"Xingyang, what do you think about air supremacy?"
After the first wind tunnel test of the new fighter jet was completed, Song Tianxing and Zhang Xingyang walked on the dim starless grassland to talk.
The roar of construction machinery in the distance is almost constant day and night. Even dozens of kilometers away from the base, the loud noise of giant mining machines can be heard.
The high-quality anthracite coal hidden deep in the ground will not be circulated to the outside world after being mined, but will be transported directly to the thermal power plant at the base.
"The current combat system and the fight for air supremacy have become the first step in starting a war."
Zhang Xingyang has an unimaginable understanding of air supremacy.
"But now the fight for air supremacy is no longer just something that fighter jets can do."
Song Tianxing on the side looked up at the dark sky and said with a little emotion:
"Yes, today's wars are all about systematic confrontation."
As the most important part of the battle for air supremacy, fighter jets must be designed with the needs of war in mind.
The first and most important thing is the positioning of the fighter jet.
In today's era, fighter jets are basically professional.
Air superiority fighters perform operations to seize air supremacy, while ground attack aircraft provide fire support for ground forces. The same is true for more professional anti-submarine aircraft and early warning aircraft.
As for the emergence of fighter jets like Feidian that have to do almost everything, it is actually more due to the fact that the previous generation F-22 hardly encountered confrontation from fighters of equal strength.
In the first dozen years of service, the F-22 failed to achieve any results.
Almost all victories are achieved in simulated battles.
The only real result was shooting down a high-altitude balloon over the mainland after more than ten years of service.
For a capital country that has almost never stopped foreign wars, maintaining such an air force with huge costs but no visible results is not a very cost-effective thing.
This is also an important reason why the F-22 was discontinued after 11 years.
After that, the F-35, which pursues multiple mission capabilities, became the new favorite of the Yingjiang military.
"In fact, for modern warfare, the first important thing is electromagnetic interference and suppression of the enemy."
Zhang Xingyang expressed his own opinions based on the current common understanding.
"In the wars that have occurred in the past two decades, we can see many one-sided wars."
"And these wars all have one thing in common, that is before fighter jets are officially dispatched to seize air supremacy."
"The attackers generally implemented a wide range of electromagnetic suppression, seriously interfering with the opponent's radar and air defense systems."
It was different from the air battles during World War II sixty years ago, where the two sides charged back and forth like knights in the air and strafed the battle with machine guns.
Today's air combat has undergone earth-shaking changes.
The battlefield is no longer limited to the sky. Radar and air defense missile systems on the ground have also become an important part.
In fact, in the wars after the 1950s, the heavenly army in space also became an important part.
At that time, the battlefield was no longer limited to the traditional ground and sky. It became a battlefield from space to under the ocean.
At present, electromagnetic interference and anti-interference are relatively weak links in China.
Professional electronic warfare aircraft that can seize electromagnetic power from the enemy in the sky have not yet been developed.
This places extremely high requirements on the anti-interference ability of fighter jets in air combat.
They are required to still be able to fight in a complex electromagnetic environment.
Judging from the history of previous wars in this world, it is very difficult to do this.
For example, during the air battle in the Bekaa Valley, the attackers successfully obtained the coordinates of the enemy's missile and radar positions by using drones as reconnaissance aircraft.
Then electronic jamming fighter jets were sent out, and after successfully jamming the opponent's radar system, nearly a hundred fighter jets launched a saturation attack on these positions, successfully reducing the opponent's radar and anti-missile missile systems that had cost billions of dollars to build to ashes.
This was also one of the earliest wars in the world that achieved complete suppression of the warring party by seizing electromagnetic power and then air supremacy.
Since then, when designing weapon systems, designers from various countries have inevitably needed to study how to make the weapon system have better anti-electromagnetic interference performance.
This is especially important for countries that do not have electronic warfare jamming aircraft and cannot engage in electronic warfare with each other.
"We still have a long way to go if we want to have professional electronic warfare aircraft."
