Undoubtedly, the statement of the commander-in-chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces Viktor Bondarev about plans to quickly deploy large-scale production of light multipurpose fighters of the 4 ++ generation MiG-35 made a lot of noise at the central headquarters of the united NATO Armed Forces in Europe, because the new machine has such technical parameters, some of which are barely familiar to the heavy multifunctional tactical "acrobat" Su-30SM. So, the new brainchild of OKB "MiG" on about the 30th production vehicle can receive an onboard radar with AFAR "Zhuk-AE", the range of which will be comparable to the N011M "Bars" (140-160 km for targets with EPR 2-3 m2), as well as already from the first combat fighters, it will receive high-resolution attack missile detection stations (SOAR), which are not included in the avionics kit for either the Su-30SM or the Su-35S. The MiG-35 multipurpose tactical fighter, ahead of the Su-30SM in speed by 250-300 km / h, is inferior to it only in the combat radius of action, which with a normal load is 1100 km (for the Su-30SM - 1500 km), the perfection of avionics and the information field of the pilot and operator of the MiG-35 systems corresponds to the level of the 5th generation. This fighter will receive a series of about 170 aircraft, and will also become a worthy basis for the design of the 5th generation "Migovsky" inconspicuous LPI.
While our media continue to actively discuss the promotion of the production program of the promising transitional generation MiG-35 fighter, as well as assess its export potential in the Asian and European arms markets, no less intriguing news continues to come from the Middle Kingdom, where several asymmetric tactical and strategic responses to the coming to power of the new anti-Chinese White House administration headed by Donald Trump. The first strategic step was the deployment of mobile ground-based missile systems with DF-41 ICBMs in China's northeastern province of Heilongjiang, located along the Russian-Chinese border.
Due to this, Beijing solved two important tasks at once: the DF-41 missiles of the 2nd Artillery Corps now confidently reach the East Coast and the southern states of the United States, and the flight trajectory of the DF-41 ICBM passes not over the Republic of Korea and Japan, but over the northern part of the Sea of Okhotsk and Kamchatka (bypassing the radius of destruction of the Aegis and THAADs deployed in the Republic of Kazakhstan and the East China Sea). Moreover, the SRK DF-41 launchers in the Heilongjiang province will be covered not only by the Chinese missile defense system, but also by the S-300/400 anti-aircraft missile divisions defending the facilities of the Russian Pacific Fleet in the Primorsky Territory: there is a more advantageous geostrategic location of the province in absolutely all meanings.
The second step was the interesting tactical measures taken by Beijing in response to the transfer of a squadron of 10 SKVP F-35B tactical fighters to the Japanese Iwakuni airbase in January 2017. As it became known from the Chinese source "Sina" in the 20th of January, the aerospace giant "Chengdu" is designing several types of suspended "stealth" containers for missile weapons of the 5th generation tactical fighters J-20 "Black Eagle", playing a huge role in reducing the radar signature of a fighter during anti-radar and anti-ship operations, as well as conducting long-range air combat with numerically superior enemy aircraft. An image of the J-20 with its promising "equipment" was posted on the resource's Internet page, which caused extremely great inspiration among Chinese bloggers and observers, and also became a very formidable sign for the Western, and especially the American, defense departments working on the military-strategic a plan to "push" the ambitions of the Celestial Empire into the boundaries of the washing seas. Before us appeared the J-20 with two types of containers with a reduced radar signature, which contain missile weapons of various classes.
The larger container is very similar to those designed in the Boeing project, the F / A-18E / F "Advanced Super Hornet", as well as the Japanese concept of the transitional generation F-15J stealth elements. In the West and in Japan, these containers are called "Enclosed Weapons Pod" (EWP) and provide for the simultaneous deployment of 2 long-range guided air-to-air missiles AIM-120D and 6 small-size guided bombs GBU-39SDB (in a mixed configuration), or simultaneously 4 AIM-120D (air-to-air configuration). The strike configuration provides for the placement of the 1st 2000-pound guided aerial bomb BLU-109 / B "JDAM", or tactical stealth long-range CD AGM-158B JASSM-ER.
