretty much the same as usual
28:08all the aerodynamic surfaces and the serration corners will reflect
28:15the energy toward a single direction and they won't spread the energy back
28:21toward the source so there will be one direction here where the aircraft
28:28is not stealth but it will be just one direction if there is no receiver here
28:34well the aircraft is not going to be spotted
28:38on the J-20 we can see the same this line here on the canard is pretty
28:45much aligned with the leading edge in here and
28:49this line on the canards it aligned with this trailing edge here and the same is
28:55true for the serrations as usual if we make the
28:59same comparison with the F-35 we can see the usual
29:04platform alignment on the F-35 too what's noteworthy though are these
29:09bumps on the lower side of the wing of the J-20
29:13and these are absent from the F-35
29:17these bumps obviously contain the hydraulic actuators of the aerodynamic
29:22surfaces here on the trailing edge of the wing
29:26in the J-20 these are not hydraulic these are
29:30electric and it is a very interesting technology because they are small enough
29:35to be entirely contained within the thickness of the wing so there are no
29:39bumps and these bumps actually being rounded surfaces do have
29:44some radar return another interesting difference that you can see in this
29:48picture is the difference between the nozzles of the
29:51two aircraft on the F-35 there is serration there's nothing like that
29:59on the J-20 also considering that this area here where we have the
30:05intersection of the vertical surfaces with the fuselage
30:09is relatively dirty we can probably expect the J-20 to have a lower
30:16level of stealth from the rear aspect should be excellent from the side it
30:22should be excellent from the front but here from the rear there are probably
30:26some more reflections so if you are interested to learn more
30:29about the J-20 there are several other videos on the channel
30:33where we discuss the aircraft and they're going to appear here beside
30:37me thank you very much to all those who are supporting the channel on Patreon
30:41or by being a member and from today there is a new way to support the
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31:28much for watching and see you next time