歼-35 years after the first flight in 9 years.

歼-35 years after the first flight in 9 years.

The test photos of the new stage of the domestic J-35 medium-sized stealth fighter were exposed online. Judging from the slightly blurred image, the plane has cancelled the pitot tube of the nose and loaded the Lambert lens, indicating that the technical state of the J-35 has gone further. In view of the fact that the first flight of the J-35 was completed at the end of 202 1 and 10, this progress was extremely rapid in less than nine months. Many people believe that the direct cause of the rapid progress of the J-35 is to cooperate with the domestic 003 Fujian ship carrier that was launched before. This idea seems perfect, but if AVIC invests a lot of resources in developing the J-35, it is obviously too simple.

On the first flight, the J -35 was still a technical prototype, with a green appearance and a pitot tube on the nose. The coating on the fuselage surface of the latest J-35 prototype is similar to that of the active military aircraft, indicating that the testing of the fuselage material has been completed, and the structure and flight performance of the fuselage composite material can meet the requirements, so the fuselage surface can be painted to protect the prototype, without worrying about the subtle influence of the coating on the material testing results.

Secondly, the nose pitot tube is usually similar to the primary color of the fuselage composite material (generally green), which belongs to the typical initial technical state. Once it is taken down, it means that the basic test flight of the fighter has come to an end. As for the Lombardy lens, it is a unique additional device on modern stealth fighters. Its purpose is to amplify the radar reflection signal of the fuselage, so as to monitor the flight trajectory and data of the J-35 prototype, which shows that the verification flight of the J-35 is smooth and the overall stealth performance has reached a satisfactory level.

If we compare the technical state of the latest prototype of the J-35 with the development rhythm of the J-20 stealth fighter in that year, it is probably equivalent to the latter's level of about 20 14 years. It took them 9 months and 3 years to reach this stage (the first flight of the J-20 was at 20 1 year and1year), so there is obviously a huge gap in time and efficiency. On the one hand, AVIC experienced a complete process from zero to mass production exceeding 100 in the field of stealth fighters, and accumulated enough experience in design, flight test and production. If this experience is applied to the J-35 again, it will naturally get twice the result with half the effort.

On the other hand, before the first flight of 歼 35, the design unit had carried out the technical iterative test for nearly 10 years with FC-3 1 as the verification machine, which laid a solid technical foundation for 歼 35. In fact, the change from FC-3 1 to J -35 clearly reveals the technical development idea of AVIC.

201210 June 3 1, the second domestic stealth fighter after the successful first flight of the J-20. At that time, it was speculated that this was a medium-sized stealth model designed by AVIC to cooperate with the heavy-duty J-20, which played the role of medium-sized J-1 1. Because of the high flight test frequency after this medium-sized stealth model, the outside world was very looking forward to this medium-sized stealth model at that time, but no one expected that this new model immediately appeared at the Zhuhai Air Show in 20 14 under the name of FC-3 1.

I flew from the north to Zhuhai for the first time as a prototype, and also performed an air show that was not amazing, but absolutely unexpected. Later, with the further disclosure of relevant information, the outside world finally learned that FC-3 1 was a stealth verification machine developed by Shenyang Aircraft Design Institute (that is, 60 1 Institute) after losing in the Air Force heavy fighter project competition, so as to complete the accumulation of stealth fighter technology.

In the autumn of 20 16, FC-3 1 boarded the air show field of Zhuhai Air Show again. It was also unexpectedly found that the aircraft has been equipped with a domestic turbofan-13 aero engine instead of the Russian RD-33 aero engine that has been relied on for a long time. After that, the relationship between FC-3 1 and domestic aircraft carriers and its own export technical characteristics were gradually confirmed. Just when the outside world had great expectations for its future development, FC-3 1 suddenly disappeared from the outside world, as if it had never appeared. It was not until 202 1, 10 that it was even more fighters 35 and successfully made its first flight. At this time, it is exactly 9 years from FC-3 1 first flight.

The direct reason why 60 1 took the lead in developing FC-3 1 was that it failed to win the bid for the heavy stealth fighter project of the Air Force. 60 1 As a fighter design unit with rich experience in fighter research and development, it is well aware of the huge crisis of falling behind the times in the field of stealth fighters. At that time, apart from the J-20, AVIC was not only unable to promote the development of another stealth fighter, but also had no urgent demand for the time being, which finally made 60 1 institute make up its mind to raise research funds and brought FC-3 1. From the technical point of view, FC-3 1 in the form of verification machine has the positioning and shape of the main fighter in mass production, belongs to the category of engineering verification machine, and is essentially different from the famous American X series technical verification machine. In fact, the latter often does not involve military needs, and the demand for technological development is not urgent. It mainly exists as an aerial platform for verifying new technologies.

However, FC-3 1, an engineering verification machine, is not essentially different from the main fighter needed by the army. It is a project developed by 60 1 through self-financing by trying to figure out the equipment demand of the Air Force. The future development seems bright, but the capital and technical risks are also great. The number of FC-3 1 early verification machines is very limited, but the high engineering demand leads to a large project investment, and the early expenditure must be measured in RMB 1 100 million yuan.

But the situation faced by 60 1 at that time was very bad. Once there is not enough accumulation in the field of stealth fighters, it will directly affect its development. Therefore, on the one hand, 60 1 reduces the R&D funds and the cost of R&D failure by reducing the number of verifiers. On the other hand, FC-3 1 tries to expand the application scope, and the most important point is to complete the technical verification of the domestic turbofan-13.

