there has been no such info released. but one can guesstimate, based on pl12 missile footprint. said missile is 4 meters long and has packed width/depth of some 47 cm.

if pl15, as seen on j20 is to be carried, length will be the same but width/depth drops to some 40 cm. weapon bay size is longer and deeper than one in f22, that much is likely. it may be narrower though. and there are no separate side weapon bays.

It doesn’t have visible actuators because the wing is thicker and it has a similar mechanism for moving the flaps as f-15 or su-27 have.

It doesn’t have IRST because it’s a concept and technology demonstrator. It probably has a bunch of subsystems used on flanker, readily available to Shenyang.

It is indeed interesting the poster shows actuators under the wing, it may point to a further refined variant (possibly past the tech demonstrator stage) that is in works – possibly pointing to a whole new, thinner wing.

Is there a story behind that image? Why two russian air force transports in egypt?

The demand might refer to number of planes projected for Chinese market and Russian market.
Anyhow, any design completion at this early stage is far, far from final. I am sure it’s more of a compilation of requirements and general layout and class. I doubt any of the fine engineering documents have been created so far.

There’s always politics to be considered. Xian is as big producer of combat airplanes for Chinese air forces as Shenyang. Perhaps even slightly bigger. Government won’t just stop ordering from them. It is more likely a new product will be some day made by xian to replace jh7, but in the meantime maybe this new variant is a temporary measure…

Likewise, Shenyang can’t just double their flanker production quickly and not let that affect the final pricetag. Also, flankers offer stuff jh7 don’t so they are bound to be pricier even in their current form and with current production rate.

Maybe some people would like to pay more to get more capability, but as mentioned, politics are often in play. Perhaps PLAAF wants to have a clearly defined striker and fighter regiments, perhaps PLAAF couldn’t afford to have as many regiments it must have (again, due to politics, overall system performance be damned) if all regiments switched to more capable planes.

I believe jh7 will continue to be produced for several more years and the hiatus (2-3 years long, i was wrong before saying it was 1-2 years long) is due to change to a new variant and possible issues delaying the new variant.

thing is, chinese government likes to keep different manufacturers happy and in business. xian is a big supplier, one of biggest three, and without jh7 programme they’d have little to do. h6k production volume is fairly low and i don’t see it going on for more than a decade. Full rate y20 production is A) several years away and B) still probably not going to be more than several per year, perhaps 10.

Also worth noting is that plaaf and planaf combined have ordered roughly 60-70 new combat planes each year. and that’s been going on for decades now, as far as i can follow. planes get more complex and costly, that’s true, but PLA budget was also growing considerably during the last 20ish years.

So i don’t see either plaaf/planaf suddenly slowing down the renewal of the fleet, nor does it seem logical that xian would suddenly lose at least half of its earnings.

I see J-20 replacing J11 units as it gets built. But that’s some years away still. What’s to come sooner is J10b and J16 replacing J7 and j8 units, like i said. At the same time JH7 will keep replacing Q5 units, as it has before.

J15 production is likely to be sporadic and fairly slow, to slowly build up the force as there’s no pressing need since the other carriers are years away, perhaps over a decade away (if we’re talking about two more).

I find it strange that pakda will be subsonic yet use nk-32 engine’s core. I mean, to use an engine that was meant to be supersonic, remove its cold section and afterburer then make a new cold section, probably pushing the bypass rate even more – it seems a strange choice. nk32 had 135 kn or so of dry thrust. A newly developed variant will harly have less and could have 20% more (20% being the improvement in dry thrust of 117 over al31f)

But even if we’re talking about just 135 kn of thrust, that’s whopping 540 kn of dry thrust for pakda, IF it uses four engines. For a subsonic flying wing that’s way, way too much. Unless we’re talking about a 300 ton (mtow) bomber, larger than anything else in history. It becomes even bigger if new engine variant has more thrust than old nk32.

Which is why i see it plausible that pak-da will in fact be a twin engine bomber. two modernized nk32 with 20% more dry thrust would give some 320 kn, roughly on par with b2, which for a subsonic flying wing configuration is plenty. That’d allow for a 180ish ton (mtow) bomber of b2-like perfomance. It also sounds about right for what Ruaf might want to replace their existing bombers.

would it make sense to go through that effort without exhaust also featuring ir signature supression? or does the shiny coat suggest the exhaust signature will also be supressed?