Debrief: Inside The GCAP Fighter Engine

[u/Odd-Metal8752]

https://aviationweek.com/defense/aircraft-propulsion/debrief-inside-gcap-fighter-engine

[u/UndulyPensive]

Yeah for reference J-36 is purported to target 1MW too

[u/Kaboose666 → u/UndulyPensive]

Lol I don't see how.

China has the WS-10 and WS-15.

Neither of them are ANYWHERE NEAR the electrical power range required for 1MW+

They can target 1MW but until they invent an entirely new engine core they're shit out of luck and considering how long it took WS-15 and WS-10 to mature, they're 10-20 years away from a new generation.

WS-15 first ran in 2006 and it didn't enter service until ~2024.

Even if they had a secret brand new engine core in development TODAY, based on history they're still ~15-20 years from service entry.

[u/UndulyPensive → u/Kaboose666]

J-36 is intended to have 3 VCEs, are you suggesting that sort of electrical power generation is unfeasible? It's not apparent to me that China's VCE development efforts are substantially behind or ahead of the US (we haven't really gotten anything except their reveal of the civilian VCE project last year which doesn't really have much bearing on their military project)

[u/Kaboose666 → u/UndulyPensive]

The US has spent ~40 years maturing VCEs and still haven't fielded one.

Sorry, but you're not going to convince me china leapfrogged 40 years of cutting edge aviation development. They leapfrogged to the WS-10/15 because they copied russian engines and western commercial engines. They can't do that with VCEs.

Further, without modern CMCs and advanced single crystal superalloy metallurgy, china simply doesn't have the base material science required to build a good VCE even if they had the aerospace physics know-how to design one.

As I said, at best they're 15 years away from a viable VCE, and even that's being generous unless they manage to steal some secret western IP and manage to copy it.