JJ / J-YY - Next Generation Fighter

On the evening of 26 December 2024, the National Defense Times social media account once posted a photo of a ginkgo leaf with the caption: "The ginkgo has turned yellow, and it really looks like a leaf". New Chinese combat aircraft broke cover in a flood of social media photos and videos on Dec. 26 showing them in flight and revealing two new examples of China’s evolution as an aerospace innovator. PLAAF dropped this present at the best time as NGAD decision/debate neared its conclusion. Possibly these are demonstrators / prototypes from two competing companies, much like the YF-22 vs YF-23 flyoff. The mystery warplanes emerged on the 13th anniversary of the roll-out of the J-20 stealth fighter, which itself came 13 years after the first flight of the Chengdu-made J-10 in March, 1998.

The Dec. 26 date marks the 131st birthday of Mao Zedong, the founder of the Chinese Communist Party. Chairman Mao Zedong made "mistakes" but asked people to adopt a "correct" historical view to judge a revolutionary figure, Chinese President Xi Jinping acknowledged 26 December 2024. Mao was a controversial figure in Chinese history due to some of his disastrous policies like the 'Great Leap Forward' and the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution." The founding father of New China, Mao still commands reverence among many Chinese but is also despised by critics. "Mao is a great figure who changed the face of the nation and led the Chinese people to a new destiny," Xi said, continuing, we "totally repudiate them and erase their historical feats just because they made mistakes".

On the social media platform X, some users called the planed, which the PLAAF have reportedly designated the J-36, as "China's Christmas surprise", while some commentators joked that the flight "sent Twitter aviation bloggers into cardiac arrest", and some even joked that "the Pentagon's phones are going to explode". "This is one of the most eye-catching surprises of the PLA this year." The US "Forbes" magazine website described that China chose to unveil a new aircraft on an important day, and it may be "the most advanced manned fighter ever." China often discloses major technological advances in December or January. One new aircraft appeared in social media posts revealing a large, three-engine warplane with a cockpit and diamond-style wing with no vertical tails. Yaw control appears to be managed by Northrop Grumman B-2-style split rudders. The engines are fed by a single dorsal inlet and two ventral inlets, the latter using caret-shaped intakes. The dorsal inlet features a stealth-enhancing diverterless supersonic inlet, but not the ventral inlets.

The US website "The War Zone" quickly captured the movement of China's new aircraft, published a long article and made multiple supplements and updates. "Obviously, this aircraft uses more advanced low-detectable technology, surpassing the J-20's tailless design and achieving another leap forward." The article said that people's understanding of the two aircraft is still in the early stages, but from the pictures, it can be seen that many of the design elements are very consistent with the outside world's imagination of China's sixth-generation aircraft - for example, there is increasing evidence that China's next-generation fighter will be a tailless configuration.

In terms of size, the new aircraft is comparable to the J-20—photos show it to be at least as long as the J-20. The J-20 fighter is nearly 21 meters long. The aircraft's twin-wheel main landing gear is also noteworthy, indicating that the aircraft is quite heavy, a hallmark of heavy fighter-bombers, such as the Sukhoi Su-34. Most importantly, the new aircraft's large size seems to reflect the emphasis on long endurance and relatively large internal space, which is convenient for accommodating a very large fuel load, as well as numerous weapons and sensors.

The new aircraft looks much larger than the J-20 next to it, which means it has a longer range and can carry more fuel, advanced weapons and sensors, making it very suitable for long-distance strike missions. The aircraft also appears to be unusually equipped with three engines, which would facilitate sustained high-altitude and highpeed fligh-st. The aircraft’s large ventral fuselage section likely provides room for an internal weapons bay.

“It’s size and arrangement tentatively suggests that this is the long awaited J/H-XX ‘regional bomber’, designed to provide a low observable high altitude precision strike capability against bases and possibly ships throughout the Indo-Pacific,” said Justin Bronk, senior research fellow for Airpower and Technology at the Royal United Services Institute. “However, it remains possible that this prototype represents China’s known 6th Generation fighter program.”

Rupprecht Deino noted "I‘m focused on numbers and as it seems it is „3601“ (?) … so could it be designated J-36? The design’s twin-wheel main landing gear is worth noting, providing another pointer to the considerable weight of the aircraft.""

