Cat and Mouose

choi

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(1) J-20 Flies Off Into Uncertainty. Strategy Page, Jan 14, 2011.
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairfo/articles/20110114.aspx

My comment:
(a) The article states, "Of the four stealth fighters than [sic; should be 'that'] have been built and flown so far (U.S. F-22 and F-35, Russian T-50 and I.42), the J-20 looks most like the I.42, a MiG project that was cancelled in 1997.

Presumably this is because the previous F-111 and F-117 also served as a bomber.
(b) Regrading I.42. I search the web. It appears that some websites use I.42 (capital letter I) and some others, 1.42 (Arabic numeral "one").

Mikoyan Project 1.44  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan_Project_1.44
("The 1.42/44 is a delta wing, twin-tailed single seat air superiority/strike fighter with an all-moving forward canard plane")

Why Strategy Page says J-20 "looks most like the I.42," the article does not elaborate. But the forward canard--unique in J-20 and I.42--may be among the reasons, I speculate.

(i) Canard (aeronautics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canard_(aeronautics)
((French for duck; Some early aeroplanes such as the Brazilian Santos-Dumont 14-bis and French Canard Voisin had tail-first configuration which were seen by observers to resemble a flying duck — hence the name)

The "tail-first" means literally: tail came before teh main wing.

(c) For definition of supercruise, see

Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 turbofab engine. United Technology Corp. (UTC), undated).
http://www.pw.utc.com/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=c94e34890cb06110VgnVCM1000004601000aRCRD
(the only operational fifth generation fighter engine today; supercruise, the ability to operate supersonically without afterburning)
(d) The article syas, "Actually, all development work on new fighters, by everyone, slowed down in the 1990s." Everybody included US, because Cold War ended.
(e) The article concluded with the remark, "This fifth generation may come to be called the "last generation," after they are replaced by the second generation of pilotless combat aircraft (counting armed Predators and the like as the first).


(2) David A. Fulghum, Anti-Stealth Sensors to Tackle Chinese and Russian LO Designs. Aviation Week, Jan 11, 2011 (blog).
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3A27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3Af2e3b33f-93da-4076-8852-0b0e2b5f387d

My comment:
(a) chase plane
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_plane
(an aircraft that "chases" another aircraft; Safety can be one function of a chase plane; others are to photo or video the target vehicle, or to collect engineering data from it)
(b) The active, electronically scanned array (AESA) is also known as active phased array radar.

(i) array definition: "An array is a systematic arrangement of objects, usually in rows and columns."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Array
(ii) I am a mere biology, not an engineer. So I do not comprehend physics of phased array. But I understand its function. This is how it works, in plain English.

Phased Array Radar. National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), US Department of Commerce, undated.
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/research/radar/par.php
(iii) What are active and passive?

"Phased arrays are also used in naval sonar, both in active (transmit and receive) and passive (receive only)."
phased array
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array
(iv) In a technologically advanced fighter jet, AESA is located at the very front tip. In F-22, it is AN/APG-77 built by Northrop Grumman.
(v) What does AN and APG mean, separately?

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/AN-

Quote:

"AN/ (note slash) is purely an identification for a designation system, not an abbreviation

"A somewhat more complex example, AN/APG-63 (V)3 is the airborne radar in the F-15 Eagle fighter.

•A in the first position means airborne
•P in the second position means radar
•G in the third position, in this case, means weapons control"

(c) The blog stated, "Airborne detection of stealth aircraft may have already been accomplished in a series of tests done at Edwards AFB, Calif. in the second half of 2009. Those with insight into the research say Lockheed Martin’s CATbird avionics testbed –a 737 that carries the F-35 joint strike fighter’s entire avionics system -- engaged a mixed force of F-22s and F-15s and was able to target the F-22s.
(d) Lockheed Martin CATbird
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_CATBird


(3) English-language websites yesterday said
(a) that China had leaked a "space fighter" in Hong Kong (the websites on their own translate the Chinese title into English as "China succeeds in spacecraft test flight in tandem with U.S. X-37B")
(b) but that whenever websites based in China had picked up the news story, Beijing invariably deleted those copycats.

中國空天飛機試飛成功 與美國X－37同步. 中國評論通訊社 (China Review, based in Hong Kong), Jan 11, 2011.
http://www.chinareviewnews.com/doc/1015/6/6/4/101566476.html?coluid=45&kindid=0&docid=101566476&mdate=0111101217

My comment:
(a) Apparently Beijing translates US space fighter as 太空戰鬥機 but China's own (if any), as 空天戰鬥機.

For the record: US has refused to talk publicly about the mission of X-37B, so there is no way for us to know if it is a so called spacefighter.
(b) 中國評論
http://zh.wikipedia.org/zh/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B%E8%A9%95%E8%AB%96
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