Chinese UCAV/UAV/CCA - news & technology

Deino said:
You think it is fake? Indeed a possibility ...
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I believe you're replying to my post in sino board. I'm leaning towards fake given the incosistent outline resolution between nose section and trailing edges. Also the trailing edges not aligned, for a stealthy platform, a red flag it's doctored. Though given the traction these photos are picking up, I might be wrong and it's just distortion, lighting, and angle.

The post you responded to on here is just a joke for us americans if it's indeed yet another stealthy 6th gen/high end CCA type from china.
 
There's been 4 new UCAS airframes shown during these parade preparations of which at least 2 are not in the chart posted earlier.

What would be the purpose of fielding so many different planforms of CCAs instead of having a handful that are either multirole or can carry different payloads? Having so many different air frames isn't easy to amass or maintain.

Some of them make sense - like flying wings for ISR and maybe one or two for supersonic A2A/A2G missions and then maybe another one as a tanker (although I'm not sure whether China really needs that). Others - like the two tailless ones here - aren't really obvious what capabilities they were designed for. 1 of everything for the air force and 1 of everything for the navy?
 
Reddington777 said:
There's been 4 new UCAS airframes shown during these parade preparations of which at least 2 are not in the chart posted earlier.

What would be the purpose of fielding so many different planforms of CCAs instead of having a handful that are either multirole or can carry different payloads? Having so many different air frames isn't easy to amass or maintain.

Some of them make sense - like flying wings for ISR and maybe one or two for supersonic A2A/A2G missions and then maybe another one as a tanker (although I'm not sure whether China really needs that). Others - like the two tailless ones here - aren't really obvious what capabilities they were designed for. 1 of everything for the air force and 1 of everything for the navy?
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The U.S. has two models under official consideration for CCA Incr1, and I believe originally there were 4-5 competitors. That list did not even include Kratos XQ-58, MQ-28, or the Scaled composites/NG aircraft (name escapes me), all three of which have actually flown despite never being part of CCA Incr1. This also ignores RQ-170, “RQ-180”, and any other in service black systems we simply don’t know about, as well as the sensor version of FQ-42, the XQ-67A.

So it hardly seems surprising that the PRC is diversifying its portfolio. I suspect not all of these enter production; in fact I would guess most do not, just like their U.S. counterparts. But there is a lot of industry growth in this area and relatively low barriers for entering the market space.
 
Josh_TN said:
I suspect not all of these enter production; in fact I would guess most do not, just like their U.S. counterparts. But there is a lot of industry growth in this area and relatively low barriers for entering the market space.
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It's just that elsewhere regarding the parade, some PLA watchers have said that the things shown on parades are usually already "in service". I, ofcourse, wouldn't know any better, so if these were contending designs, then that's absolutely understandable. But if these were all going into service, that's why I questioned what their purpose was for since it would seem like there'd be substantial overlap for what they can be used for.
 
Reddington777 said:
It's just that elsewhere regarding the parade, some PLA watchers have said that the things shown on parades are usually already "in service". I, ofcourse, wouldn't know any better, so if these were contending designs, then that's absolutely understandable. But if these were all going into service, that's why I questioned what their purpose was for since it would seem like there'd be substantial overlap for what they can be used for.
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Chances are some will be optimized for different roles (and with different cost/capability profiles) from each other.

And economies of scale could still very much be achieved for each type, it all depends on how ambitious one wants to be in terms of MUMT and overall tactical air fleet size and composition into the future.
 
Blitzo said:
Chances are some will be optimized for different roles (and with different cost/capability profiles) from each other.
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In what ways do you think China's use cases for CCAs and MUMT differ from the US? These CCAs all have a high focus on stealth and maybe higher speeds, which is pretty different from the way the US is approaching CCAs.

At risk of sounding even more like an idiot here, China seems to be the only country making CCAs that are supersonic capable AND with a great focus on stealth.
 
lancer21 said:
I remember reading that apparently the chinese found low-tier CCAs to be near useless in a peer conflict, hence why the great attention to high-tier CCAs.
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I'd love to read any sources regarding that - in English or Chinese.
Blitzo said:
And economies of scale could still very much be achieved for each type
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Putting these two comments together, given that high end CCAs still aren't exactly order of magnitudes cheaper than your manned stealth fighters, numbers wise what would be a ballpark estimate of intended numbers for a single CCA type? 500 - 700 per type?

Also, are stealthy air frames (like the two tailless designs) by themselves any harder to manufacture than something like the FH-97 looking one? I imagine the cost is probably mostly within the internals...
 
