Chapter 530 The Best Canard Is on the Enemy Plane

When saying this, Andre felt great emotion in his heart.

This sentence was not said by Andre, nor was it a rumor as later generations said. This sentence came from Harry J. Hillaker, the chief designer of General Dynamics Flight Systems in the United States, and the chief designer of F-111 and F-16. At the same time, his other identity was one of the four absolute core members of the Fighter Mafia: the four members included John Boyd, Harry Hillaker, Pierre Spray and Riccioni. The energy maneuver theory they created and perfected guided the design of later fighters.

This is what Chirac said at the bidding meeting for technical documents of advanced fighter jets. At the bidding meeting a few days ago, many companies' designs used canards or even forward-swept wings. Faced with these designs, as the authority presiding over the meeting, Chirac said mercilessly that canards are of no value and the best place to install them is on enemy aircraft!

There is some truth to this statement. The canard is a layout in which the horizontal stabilizer is placed in front of the main wing, while the most common tail is the one in which the horizontal stabilizer is installed at the back.

The history of canards is actually very long. When the Wright brothers invented the airplane, they used canards. However, due to various technical defects, this type of canard did not become popular afterwards. It was not until the successful development of fly-by-wire operation that the canard layout began to reappear.

Compared with the tail layout, the canard layout has advantages, and this advantage is more prominent on statically unstable aircraft. For example, the ordinary trimmed horizontal tail generates negative lift, which means that if the aircraft wants to climb, it must first press down. However, because the canard is in front of the center of gravity, it generates positive lift. When the control stick is pulled up, the nose of the aircraft is lifted directly.

At the same time, the most outstanding contribution of the canard is that the vortex pulled out by the canard and the effect of stabilizing the boundary layer of the main wing can help the aircraft improve its stability and lift coefficient at high angles of attack. In current aerodynamic theory, the use of vortices is crucial.

During takeoff, the positive deflection of the canard can greatly increase lift and reduce the taxiing distance; during landing, it can be used as a speed brake, eliminating the need to use a back speed brake.

These are all advantages, but canards also have disadvantages, the most prominent disadvantage is stealth! When the canard moves, the reflected radar waves generated increase by orders of magnitude, which is not conducive to the stealth of the fighter. At the same time, the aerodynamic interference between the canard and the main wing increases nonlinearly with speed, so it is difficult to control, increasing the complexity of the fly-by-wire operation program; because the canard is much closer to the center of gravity than the horizontal tail, a much larger rudder area deflection is required to balance and control the aircraft. There are also problems such as the requirement of high angle of attack nose-down control torque and the increase of trim resistance and the reduction of maximum trim lift caused by the canard load.

It can be said that the advantages and disadvantages of canards also exist.

In later generations, Europe's Typhoon, Rafale, Gripen and China's J-10 all adopted the canard aerodynamic layout. From a simpler perspective, this is a typical way of compensating for insufficient power with an aerodynamic layout. Due to the lack of advanced high-thrust engines, this compromise method has to be adopted.

The United States has the strongest technological strength, especially its engines, which are simply alien technology. As long as the engine is good, a brick can fly! The fourth-generation aircraft of the United States uses an engine with a thrust-to-weight ratio of 10, which is only achieved by the United States in later generations.

However, China, due to engine limitations, has to adopt the canard layout in the fourth-generation aircraft. After all, the J-20 is very advanced in all aspects of design, but the engine is still a weak point. During the test flight, the AL-31F has been used to make do. Although there are constant reports on the progress of the Taihang engine and the newer WS-15 engine, it is still a question mark. There are many difficulties in the engine issue, and it can only be compensated from the aerodynamic point of view. The canard layout is a last resort.

(I heard that the WS-15 has truly matured. I wish our national defense industry will continue to grow stronger!)

Andre, who came from the later generations, is well aware of the various disadvantages of canards. Now, adding canards to the Su-27 is a superfluous act! Because the Su-27 originally has a conventional aerodynamic layout, adding canards to this basis will make it the only aircraft in the world with a three-wing layout, and the advantages will be offset by the disadvantages!

There was evidence in later generations that, apart from the original Su-33 Sea Flanker that used three-wings, only countries like India, under the persuasion of Russia, used three-wings and "awesome" thrust vector control technology. Others, almost none of them did. Even the Su-35, the old one had a three-wing layout, and the new one also changed to a conventional layout. The Su-27 series aircraft used canards, which were absolutely useless.

This is also the reason why Andre strongly opposed it.

Now, although Andre's position is not high enough, his voice is the most important. At the beginning, Andre strongly supported the T-10's reconstruction, which led to the current Su-27. Now, Andre is strongly opposed to the canard.

Cut off all these projects for developing duck wings! If you have these capabilities, work harder in other areas!

Andrei's words made Simonov's old face blush. The duck wing was actually proposed by Simonov, but now it was ruthlessly criticized by Andrei.

Looking at Simonov's expression, Andre knew that he was the one in charge, so he slowed down his speech: "Comrade Simonov, our new fighter jets need to have balanced performance. If we only want to emphasize maneuverability, it will inevitably affect other performance. For example, for new fighter jets, stealth will affect the survivability of the fighter jets, so it must be regarded as the focus."

Stealth! This is also what Andre attaches the most importance to. After all, in the future, when facing the threat of the American F22, China did not know how much detailed analysis was done, but there was only one conclusion: if you want to fight against the F22, you must have the same stealth aircraft! This is also the reason why the country has made great efforts to develop the fourth-generation aircraft!

"At the same time, in order to detect the enemy's stealth aircraft, our fighter jets need to have more powerful radars. We don't need the backward passive phased array radars that are bulky and heavy. That is not the electronic equipment of the fourth-generation aircraft. What's the progress of our active phased array radars?" Andre continued to ask.

The layman sees the excitement, while the expert sees the details. Andrei came here not just to take a quick look with Ustinov and Kordunov. Many of Andrei's suggestions are even more visionary than those of professional designers.