Chapter 884 The Route of Future Early Warning Aircraft

The plane made a tight turn over Nanzheng and then slowly landed on the runway of Chenggu Airport.

Compared with Shengfei or Rongfei, which Chang Haonan has often visited in recent years, Qinfei Group is indeed far behind in terms of scale and development level.

This is not difficult to see from the situation at the airport.

After all, it was just a backup set up just in case during the third-line construction stage, and its status was similar to that of the Guihang Group in the mountains.

Therefore, after the end of the special period, the status itself is rather embarrassing.

Before Chang Haonan was reborn, Qin Fei had even reorganized assets with Hao Fei.

It is said to be a reorganization, but in fact it is merged into the latter.

After all, the geographical location and business scope of the two are relatively close.

Against the background that there were only three aircraft models of more than 80 tons at that time (Yun-20, Y-9, and H-6K), there was really no need to retain two production bases for large aircraft.

But in this life, the development of China's aviation manufacturing industry has been more than 100 million points better than in the original timeline, so Chang Haonan actually still intends to lead his little brother Qin Fei Group.

…

Since we were here to attend the delivery ceremony of the Air Police 200, naturally there were two chief engineers waiting on the tarmac.

Wang Xiaomo and Liang Shaoxiu.

A little further away, the Air Police 200 has been painted in the gray and white paint characteristic of naval aviation, and even has the four characters "Chinese Navy" written on the side.

There were many maintenance personnel wearing blue 87-style marine camouflage standing around.

Obviously, at the operational level, the aircraft should have been taken over by comrades of the Naval Aviation.

What we have to do tomorrow is just a handover ceremony.

Chang Haonan is naturally very familiar with Air Police 200.

Not only the overall design plan came from him.

And about a year ago, he also verified high-level data dimensionality reduction technology on this aircraft.

It can be said that hardware and software are grasped at once.

Therefore, after some simple greetings, what was originally supposed to be a two-on-two arrangement, unknowingly turned into three other people introducing the basic situation of the entire project to Zhang Hongbiao...

"By the way, Mr. Chang."

Liang Shaoxiu, who was walking slightly behind, suddenly stopped Chang Haonan:

"Some time ago, Director Ding and Mr. Liu specially called me to arrange a transport aircraft project to dock with you."

Chang Haonan was stunned:

"Moving so fast?"

Of course he knows this.

After all, it was Chang Haonan himself and Ding Gaoheng who first proposed it.

But a few months later, the aviation industry has begun to organize research and development efforts, which is indeed a bit unexpected.

But then I thought about it, now the leader of the Aviation Industry Group has been replaced by Liu Gaozhuo...

That's reasonable.

Liang Zhuoping cannot be said to be bad, but after all, he is an old man from the head office era. Facing the Aviation Power Group that has taken away half of the family property, it is inevitable that his mentality will be a little unbalanced.

But Liu Gaozhuo has no such psychological baggage.

And he also had a very smooth cooperation with Chang Haonan.

"Ah... Although the leader didn't say it clearly, he is probably worried about not being able to keep up with the progress of your aviation development."

To a certain extent, Liang Shaoxiu can even be said to be the chief engineer brought out by Chang Haonan, so he looked as usual when he said this:

"After all, if the aircraft is waiting for the aviation engine, it can use other models for test flights first, but the aircraft such as the aviation engine cannot even be finalized..."

"There's no need to put too much pressure on it. The turbofan 20 may not be as fast as you think."

Chang Haonan shook his head helplessly:

"Although the core machine is ready-made, the large bypass ratio turbofan still has many unique technical difficulties, and it is difficult to opportunistically..."

Turbofan 10 can serve with such fast efficiency. In the final analysis, it uses the active cooling design of the leading generation to achieve a higher than expected temperature in front of the turbine. Coupled with the overall design of the leading generation, the result is basically the same as the 3.5-generation engine. performance.

At least for now, it cannot be said that China has kept pace with those first-mover countries in the field of aviation development.

There are still shortcomings, and they are not easy to overcome.

However, Liang Shaoxiu is obviously much more optimistic than Chang Haonan himself:

"fine."

He waved his hand:

"You said the same thing when you were designing the anti-icing design for Yun-8."