Song Tianxing said with emotion:
"However, our new fighter jets have enhanced anti-electromagnetic interference capabilities."
Zhang Xingyang nodded after listening and said:
"The battle for electromagnetic power is just a prelude to seizing air supremacy. The real test will still be in the subsequent air battle."
For countries with relatively comprehensive air force development, complete electromagnetic suppression can only occur when facing some relatively backward countries.
Countries that are stronger have certain capabilities to resist electromagnetic interference.
At this time, what needs to be tested is the performance of both fighters and the combat quality of the pilots.
"According to the 4S standards we previously formulated for fourth-generation aircraft, high altitude and high speed are no longer our development focus."
"In their place are advanced radar systems and ultra-long-range air-to-air missiles."
Among today's fighter jets, it is rare to see fighter jets that focus on high altitude and high speed.
The main reason is that the war situation has changed, and the development of radar systems has also made the once infinite pursuit of high speed meaningless.
"However, many of the previously imagined confrontation scenarios involved battles between fourth-generation aircraft and third-generation aircraft."
"If it is a confrontation between fourth-generation aircraft and fourth-generation aircraft, the combat situation will change greatly."
In fact, this has a lot to do with Zhang Xingyang.
Especially in last year's confrontation, the J-10S achieved an incredible 32:1 result.
It also makes everyone's imagination of battle scenes tend to be between fighters with generation differences.
At this time, although Yingjiang's F-22 has completed its first flight, it has not yet entered service, so everyone does not have an accurate understanding of the specific performance of other people's fourth-generation aircraft.
The previous battle situation is still used to apply the confrontation situation that may be faced.
"Because both sides are stealth high-speed fighter jets, the radar systems and stealth of both sides will be tested even more during the battle."
This kind of battle is actually more like two enemies holding shotguns walking in a dark forest. The competition is who can discover the other party first. Discovery means destruction!
"The development of new phased array radars like the Radar Research Institute is going very smoothly."
Zhang Xingyang smiled at Song Tianxing beside him and said.
However, at the next moment, Zhang Xingyang still proposed an idea that few people had thought about at this time.
"In fact, we can develop a batch of stealth unmanned fighter jets and form a combat formation with fourth-generation aircraft."
At this time, fighter formations were still composed of manned fighters.
Drones, in this era, are still mostly responsible for reconnaissance tasks.
Unlike the unmanned fighter jets that flourished later and were capable of almost all tasks such as reconnaissance, strike, electromagnetic interference, etc.
Even after the 1950s, automatic combat systems composed of unmanned swarms have become an indispensable part of the war system.
Among the drones, manned fighter jets have also been freed from their original many tasks and mainly assume the command function in war.
After all, although the intelligent combat system is very mature, humans still need to make decisions on some key orders.
"Explain it in detail?!"
When Song Tianxing heard what Zhang Xingyang said, he immediately became interested.
After all, neither the automatic control system nor the information transmission between data links were very mature at this time, so not many people proposed such a concept.
"First of all, we need to know that it is very difficult to change the combat mission of a current fighter jet after its design is finalized."
Zhang Xingyang saw that he was very interested, so he simply instilled some concepts from decades later into Song Tianxing.
"For example, ground attack aircraft cannot participate in air battles. This means that if they want to be dispatched, they must achieve a certain degree of air superiority by air superiority fighters."
"The same is true for air superiority fighters. After emphasizing air combat performance, if you want to participate in ground attacks, the effect is not as good as that of professional ground attack aircraft."
"Fighters that can perform air-to-ground operations at the same time are not only inferior to professional fighter jets in all aspects, but their complexity and maintenance difficulty will also be greatly increased."
"so what?"
"Can drone formation solve this problem?"
Song Tianxing asked excitedly. He now understood somewhat what Zhang Xingyang was going to say.
However, it has not yet formed a very clear understanding in my mind.
"Mr. Song, you can actually think of this grouping as a modular design."