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Reddington777 said:
In what ways do you think China's use cases for CCAs and MUMT differ from the US? These CCAs all have a high focus on stealth and maybe higher speeds, which is pretty different from the way the US is approaching CCAs.

At risk of sounding even more like an idiot here, China seems to be the only country making CCAs that are supersonic capable AND with a great focus on stealth.
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Hard to answer that question, because US efforts for CCA and MUMT are preliminary/beginning at this stage.
 
Grey Havoc said:
Presumably they arrived at that conclusion through a mix of computer simulations and field exercises / trials. Though we can't rule out the possibility that there are institutional or even personal biases involved in some way.
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They might also have simply gone with aircraft types that were easier for their existing infrastructure to produce. Does China have a lot of engines in the 3000-8000 lb thrust class? There are a half dozen US options from several manufacturers off the top of my head, but there’s a lot less commercial aviation development in China. Using larger military turbofans might have been a faster way of achieving initial capability.

I suspect a lot will be learned by both countries once they start experimenting with CCA types at scale.
 
Josh_TN said:
They might also have simply gone with aircraft types that were easier for their existing infrastructure to produce. Does China have a lot of engines in the 3000-8000 lb thrust class? There are a half dozen US options from several manufacturers off the top of my head, but there’s a lot less commercial aviation development in China. Using larger military turbofans might have been a faster way of achieving initial capability.

I suspect a lot will be learned by both countries once they start experimenting with CCA types at scale.
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They have the AEF100 which is a 10kN class engine similar to the FJ-44 on the YFQ-44, I expect it to be able to scale up like the FJ-44 series if they really wanted. For the middle end of the spectrum I don't think they have much commercially but could easily use something like the WS-17 which is an Al-322 class engine and is readily available. The only thing they really lack is an engine that could do 6000-8000lbf but they could either derate something like the WS-21 or make a AEP400 derivative similar to how the AEF100 came to be from AEP100. Engine dev is pretty secretive even for commercial projects like the CJ series so there could be quite a lot of engines that we don't know about.
 
An image of a large flying wing UAV was leaked in flight, while most suggest it to be (finally) the CH-7 others are not sure and argue it could be also the much larger WZ-X since the wingspan appears to be wider, the landing gear looks different & maybe this one is twin engined?!

IMG_2486.jpeg
 
Currently, using heavy fighters in this era appears to hold their value quite well, which may be why the CCA is heavier and opts for more powerful engines. In any case, ammunition is far cheaper than the aircraft itself.
The PLAAF employs a significant number of Sukhoi aircraft. The heavy airframes' payload capacity and endurance allow them to see more operational use and broader application scenarios compared to medium fighters. This trend is also observable in the design of sixth-generation fighters, indicating that heavy fighters are more favored by the PLAAF than smaller airframes.
Considering the tactical objectives of the PLAAF itself, this tendency appears quite cautious and reliable.
It seems that air combat might have entered the age of the Invincible-class battleship, guys.
 
GTX said:
Maybe it should say a "Chinese copied...":
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Nah--it'd have straight wings too then.

China is doing nothing less than building (for reals) every concept plane we grew up reading about in Pop Mech, Pop Sci, and other magazines.

You know, all the concept planes our own governments and businessmen turned their nose up at.

(mutters curses)
 
lancer21 said:
Video of the CCA line-up from today's rehearsal. We can see another tailed CCA apart from the YFQ-42 style one, plus what looks to be the large CAC Little Leaf.
https://twitter.com/x/status/1959246026046406777
View: https://x.com/guyanmuchan001/status/1959246026046406777/video/3
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The three new CCA's spotted
Two smaller ones with vertical stabilizers, and another massive one that could be 17-18m long.
Screenshot_20250823_221633_Samsung Internet.jpg 1000003672.jpg Screenshot_20250823_221623_Samsung Internet.jpg

The large one could be the same as the one seen before, but it seemingly has a protrusion from the side view, which may or may not make it different, or that it wasn't visible from the front angle we had before.
1755983910835.png
 
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Nx4eu said:
The three new CCA's spotted
Two smaller ones with vertical stabilizers, and another massive one that could be 17-18m long.
View attachment 782447View attachment 782448View attachment 782449

The large one could be the same as the one seen before, but it seemingly has a protrusion from the side view, which may or may not make it different, or that it wasn't visible from the front angle we had before.
View attachment 782452
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Yes I agree ... three "already seen before" ones and three new ones:

CCA 3x old.jpg CCA 3x new.jpg
 

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