You would think that interceptors would be cued against opposing MPA and surveillance aircraft by your own surveillance aircraft and MPAs. For China that would be the Y-8 High New (Gao Xin) aka Y-8GX variants. There are already seven spotted variants of the line.

That also kind of answers a question posted in the SDF, why the model of the next generation Y-7 MPA, now in prototype stage, is packing heat (heaters).

The Scenario:

You work in the marketing division of a major weapons manufacturer and after sipping you cup of coffee early one morning, you find a memo. The memo gives you a directive from the CEO entrusting you to market one of the major new products of the company – a kick ass fighter plane. You believe that the fighter plane has great potential – it could become the next F-16 or MiG-21 and you are determined to validate the confidence vested in you by your CEO. This is your chance to make a break and you are all ready to take it!

How would you market this fighter plane?

Do it the old fashioned way. Get the decision makers into hotel suites and arrange appointments for them with high class hookers. 🙂

Sorry to say about your ignorance that but from the designer interview of the Kunlun, it is stated that the engine is based on all Chinese IP, and not from the R-11 series. It is for this reason the designer got awarded for technical achievement, something that was never given to the people who reverse engineered the R-11 and made the WP-7 and WP-13 series. Further more the core was intended to be used in all forms of different applications, including stationary and shipping.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200205/31/eng20020531_96870.shtml

The No.1 Group Corp of China Aviation Industry announced Thursday that the first jet-engine designed by China herself and of her own intellectual property rights has made its appearance.

Named “Kunlun”, the engine, of advanced technology and reliable in performance, has passed the examination and appraisal of the state for designing as fixed model and is up to the standard for equipping the Chinese airforce.

The sci-tech result has after all placed the Chinese jet-engine onto the historical stage for self-development, marking China to become, after the USA, Britain and France, the fifth country in the world that is able to design and manufacture independently the jet-engine. Therefore, it has put an end to the long history in which China could only copy, improve or remodel the engines of others, but was unable to produce jet-engine of her own.

The successful design and manufacture of the “Kunlun” jet-engine symbolizes a “landmark” in the development of the Chinese Aviation Industry. In the process of research and manufacture almost 40 new technologies, new materials and new workmanship have been used.

Scores of such technological problems as unmatchable pressures of high and low compressors, causing the breaking of vanes have been overcome, thereby solving hundred such problems as exposed in the ground experimentation and trial flying in the air.

The “Kunlun” jet-engine is the one self-studied and designed by Shenyang Jet Engine Research Institute of No.1 Group Corp of China Aviation Industry and manufactured jointly by factories and institutes concerned.

It is the jet-engine in which China has traversed over the first and whole course of research and development. It is the turbo-jet engine of medium thrust, so far the most advanced of its kind in China and enjoys a bigger potential for development in performance and duration of life. The engine with its developed type is able to meet the needs of the Chinese airforce for turbo-jets of medium thrust or even a bit over.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2002/11/12/157721/airshow-china-indigenous-engine.html

Airshow China – Indigenous engine

AVIC I unveiled China’s first indigenously developed modern after burning turbojet fighter engine at the show. The Kunlun II is designed to power Chinese air force J-7 and J-8 fighters and has a thrust-to-weight ratio of about 7:1. Designed by Shenyang Engine Design, the 17,500lb-thrust (78kN) powerplant has cooled turbine blades, an annular combustion chamber and digital anti-surge and condition monitoring systems.

Does not look like the output specs matches that of the R-25-300, which as 68kn thrust with afterburning. That spec is already matched to the WP-13B series.

The Kunlun is an engine core isn’t nor appears designed to be intended for just military use and that’s something of a different banana that an engine solely designed and optimized for a small fighter.

http://english.people.com.cn/200506/23/print20050623_191974.html

Fighter with Kunlun aeroengine succeeds in first flight in NE China

A new-type fighter carrying a home made “Kunlun” aeroengine succeeded in first flight in May at an airport in northeast China, according to Science and Technology Daily’s report.

In June, the QD 128 gas turbine, a derivative of the Kunlun aeroengine was delivered to the Daqing oil field. This is the first generator unit for commercial use. The gas turbine is expected to be put into use in July.

Only a few countries in Europe and America have the capability to design and manufacture aeroengine and gas turbine independently at present. With independent intellectual property rights, the Kunlun aeroengine and its derivative QD 128 light gas turbine have filled the void in China and shows the bright future of China’s aeroengine industry.

On May 20, 2002, China’s first independently designed aeroengine – Kunlun turbojet engine passed appraisal for finalization of design in Shenyang.

