How on earth supercruise brings a definite advantage is beyond me.

You are completely wrong.

First, I must say that when there was all that debate about how would be the PAKFA and what requirements should have, I remember I said that SC should not be a goal, I said this because two points.

1- I knew already the F-22 SC capability was nothing near for something practical.
2- The f-35 won’t have this capability.

But sometimes, we are just stuck in the “X against Y” thinking, that we forget about the requirements and the advantages of a determined feature.

Traveling fast long distances HAS a clear tactical advantage, it makes you more flexible tactics, decrease enemy’s time of reaction, and mainly it gets you in a better position to start the fight at the place and aspect yo want it.

For example (among many situations I could say), if you have this advantage you can approach to the target from it’s six at long range, before the merge, without losing the probabilities of missing its interception.

So traveling long distances fast, is actually very important, and in fact, is a more solid feature than the overrated stealth.

I believe people don’t understand that the Flanker is a completely different machine than the F-15/14 planes.

People can be surprised by the F-22’s “supercruiser” performance…I’m sure Flanker pilots aren’t, just take a look at the Flanker FAIs records…

http://su-27.com/info/records/

The Flanker is a interceptor and a fighter at the same time, is funny the commentary that says the 35’s engines are outdated by 10-20 years compared with the F-15E’s ones…both engines are meant for very different uses and requirements, and I’m pretty sure that the Flanker ones are the most demanding, people don’t understand what they are talking about.

You know, somehow I find this funny, because you have a huge glass from the canopy that is not faceted, and suddenly designers are worried of a small section of glass that must be faceted.

You know how that mess is called?

Different suppliers.

Is a little cute nice bird…but is a demonstrator o a prototype? Its intakes seems to be very small, probably supercruiser is not a goal?

Paint it yellow and I would call it Tweety.

Unfortunately the F-117 will never be as stealthy as more modern non-faceted designs.

Wonder why every project for RCS reduction not dealing with aerodynamic issues goes with the faceted solution…

You know why? I will tell you.

Because is not worth the trouble.

The j20 was designed with maneuverability in mind, that we have not seen any display showing its capability doesn’t mean it won’t be an agile aircraft.

The design shows a plenty of aerodynamic features and details that are common for a highly agile aircraft, is just in the post-stall and low subsonic flight regime that i would say this plane won’t match other 4-5 gen fighters, the j20 is more a Typhoon than a Rafale, although i believe the Typhoon will be slightly better at that area.

Anyway, for me, is interesting to try to find what is the purpose of this plane.

It´s IRST/EO system is located beneath it nose, which show you that is a installation for ground surveillance.

But then, its bomb bay is not placed in the optimal location to carry a lot of weight for air ground missions.

Then, you can see the aerodynamic layout is for a fighter, the canard delta was the favorite configuration for the JSF program, but then was dropped because issues with heavy loads of weapons and problems with low speed handling for carrier operations (given the weight an other programs requirements).

Then you see that such intake has not been tested for supercruiser aircraft, even the F-XX renders don’t show such a big bump for the DSI, and some proposals don’t even have it.

Why the wing is moved towards the back of the fuselage?…I mean why must be placed that far back, then you try to figure it out.

This aircraft is a big mystery.

Summary = “J-20 is draggy, and underpowered, so it has to be designed as interceptor”. No, an interceptor cannot be draggy and underpowered.

Maneverability would depend heavily on weight, a 3 ton difference will turn J-20 from a flying brick to a decent dogfighter. Without empty weight, all speculations are baseless. However no matter how light J-20 is, one thing is far more certain: With less thrust, similar/greater drag, and lack of variable inlets, J-20 will have way lower (kinematic) top speed to T-50.

Plus, J-20 has no features to prioritize top speed. Canopy, fixed inlets, big canards, all moving stabilizers and AL-31 engines do not belong to a high speed oriented design.

Since we are speculating, my mk1 eyeball inspection says main wings are located way too at the back, that “canard”s will need to generate substential lift to balance the aircraft. As such, J-20’s aerodynamic layout is more like tandem wing to a canard-delta. This, combined with all moving vertical stabilizers, tells me J-20 is more oriented towards high maneuverability than people think.

Yes, I also realized the wing is located far behind, this give me some doubts about how much the weapon bay could carry.

I must agree that we can only speculate right now, but there is the possibility that Chinese engineers are doing it wrong 🙂

I believe the aircraft itself is optimized for supersonic maneuverability, i recall a very good observation about its intakes, that most likely are too small for a supercruiser engine, so i think SC is not the main goal, anyway, the su-27 has demonstrated a very good range (about 1000km) at Mach 1.5 (according with a FAI record).

I doubt it is designed for a great performer in subsonic agility, at least not in post stalling maneuvers, that wing is way far too back to think that , and has not the right aspect to think is designed for subsonic sustained G.

Most likely for instantaneous G performance or sustained supersonic turning.