Japan wants to build stealth fighters?

Japan wants to build stealth fighters?

20 16 was exhibited for the first time in Japan on April 22nd. In 2006, we began to develop the fifth-generation machine "Mind" up to now 1 1 year, and finally the first flight was successful. Although compared with the project in 2008, it has been six years since the first flight of the J-20 fighter 20 1 1.

After the news of the first flight of the "Mind" fighter plane came out, the Japanese media network fell into a carnival, as if it were "Zhong Ping Town Dew", and easily defeated the "ghost of the United States and Britain". However, with the spread of subsequent detailed information and careful analysis and research by various experts, it is found that "mind" is "uneasy".

Shen Xin, also known as X-2 technology verification machine in Japan, is a theoretical prototype of the fifth generation stealth fighter independently developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan, which is used to verify the feasibility of stealth shape, vector nozzle and aerodynamic layout. It is equivalent to writing an article with an outline and a draft. Because the research and development of stealth fighters is an extremely complicated project, there will be tens of thousands of related projects involved.

Therefore, in order to ensure the reliability of technology and save time, technology verification machine is very important. Unfortunately, even a technical verification machine is full of problems, and Japan's material technology and finishing technology, which ranks first in the world, are like making a table of "dark dishes" with all kinds of precious ingredients. And the most important thing is that the performance of "Mind" is almost not as good as that of ordinary trainer.

First of all, the so-called Japanese three-dimensional vector nozzle technology is actually a spoiler installed at the nozzle. This technology was used with the X-3 1 verification machine launched 25 years ago, but this technology was abandoned by many countries as early as this time, because it consumes too much energy and easily causes greater radar refraction. Spoiler technology is therefore only used on missiles, that is, gas rudders.

However, in order to save time, Japan chose this "medieval" technology without knowing much about the two-dimensional vector of the United States and the three-dimensional vector of Russia, so this technology made the second half of the brain as a stealth machine almost "streaking" for the radar. But also severely lost the 5 tons thrust of XF5- 1 engine.

"Xinxin" is jointly developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the Technical Research Headquarters of Japan's Ministry of Defense, code-named X-2 (formerly ATD-X), and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is responsible for the production. According to Japan's plan, the X-2 is mainly used to verify the technology of the next generation F-3 stealth fighter. Japan claims that the performance of the X-2 is equivalent to that of the American F-22, which not only has excellent stealth effect, but also has superior maneuverability and supersonic cruise capability, among which the supersonic cruise speed can reach Mach 1.82, which exceeds the supersonic cruise speed of Mach/.4-1.6 of the F-22.

However, a series of problems have been exposed after actual production. The aerodynamic layout of the X-2 is a hodgepodge that combines the characteristics of F-22 and F-35. The nose is neither flat nor round, nor is it rhombic like F-22 and J-20. Wing-body fusion is not done well; The inlet imitates the F-22, but it is similar to the inlet with boundary layer partition of the third generation aircraft. The cockpit is too big; The distributed aperture system has two windows at the rear of both sides of the inlet, which brings difficulties to the layout of the side bomb bay.

The problem is that Japan has no experience in designing fighters in the jet era, and it also lacks the core facilities for developing fighters-wind tunnels. Therefore, for the United States, Japan's R&D capability has been stifled. The so-called domestic fighter F2 is just "helping" the next extremely expensive cottage in the United States, but its performance is not half that of the original F 16.

The most fatal thing to Mind is its XF5- 1 engine. XF5- 1 claimed to be comparable to the American F 1 19 engine at the beginning of the project, but with the deepening of research, its performance continued to decrease, and finally it only had a pitiful thrust of five tons. However, this is something that other trainers can easily surpass. XF5' s data can hardly support a fifth-generation fighter with combat capability.

However, Japan's next generation of large thrust engines is still far away. Only this year, the relevant PPT was released, and the specific plan has not yet been implemented. The air inlet of the mind has no stealth treatment, and the oval canopy is incredible compared with other fifth-generation machines. Compared with the R&D process of American F-22, ATF planned to start at 8 1, defined the demand in 1983, made the first flight of YF-22 and YF-23 in 1990, won YF-22 at 9 1, made the first flight of F-22A prototype in 1997, and started its service in 2005.

It took 15 years for the F-22 to fly from the technical verification machine to the official service. It is certain that the gap between YF-22 and F-22A is much smaller than that between ATD-X and F-3, and Japan's aviation technology accumulation is also far smaller than that of the United States. In other words, there are still many years before the fourth-generation aircraft independently developed by Japan will be in service on April 22, 2006, and there may never be a fourth-generation aircraft independently developed by Japan.

In a word, "Mind" is only the first step on the long road of Japan's self-developed fifth-generation aircraft. It is just a "fishing" project in Japan, with the purpose of trying to fool Americans into agreeing to sell F-22 to it under the guise of self-research. As a result, in order to avoid being laughed at by the outside world, Japan had to continue to be such a rough "mind", but it did not build a new identical verification machine, and the flight test progress was very slow. Obviously, it did not want to develop well.

In fact, Japan also knows that its fighter R&D strength is very weak. The F-2 was developed with technical support from the United States. It is difficult to develop advanced stealth fighters, especially large thrust turbofan engines, which is even more difficult for Japan. With the arrival of F35, it has filled the vacancy of Japanese fifth-generation aircraft to a certain extent, so the fate of X2 mind and Japanese next-generation fighter F3 is self-evident.