The flying wing layout integrates the fuselage/wing/tail into one, and the fuselage/propulsion is highly integrated, and the horizontal tail and vertical tail are eliminated, which minimizes the adverse aerodynamic interference and radar scattering area of the wing/body/propulsion, significantly improves the cruise aerodynamic performance and enhances the stealth combat capability. It is of great significance to the design of advanced aircraft such as new bombers, sensor aircraft, long-range and long-endurance drones, and stealth reconnaissance drones. However, the design features such as the wing-body integrated lifting surface and the tailless layout also have an adverse effect on the flight quality of the flying wing layout aircraft - insufficient heading stability, poor longitudinal control characteristics, etc., all of which put forward extremely high design requirements for the flight control system.

The flight control surfaces of an aircraft are movable surfaces hinged on the wings, horizontal tail and vertical tail of the aircraft. They are used to control the aircraft when it is flying and taxiing at high speed on the ground. They include main control surfaces such as elevators (all-moving horizontal tail), ailerons, rudders, auxiliary control surfaces such as leading edge slats, flaps, spoilers, and special control surfaces such as canards.

The wide nose can even provide space for side-by-side crew members. The cockpit situation cannot be observed well through the existing photos and videos, which means that it cannot be determined whether the aircraft ispiloed, or whether it is a single-seater or a side-by-side two-seater. Tandem two-seaters are another possibility.

Also noteworthy is the careful placement of control surfaces combined with the tailless configuration, with each wing having five trailing edge control surfaces, including split flaps near the wingtips. It uses wingtip control surfaces to replace the role of the vertical tail on the J-20 to obtain better directional stability and stealth characteristics. In the absence of vertical tail control surfaces, these would provide yaw control at different opening angles and could also act as speed brakes when deployed.

“While many unknowns remain, it is safe to assume that the aircraft is a large, very heavy tactical jet with a lot of focus put into combat, radar, and survivability. In particular, if it is indeed equipped with three engines, high-altitude combat may also be a feature of this design,” the article concludes.

Background

China is developing a new type of fighter jet, according to the country's top aircraft design institutes. In 2018, the structure department of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) Shenyang Aircraft Design and Research Institute and the arms project department of the AVIC Manufacturing Technology Institute jointly established a team codenamed "JJ" with the aim of developing a new type of fighter jet. the term "jian ji ji" means fighter plane. The JJ nomenclature may reference the term "jiji" [not the same characters is in the term fighter plane], which in Mandarin means active, energetic, or vigorous.

The JJ team might include a smaller group focused on the development of an S-shaped air duct. An S-shaped air duct are usually found in stealth aircraft as they obscure the engine from hostile radar. Some military observers speculated that the new fighter jet could be an upgraded, domestic version of the FC-31, while others predicted it could be an entirely different aircraft.

The US Air Force has begun early prototype development for new fighters to be launched in the 2030s and 2040s, 6th generation in Americna nomenclature, 5th generation according to Chinese. Technologies unmanned fighters, hypersonics Attack aircraft, artificial intelligence, lasers, electronic warfare, and sensors integrated into the fuselage of the aircraft have all become the current technological exploration areas. the US Air Force's "Penetrating Air Platform / Next Generation Air Superiority" program also focuses on information exchange as a decisive factor in future wars. This kind of thinking is not only considering individual systems and weapons themselves, but instead envisaging extensive "networked" operations, that is, the combat platform as a "node" of a larger combat system. This larger combat system is coordinated by real-time operations.

Russian officials confirmed that the development of thThe work of the 6th generation aircraft is already underway. The main difference is that the basic 6th-generation aircraft is expected to be a drone. Manual driving is an alternative. Other features are upgrades to existing models: faster, more flexible, more covert, and so on.

By 2016 countries around the world had begun to enter the wave of research on the sixth generation fighters. Russian analysts divine five generations of post-World War II fighter aircraft. Fifth generation fighters use advanced integrated avionics systems to provide the pilot with a complete battlespace awareness, and use of low observable "stealth" technology. The F-22 and F-35 were the first fifth generation fighters, with Russia following with the Mikoyan Gurevich MFI prototype and the Sukhoi PAK-FA, and China with the J-20. The Chinese have their own particular order of ranking, with Chinese characteristics. The Chinese call the Russian's 5th generation fighter a 4th generation machine, there being no Chinese counterpart to the First generation fighter aircraft in the rest of the world, the first military aircraft using jet engines.