Zhang Xingyang came up with another concept that is rare in aircraft design, but common in armored vehicles.
The same chassis can be modified into combat vehicles for various purposes, such as anti-tank vehicles, anti-aircraft vehicles, and rocket support vehicles, all of which may use the same chassis.
"Manned fighter jets are mainly used for command purposes, and in the formation, there are professional reconnaissance, strike, and information relay drones."
This can not only greatly improve the combat efficiency of fighter jets, but also enable the group of drones to be quickly replaced when necessary, thereby changing combat targets.
"After entering the battlefield, the reconnaissance drone discovers the enemy's traces through high-performance airborne radar, and then sends the data to the rear strike drone through the high-altitude information relay drone to complete the attack on the target."
Although this kind of work can be completed by manned fighter jets, drones also have considerable advantages over manned fighter jets.
First of all, due to human physiological limitations, fighter jets cannot make extremely overloaded movements, but drones have no such trouble. What limits its overload is only the strength limit of the material.
Secondly, the loss of unmanned fighter jets will not make everyone feel bad, and they can carry out some highly dangerous missions without any scruples. And for a country like China, which has a complete range of industrial categories and a very developed industry, the cost of unmanned fighter jets is not really high, and it can be said to be high quality and low price.
Finally, this kind of grouping can greatly expand the battlefield control range of a single fighter jet.
Generally speaking, the control range of a fighter jet is the range that its radar and missiles can reach.
But for a formation of unmanned fighter jets, because reconnaissance and attack are no longer solely the responsibility of a single airborne radar and missile, the battlefield range that can be controlled has expanded several times.
"In future wars, fourth-generation aircraft equipped with stealth unmanned fighter jets will become the main force in air confrontation."
After Zhang Xingyang finished speaking this paragraph, Song Tianxing fell into deep thought.
Looking at Song Tianxing who didn't seem to fully accept it, Zhang Xingyang decided to continue to increase the dosage of medicine:
"Let me give you an example!"
Later, Zhang Xingyang talked about a real air battle that would happen in the future.
But now, Zhang Xingyang only said it was a hypothesis.
"The air force of country A is all manned fighter jets, while the air force of country B is composed of manned fighter jets and unmanned fighter jets."
"The fighters on both sides are stealth fighters."
"After the war began, Country B adopted a large number of unmanned fighter jets, so their combat strategies became bolder."
"A large number of unmanned stealth delta-wing reconnaissance aircraft and unmanned electronic warfare aircraft are scattered across a battlefield that is one thousand kilometers wide and six hundred kilometers deep."
"And high in the sky, there are dozens of solar-powered information relay drones."
"Although the performance of country A's fighter jets is equally excellent, they were quickly exposed to the eyes of the air force of country B under the nearly endless radar and optical reconnaissance."
"The electronic warfare aircraft electromagnetic suppressed the opponent's fighter jets almost one-on-one."
"Although Country A's fighter jets also have excellent anti-jamming capabilities, there was still an information interruption for several minutes."
"And this time, for them, will be fatal."
"Within these minutes, the reconnaissance aircraft transmitted hostile fighter information to the command fighters and unmanned strike fighters at the rear through the high-altitude solar-powered information relay drone."
"In just a few minutes, with speed comparable to that of a missile, the attacks of unmanned strike fighters swarmed in like wasps!"
"In less than half an hour, all of Country A's fighter jets crashed!"
"Although before they crashed, they achieved an exchange ratio of 1:8 and shot down eight times as many drones as themselves."
"But it won't have any impact on the war, because these unmanned fighter jets are all finished products from the industrial assembly line."
"As long as the pilots who can command the battle are still there, for industrial countries, it is basically not a loss."
After Zhang Xingyang finished speaking, Song Tianxing felt as if he had opened the door to a new world.
And this air battle will be real in the future time and space, and it is this battle that will establish the future position of the Dragon Kingdom in the world.
That's right, country B in the story is a country where humans and animals are still harmless! (End of chapter)