As you can see in the image, the Chinese container can also carry up to 4 medium and long-range missiles of the PL-12B / C and PL-21D types (for unknown reasons, only 2 missiles are shown), or one supersonic anti-ship missile YJ-91, which is an analogue of our X-31A. Imagine that two such anti-ship missiles need to be placed on the external sling of the J-20 due to the lack of free points in the inner compartment. The effective scattering surface of the YJ-91 reaches approximately 0.2 m2, which can bring the radar signature of the far from ideal "Black Eagle" to 0.7-0.8 m2 (similar visibility is observed today in the Raphals and Typhoons with light combat load). On the indicators of enemy surveillance and multifunctional radars (AN / TPS-59/75, AN / SPY-1D or AN / MPQ-53), the J-20 fighter will look like a conventional tactic of the "4 ++" generation, which for the 5th generation just unacceptable.
The radar signature of such a "large" container does not exceed 0.02-0.05 m2, and therefore 2 such products will increase the total RCS of the J-20 by no more than 4-6%, which means only about 12-15 km of increase in the detection range. Without stealth containers, this increase will be about 20% (50 km). From a tactical point of view, the difference is pretty decent. In practice, it looks something like this. For example, there is a Patriot PAC-2 air defense system battery, which forms a 160-kilometer air defense line over the island of Miyakojima (Ryukyu archipelago), where the SSM-2 anti-ship battery is deployed. Two stealthy J-20 fighters were assigned 2 tasks - an anti-radar missile-air strike on the AN / MPQ-53 multifunctional radar with the subsequent destruction of the SSM-2 battery, the purpose of which is to provide safe sea and air corridors for operating the ships of the Chinese Northern Fleet. J-20s carrying out an operation with SM-102 anti-ship missiles on board without stealth containers will have an RCS of 0.8 m2, which means that the Patriot AN / MPQ-53 will detect them at a distance of about 120 km and will be able to attack with MIM missiles -104C from a distance of approximately 110 km. Chinese pilots will be forced to evade anti-aircraft missiles even before they can launch anti-radar missiles, which will complicate the task at times.
In the presence of 2 "stealth" containers, EPR J-20 will not exceed 0.45-0.5 m2, which corresponds to a detection range of 70-75 km. In such a situation, a link of the "Black Eagles" has the ability to approach the launch lines of SM-102 anti-radar missiles even from medium altitudes (5-7 km). This is a small analysis of the simplest tactical situation in which inconspicuous containers for missile weapons are an integral part of 5th generation fighters.
But, judging by the image, a smaller container with a reduced radar signature is also being developed for the Chinese "tacticians". Smaller items can be located farther from the center section of the J-20, but the number of missile and bomb weapons in them will be approximately 2.5-3 times less than in large samples of the "Enclosed Weapons Pod" type. Based on visual assessment, they can accommodate no more than 1 long-range air combat missile PL-21D, or 4 compact small-sized corrected / guided aerial bombs; it is unlikely that it will be possible to fit the heavy PRLR CM-102 into their internal compartment. A very suspicious feature of "small" containers is the absence of doors for launching (exiting) weapons. This may indicate that their purpose is completely different, for example, the installation of a multi-frequency electronic reconnaissance station or a wide-range electronic warfare station. These containers may well represent stealth versions of the suspended analogue of the complex by the protection group of the AN / ALQ-99 type, which is part of the structure of the avionics of the F / A-18G "Growler" electronic warfare aircraft. In any case, detailed information about the "small caliber" of the new "stealth" unloading of the "Black Eagles" will remain classified for a long time, because the entire program of development and modernization of the national Chinese fighter of the 5th generation J-20 is carefully hidden from prying eyes.
CHINESE AIRCRAFT IMPACT TEAMS WILL INCREASE INDIVIDUAL INFORMATION SUPPORT TO THE LEVEL OF US Navy AND FRANCE AWG: WUHAN'S LAYOUT OF DRLO Y-7J DECK AIRCRAFT SENTENCE
It is well known that, until recently, the carrier-based wing of the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning did not expect significant progress in terms of increasing network-centric and information capabilities. The actions of the carrier-based tactical fighters of the 4 + / ++ generation J-15B / S during long-range cruises were strongly limited by the mediocre tactical and technical characteristics of the Z-18J early warning and control helicopters. Despite the fact that the aircraft carrier provides for the simultaneous basing of 4 helicopters of this type, they have a lot of disadvantages in comparison with just one carrier-based aircraft RLDN, including:
It turns out that in terms of the time it takes to reach the required lines, the Z-18J helicopter is 3 times inferior to the E-3D type AWACS aircraft, in terms of the radius of action - about the same, and this is not counting the best parameters of the radar complex.