In early 2018, a mysterious Chinese fighter photo appeared on the US Defense News. From the photos, the fighter looks very sci-fi, and the tail design is the same as the active J-20 fighter. The overall aerodynamic design of this type of aircraft is significantly different from all the fighters currently in service in China. Therefore, some experts say that this mysterious fighter may be the next generation of testing machine that China will soon unveil.

It is reported that Yang Wei, the chief designer of the Chinese J20, once said that the sixth-generation fighter will be an important revolutionary breakthrough in the history of the world's air force, and the artificial intelligence and hypersonic technology will be brought to the extreme in the future.

At the same time, the six-generation fighters will break through the limitations of traditional engines and switch to variable-cycle engines. As early as 2012, the vice president of AVIC has clearly stated that China has established a project for variable-cycle engines, so China's variable-cycle engine It may be in the development stage now.

It is understood that the working principle of the variable cycle engine is to adjust the engine cycle mode to adjust the engine thermal cycle parameters so that the engine can always maintain the best state during the working process, and the variable cycle engine can also make the aircraft have subsonic speed and super Three flight efficiencies of sonic and hypersonic.

In addition, China's future six-generation fighters will also be equipped with a new domestic integrated avionics system, which will enable the aircraft to have excellent operational effectiveness in future air combat.

At the same time, in the allocation of radar systems, China's six-generation aircraft will be equipped with an airborne terahertz radar system in the future, and this radar can emit strong terahertz radiation in air combat, which can instantly penetrate warplanes and other composite armor. The metal material interferes with the signal inside the fighter, and the terahertz radar also has strong anti-invisibility ability, which can react to the composite metal under the coating of the fighter. Therefore, the so-called invisibility of the fighter is not broken.

Today, the development of China's six-generation aircraft is basically at the same level as the United States and Russia, so the difficulty of the arms race can be imagined. At the same time, China's aviation industry technology is slightly inferior to the United States and Russia, so it is very likely that China will not be able to follow the path of developing the sixth-generation aircraft. However, once China's sixth-generation aircraft is in service in the future, the Chinese Air Force will have the ability to resist intervention / regional opposition in future wars, which is of epoch-making significance for China.

Yang Wei of Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the chief designer of China's first fourth generation fighter jet, the J-20, in a paper published in Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica, a Chinese monthly journal on aeronautics, in June 2020 said that in older generations of fighter jets, maneuverability used to be the deciding factor, but this concept is becoming outdated with the development of advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles with their beyond-visual-range attack capabilities.

Information has now become the deciding factor, as modern fighter jets focus on gaining more information with the help of AESA radars and data chains, while also reducing opponents' ability to gain information, including using stealth technology and electronic countermeasures. When aircraft can get more information with these advanced devices, pilots must have extensive knowledge, sharp analysis and sound decision-making to put them to use.

Yang said artificial intelligence will help pilots process the information, and help them become mission objective-oriented. Each step in the original observe-orient-decide-act (OODA) loop in the air combat decision-making process will feature artificial intelligence's assistance, the paper said. "Intelligence becoming the deciding factor" will be the essence of what Yang calls an OODA 3.0.

Citing foreign projects, Yang said that a future fighter jet will generally require a longer combat range, longer endurance, stronger stealth capability, a larger load of air-to-air and air-to-surface weapons, and the functionality to provide its pilot with easy-to-understand battlefield situation images and predictions. In an integrated system, the aircraft should be able to form a network, draw real-time integrated situational images, create multiple attack routes, and transmit target information across mission areas in real time.

Yang's vision could indicate what China's future fighter jet might be like, a Chinese military expert told the Global Times on Monday under the condition of anonymity. Usually the Chinese military simultaneously equips a current generation of weapons, develops a next generation, and conducts pre-study on a further generation at the same time. So as J-20s are being commissioned into the Chinese Air Force, the next generation fighter jet must have already started development, the expert said. China is eyeing to develop a next generation fighter jet by 2035 or earlier, which could feature laser, adaptive engines and the ability to command drones, reports in early 2019 quoted Wang Haifeng, another senior designer at AVIC who participated in the development of the J-20 and J-10 fighter jets, as saying.