Since 1998, China and Pakistan have jointly developed Xiaolong, and the power system is a serious problem. The early use of Russian RD-33 series engines was purely a last resort.

Since then, RD-33 has been successfully copied in China, and the domestic turbofan-13 was born. However, Pakistan does not want to use turbofan-13 to replace the RD-33 used in Xiaolong series for many years. The most direct reason, of course, is that the turbofan-13 was still an early model at that time and had not been tested. It still needs a lot of time and resources to further improve it. The most important reason is that Xiaolong is a single-engine fighter. Once turbofan-13 is used for verification flight, the cost will be very high, which will directly affect the subsequent research and development process. Except Xiaolong, domestic fighters such as J-20, J-16 and J-10 are not suitable for the aerial verification platform of turbofan-13, which makes turbofan-13 not develop for a long time.

Turbofan-10 is a typical high-thrust aircraft engine used by domestic fighters, and the research and development of a new generation of turbofan-15 has indeed been completed in China. The turbofan-13 is a typical mid-thrust type, which has the most practical significance for improving the equipment sequence of domestic aero-engines.

The reason why China copied the turbofan-13 at a high price was to fill the blank of domestic aero-engines. However, after the imitation was completed, it suffered for a long time that there was no suitable aerial platform test to improve the related performance. The final FC-3 1 has become the most suitable platform for verifying turbofan-13, in addition to the technical accumulation of medium-sized stealth fighters.

In 20 16, FC-3 1 formally assembled turbofan-13, which became a sensational news at that time. Interestingly, perhaps because the domestic turbofan-13 has never been mature, FC-3 1 was equipped with a turbofan-13 and an RD-33 at the same time, and then disappeared from the outside world. According to the routine development process of domestic fighters, the prototype model should be absolutely confidential, but the particularity of FC-3 1 made it unexpectedly public for a long time.

FC-3 1 disappeared from the public view in 20 17, which happened to be the stage when the domestic J-20 finished its test flight for more than five years and started small-scale production. It shows that after basically solving the technical problems in the development of domestic stealth fighters, with the booming economic strength and the relevant technical support accumulated by FC-3 1, the development of the second stealth fighter was officially started, which finally made the J-35 soar.

For 60 1 Institute, it is difficult to get support to develop another stealth fighter after losing in the air force heavy stealth fighter competition. The reason why the J-35 was recognized after 20 17, from the open design institute to the confidential military-led research and development, the use of carrier-based aircraft can be described as the most attractive point. After all, the first domestic J-15 carrier aircraft was developed by 60 1, and it has become the most experienced unit in the development of carrier aircraft in China. The 歼 35 finally succeeded in attracting the interest of the navy, and the carrier-based aircraft also became its primary design purpose, which is also the direct reason why the outside world regards the 歼 35 as a complete set of 003 aircraft carriers.

However, the number of domestic ejection aircraft carriers is destined not to increase too much in a short time, and the ski-jump aircraft carriers cannot carry aircraft with too high empty weight, which makes the number of carrier aircraft types in the early stage of the J-35 doomed to be limited.

AVIC invested a lot of resources in the J -35 project, so that three prototypes appeared less than nine months after the first flight. According to the test flight experience of the J-20, the J-35 will be put into use in 2025, which is the expected service stage of the Type 003 aircraft carrier, and there should be no big problem. The premise of this rapid maturity is the development mode of aviation industry, and if it is only used in the field of carrier aircraft, its scarce demand will be combined with this rapid maturity, which will lead to an embarrassing "snail" production speed.

In fact, before the first flight of 歼 35, the subordinate units of AVIC also issued the document about "2 1 project". According to the previous development experience of J-10 project 10 and J -20 project 20, it should be called "J-265433".

In terms of time and model, the most reasonable explanation of "J -2 1" should be the land-based model of J-35, which is basically the same as J-11B/J-15, with similar structure but different numbers. If FC-3 1 was given the export task at the beginning of the project, it can be inferred that the J-35 is destined to exert its strength in three directions: naval carrier aircraft, air force low-cost fighters and medium-sized stealth fighters exported to the outside world, so it will have a large production capacity and continuous production time. It is the huge demand of these three aspects that can support the rapid production of the J-35, which is worthy of the huge investment of AVIC in the J-35, and will truly compete with the American F-35 series in most fields around 2028.

China has equipped a large J-20 heavy stealth fighter, and the production and improvement continue. The F-22A equipped by the US Air Force not only stopped production in 20 1 1 year, but also resumed production for various reasons. Under the influence of various factors, the J-20 has enough stand-alone performance to suppress the F-35 series.

However, the expensive production and maintenance costs of the J-20 heavy aircraft also lead to its limited scale. There is no problem in carrying out defense tasks at home, but it is bound to be difficult to compare with the F-35 in overseas and export fields, and these areas are precisely where the J -35 can show its talents.

During the Cold War, medium-sized aircraft such as MIG -2 1 and MIG -29 exported by the Soviet Union competed with medium-sized aircraft such as F-5 and F- 16 exported by the United States and became the main force in the international arms market. The technical strength of Russian aviation industry has declined seriously, even the mass production of Su -57 heavy stealth fighter has not been realized, and the Su -75 medium-sized aircraft launched is still in its infancy. These comparative advantages are rare opportunities for the J-35 and even AVIC, and also the advantages for the J-35 to tap its own potential and fully enter the fighter sequence of China.