The Chinese Admiralty was fundamentally unhappy with such a picture. And so, at the beginning of 2015, the defence-blog.com resource, with reference to the Chinese source sina.com.cn, announced the start of the development program for the first carrier-based AWACS aircraft Y-7J-03 for the Chinese Navy. As you know, specialists from the Xian Aircraft Industrial Corporation and China Electronics Technology Group Corp. were involved in the project. (CETC), which specializes in the production of advanced radar systems with active and passive phased array. The Y-7J-03 itself is built on the basis of the Y-7H-500 military transport aircraft (it is a copy of our An-26), but has significant design differences. To be based on board an aircraft carrier, the dimensions of the Y-7J airframe had to be reduced to an acceptable size, as well as to increase the bearing qualities of the tail of the machine, since the radar complex with a support and fairing was shifted to the tail of the aircraft. The length and span of the wings were reduced by 2 m (to 21 and 27 m, respectively). A 4-keel tail unit with a large-area horizontal stabilizer was used (in accordance with the design of the American E-2C "Hawkeye"): this compensated for the smaller wing area of the modernized machine.
The use of a springboard instead of catapults on the Liaoning aircraft carrier will not allow the Y-7J to be launched only with the help of its 2 main Dongan (DEMC) Wojiang-5A-I turboprop engines with a capacity of 2800 hp each.or a more powerful propulsion system (we will talk about it below), and therefore in the technical image you can also see 2 auxiliary turbojet engines, doubling the thrust at the time of launch. 2C Hawkeye and Yak-44. It is known for sure that the radar complex (RLC) of the Chinese "deck radar" will be built on the basis of a modern two-way active phased array of the decimeter L / S-band with a target detection range with an EPR of 1 m2 in 300-350 km. A modern high-performance computing base, represented by the latest Chinese developments in the field of multi-core microprocessor technologies, will make it possible to increase the throughput of one aircraft by the number of tracked targets up to 1000-2000 units. while reducing the number of operators to 2 or 3 people.
According to the same Chinese source, the sina.com.cn resource, the empty mass of the Y-7J will be 14 tons, and the maximum take-off weight will be about 23 tons; at the same time, the maximum speed of the vehicle should be 700 km / h, and the cruising speed (during combat duty - 350-400 km / h). It will be very difficult to achieve such speed characteristics with 2800-horsepower Vodjiang-5A-I theaters, because the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, similar in weight, is equipped with two 5439-strong Allison T-56-A-427A theaters, which barely accelerate it to 600 km / h. All indications are that the Y-7J is equipped with more powerful Wojiang-6C turboprop engines with a power of 5100 hp. These engines power modern Chinese Y-9 long-range tactical military transport aircraft. The carrier-based AWACS aircraft Y-7J is a complex "prefabricated hodgepodge" of Soviet technologies used in the An-26B, the American tail assembly of the Hokai, modern radar technologies with AFAR, integrated into a promising computerized element base of Chinese origin. The practical range of the Y-7J will reach 2400-2700 km, which will make it possible to conduct combat duty at a distance of 500 km from the AUG ship order for about 2-2.5 hours.
The first officially presented demonstrator, or a flight prototype of the Y-7J under the designation JZY-01, was seen in a photograph of an unknown Chinese amateur at the beginning of 2015, then, in January 2017, at one of the test sites of the naval aviation in St. Wuhan, "lit up" and a second similar copy. It is obvious that the work on this program after the strengthening of the US Navy in the Asia-Pacific region is significantly intensified. Aircraft AWACS Y-7J will enable the Chinese AUG to operate much more confidently even in the most remote areas of the oceans. The vehicles will be able to transmit information about the tactical surface and air situation to only the J-15B / S carrier-based wing, but also to the Kunming Type 052D Missile Weapons Control (URO) destroyers. The group will be about 4 times faster to respond to threats such as anti-ship missiles, TFR, as well as hypersonic air attack weapons. The appearance of this aircraft in service with the Chinese fleet will be an excellent response to all known and currently developed Pentagon concepts related to monitoring and blocking the actions of Chinese naval strike groups in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