By People’s Daily Online

As far as I know, the R-25 is a new design from the R-11 and R-13, and which included an all new compressor stage. You cannot keep pushing the design further in output and new materials without reaching some point that the old design had reached its limits and a new design is required.

Just because there are engines available, does not mean you can copy it without access to the core theory of the engine. This kind of information you cannot get just by looking at the engine. Otherwise think about it, China has a lot more access to GE, Rolls Royce and PW engines without even leaving the country. If you want to figure these things out from scratch without the documentation, its going to take a lot of experimentation and research, and in the end, all that work can have been better use in designing a new engine from scratch. Often working with legacy baggage is more difficult that starting with a clean sheet of paper. Frankly it looks China had reached to that point.

Furthermore the R-25 does not match China’s requirements, whose power output can be obtained by further boosting the WP-13 series (WP-13A to WP-13B). And you seem to forget about the WP-13B (68kn), which had more power than the WP-13A series. The WP-13B series is the one that had roughly the same power as the R-25-300. So why would they have to come out with the WP-14 with a new number, if they already have the WP-13B? The J-8IIs were perfectly fine with the WP-13B and the plane had already reached the end of their development life. Putting the Kunlun on the J-8II was more to test and certify the engine rather than being an original plan to upgrade the J-8II into a new variant.

What China was looking to achieve was to create a core design of their own that can be adapted to different uses, from air both military and civilian to shipping to stationary. In so doing they can maximize their research and development and produce a family of designs from one single core.

The J-10 guardian was only erected last July, so you still have to wait for an update in the area to cover this time period.

Nevermind, I found it and the J-10 isn’t visible.

Too soon. GE maps aren’t updated and when they are, its about six months behind actual time at least. The J-10 guardian was only installed last month. Don’t expect to see anything in GE until updates in 2009 at least.

The coastline was never really what its all about. The EP-3 was “spying” on an island. All it mattered was the distance to that island, which was Hainan.

There were reports and activity that indicated to a good suspicion that the PLAN might be doing something in that area. The EP-3 went to investigate. While interceptions are normal, the PLANAF conduct them all the time, this one was particularly sensitive. Today, we all know what this was all about–a full scale naval base that includes China’s largest facilities for nuclear submarines and a submarine cave. Everything from boomers like the 094 to the 052C destroyers.

Today, sending an EP-3 to check out this “secret” base out seemed rather a waste of time, considering you can book yourself in any number of the 5 star hotels across the harbor and view everything, while playing on a five star golf course, or stroll across the beach. Wasn’t a Miss Universe or Miss World pageant was held there?

As far as I know, and fair is fair, if the Chinese or the Russians sent planes or subs just outside of the 12 nautical mile zone, the US cannot do anything about it but track its presence. During the Cold War, I believe the Russians did just that, and this year, sent Bears close enough to Guam to track and “greet” the Nimitz battle group doing exercises at that time.

No, it’s not reinventing the Alfa class – they used the reactors to drive a steam plant, driving a shaft. In the tea-kettle concept, the reactor unit just provides electrical power, which is then used to power an electric propulsor unit. The whole point is that is takes up a lot less space, and is much less maintenance intensive than using a normal drive shaft.

Then you’re referring to Rickover’s “Holy Grail”, using MHD (Magnetohydrodynamic) principles to create electricity (not to be confused with MHD drive, which uses the same principle to create a propeller less sub).

Or are you referring to the use of RTGs?

Also, the problems of the reactor can be dealt with; there are a number of ways of avoiding coolant solidification, or dealing with it should it occur. The reactor can, obviously, sit on standby; but it is also possibly to keep the cooland artificially ‘warm’, and even re-melt the metal. Similarly, though many of the liquid metals are corrosive, that isn’t necessarily a problem, since there are materials that can be used that will not corrode. This is especially true of lead-cooled fast reactors, since they do not need to be pressurised, hence there are a number of alternative materials that are viable.

The aim, as I have stated, is not to build small nuclear submarines, but rather to build cheaper nuclear submarines. The size of these subs would likely be in the 3-4,000 ton displacement range, with crews of 50-70 (still large enough to have proper shifts, and maintain full damage control capability). A lot of the smaller submarines have small crews at the expense of capability. For instance, many can only muster a full set of crew when needed, i.e. by borrowing crews from the off-duty shift; which only works for short periods. With fifty or so, you can have two full shifts, with everyone that is needed for a tactical situation. This is one reason why, despite automation (etc…), the Collins has over forty crew, and the Japanese subs have even more, with around seventy crew.