"The final actual effect was better than the theoretical expectation."

"Is there still this matter?"

Chang Haonan himself didn't even remember.

"have."

Liang Shaoxiu nodded.

Since the other party was so sure, Chang Haonan couldn't say anything else.

His requirements for the Yun 9 project itself are not very high.

In China's system, tactical transport aircraft do not actually need to undertake such heavy tasks of transporting large equipment.

But it must be able to fit in at least a standard size pallet of 3.2 meters wide.

Otherwise, like the Yun-9 modified from the Yun-8 in the previous life, even transporting supplies will be troublesome.

It's very stiff.

Therefore, the chat among several people quickly shifted to content related to early warning aircraft.

"After the Air Police 200 is installed, what is your next plan?"

This question was naturally asked by Zhang Hongbiao.

"Whether it is a balance beam antenna or a T-shaped antenna, it is always inappropriate for a large early warning aircraft."

Wang Xiaomo replied:

"So, we have built a ground simulation device for airborne radar antennas and are testing three-sided fixed arrays and two-sided rotating arrays."

"Can it also be made into a double-sided rotating array?"

As the deputy director of the Science and Technology Commission, Zhang Hongbiao couldn't do any homework, so he had learned about the ring project before coming and knew the antenna design of the three-sided fixed array.

But after all, he is not a professional, and if he expands a little bit, his eyes will turn black.

"Well... From an antenna point of view, it doesn't matter. Just hide the back-to-back antenna design like a balance beam inside the disc-shaped radome."

Wang Xiaomo also saw that the other party was improvising, so he described it in a very popular way:

"The advantage of this is that for a radome of the same size, the single antenna area of ​​a double-sided rotating array can be nearly twice that of a three-sided array, but the total power consumption only increases by about one-third. In detection It will show huge advantages in terms of distance and detection efficiency, but the mechanical structure will be more complex and the weight will be larger.”

"It's not just that."

After seeing that Wang Xiaomo had no intention of continuing, Chang Haonan added:

"The two back-to-back arrays can also be designed with different wavebands. For example, one side uses the S-band for precise scanning, and the other side uses the L-band for anti-stealth detection. Just rotate the corresponding arrays to the mission direction according to different types of mission requirements. "

"But wouldn't there be two blind spots?"

Zhang Hongbiao asked:

"The information I read before said that radar cannot detect the 180° range."

"Of course there are blind spots."

Wang Xiaomo showed a smile.

That’s the look on a professional’s face when they hear a layman’s question:

"However, in most cases, AWACS aircraft are far away from the main battlefield. In fact, the demand for 360° omnidirectional detection is not very large. The problem with balance beams and T-shaped antennas is that the aircraft needs to adjust its route to adapt to the scanning angle, which will have a negative impact on the flight route. limit."

"But if a rotatable disc is designed, the aircraft's heading will still be free, so a smaller field of view is not completely unacceptable. It mainly depends on the user's choice..."

After all, the rotation of mechanical scanning radar is a necessary step for the normal operation of the radar, and the rotation speed is equal to the refresh rate.

But for phased array radar, rotation is only to fill the blindness. After adjusting the angle, it can be stopped without affecting the detection capability.

"Of course, we are also developing some new technologies to reduce the blind area of ​​the double-sided array as much as possible."

After a brief pause, Wang Xiaomo continued:

"The detection angle of a traditional single-sided array is about 120°, but if wide-angle scanning technology, such as a real time delay line, is used to replace the conventional phase shifter, it has the potential to increase to 150° or even 160°, so that the double-sided The blind area of ​​the array will be compressed to a very low level..."

Chang Haonan was just wandering behind, but suddenly he heard a term from Wang Xiaomo that he seemed to have heard some time ago.

"Wait...Academician Wang."

He directly interrupted Wang Xiaomo’s explanation:

"You just said that wide-angle scanning technology can be used to further improve the detection range of the single-sided array?"

"That's right."

Wang Xiaomo and Chang Haonan were old acquaintances, and they were not annoyed after being interrupted midway. They just nodded:

"But this is only something on a theoretical level. The actual situation is far from being as simple as it sounds. I estimate... that it is unlikely to be applied to existing models within at least 10 years."