6th generation Chinese fighters? Generations of fighter planes
Added 2025-03-01 16:11:47 +0000 UTCSoon will be processed. The extra will be available likely on Monday.
Comments
In the extra will be explained that 6th gen planes may never will come if we stick to the criteria to have visible advantage over the previous generation. I will fix that narration part. Nobody ordered the Su-57 as export and so far just a bit more of them were manufactured as the first large test batch of the F-15A. I cannot take seriously this as a "plane in serivce".
Militavia - Military Aviation & Air Defense
2025-03-03 07:38:43 +0000 UTCAt slightly after 26:30 I think you say "F-16's didn't get this capability until after Cold War" - but it did sound like you said "World War" - I was confused for couple of seconds. Aside from that - I mostly agree (though funnily enough MiG-21 is often cited as an example of aircraft that started as 2nd Gen and ended as 3rd Gen). There aren't many informations that would say that Chinese Aircraft is 6th Gen. Most specialist simply adopted this terminology for the moment, because people and media are hyped about this. I know that in their more specialized talks they do not refer to those aircraft as 6th Gen. There is some interesting things about Chinese Aircraft though that were deduced from the footage (I'm not talking about "seeing" - so really imagining - some kind of advanced sensors on it). It was curious that there are 5 separate control surfaces on the "back" of the wing. For 3 of them - we can see the actuators beneath the flexible RAM coating. For 2 of them we don't. Does it mean that China has basically flat actuators? None of this would make it 6th Gen of course. But sufficiently good performance leap over current 5th Gen, might be something that would earn the moniker of 5.5 or 5+ generation. Maybe. For 5th generation a lot of it was data fusion. And Su-57 is produced, we know it. It also got export deal. Whether it is fully 5th gen fighter - I'll leave that to you, but I know that Comments will hate the fact that you omitted it. Take care in those tough times.
Jan Negrey
2025-03-01 17:48:44 +0000 UTC