Well the Alfa only had one less of 30. You don’t exactly build cheaper submarines by making them smaller; cost of submarine isn’t proportion to its size, weight and displacement.

A note on natural circulation. Most sub reactors today has some sort of natural circulation even if they don’t advertise it. The ones on the LA class, can run on natural circulation on low power settings. Those that do advertise this, are not pump less either, like those in the Ohio class. They still need the pumps in the high power settings or in case of emergency. What’s more important is to be able to increase the operating range of the reactor while using natural circulation before the pumps have to kick in. You need pumps as a final safety ace always.

Going back to the Alfa, yes there are ways to lower the required liquid temperature. But these ways involve adding additives like Bismuth, which makes the coolant corrosive and the additives themselves can result in being becoming radioactive under neutron bombardment either by becoming a radioisotope, or move up in the element chart to become a radioactive element (Bismuth to Polonium).

Sodium isn’t corrosive, but when exposed to water, reacts and one of the byproducts is hydrogen gas, which is explosive. Sodium, unlike lead, tends to become radioactive under neutron bombardment. Mercury, although liquid in room temperature, has been ruled out early due to being toxic.

Personally I tend to favor lead, not just because of its density and safety properties, but because it also acts as a radiation shield on its own, so you can actually reduce the size of the reactor, as the coolant acts as both coolant and shield. For some reason, the sodium cooled reactor can’t be pumpless, but the lead cooled reactor can.

Liquid Sodium reactor

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Sfr.gif

Liquid Lead reactor

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Lfr.gif

Now if you want a reactor to be fail safe, you would need a pebble bed design. There is only one currently operating pebble bed in this world, the HTR-10 in China, based on a working German design that was killed by politics, and another one being designed for South Africa. No design yet that combines pebble bed with liquid metal cooling. Basically the idea that you need a sphere—shape that is totally equidistant in all directions—in order to have Doppler Broadening, which is what you need to automatically kill nuclear fission once the temperature goes past a certain level. The idea that as the fuel becomes hot, heat makes the fuel less dense, and when its less dense, less nuclear fission will occur. HTR-10 has demonstrated that you can literally pull out all the control rods from the reactor, and the reactor shuts down by itself. The other advantage of having pebble bed, is that you can replace pebbles on the fly, take used ones out of the bottom and add new ones on the top, eliminating the need for expensive refits to refuel the reactor.

As for gas cooled reactors, the whole study about it is being of low power densit is focused on graphite moderated reactors but failed to account that the best power densities are produced by fast neutron or fast reactors. Fast reactors has the highest energy for its neutrons and tends to produce more neutrons than it needs to fission with. The excess neutrons can be used to convert thorium and uranium into plutonium as fissionable fuel, so the reactor actually generates more fuel as it goes. PWRs cannot be fast reactors, and can only be thermal neutron reactors, meaning neutrons that are rather “slow”, because water is a neutron moderating element by itself. But liquid metal and gas cooled reactors do not have such neutron moderation and can be used as fast reactors.

The other point about gas cooled reactors, using helium is that you can use the superheated helium to drive a Brayton cycle turbine (closed cycle turbine) without steam generation and turbines. Cutting out the steam circuit stage you can reduce the size of the system. Helium itself is inherently safe, it does not burn, its non toxic, and does not become radioactive (the radioactive isotope for Helium, He-5, has a 7.6×10−22 second half life) so the turbine it drives does not become radioactive

But you can cut out turbines even further with true direct MHD generation. The coolant itself must be electrically conductive and turned magnetic. For the most part, the preferred mediums are either liquid metal or gas in plasma or ionized form.

In any case, if we list down the smallest nuclear subs you can get some perspective of the technologies used and in respect to their size.

1. Smallest- Alfa class, roughly 2300mt surface, Liquid lead cooled Reactor with Shaft drive
2. Tied with 1. – Tulibee class, roughly 2300mt surfaced, 2700mt dived, PWR with turbo electric drive.
3. Rubis class – 2500mt surfaced, PWR with turbo electric drive
4. Skipjack class – 3000mt surfaced, PWR with shaft drive.

In comparison, a Kilo is 2300 mt surfaced, and a Collins around 3000 mt.

The fact that old subs like the Skipjack are already that small means that making nuclear subs small is a no brainer. They actually started small, and grew in size as requirements packed in. The Tulibee is another old sub. However, it should be noted that the shaft driven subs here are faster than the electric drive ones, with the Alfa <40 knots, and the Tulibee at 25 knots.