Chapter 273 Flying Leopard, regained a new life
After assigning the tasks, everyone quickly got back into the intensive work.
Chang Haonan had not participated in the improvement work of the JH-7 before, so Yao Mengna volunteered to take over the task of briefing him on the progress of the project.
As an aircraft that is not a completely new design, the JH-7 has no extra space inside the fuselage to insert other electronic equipment, so it can only remain roughly the same. The difficulty in the transformation process actually mainly comes from Deformation of the body caused by relatively intensive use over the past few years.
Especially when it comes to some important structural parts, if you build a new one completely according to the data on the original design drawing, you may not be able to replace it.
This is actually a common problem faced when refurbishing second-hand mobile phones, or mid-life upgrades. It is also why overhauling one often takes longer than building a new one.
In the future, engineers will generally use 3D laser scanning and 3D printing to solve such problems, but in 1997, Chang Haonan and the others could only rely on manual measurement of deformation and the experience of veteran workers to solve this problem. question.
Another troublesome thing is caused by the foundation of the old aircraft.
When the JH-7 was being designed, the Chinese Air Force had only a few aircraft equipped with radars, and had never considered such a lofty upgrade as an electronic warfare modification.
Therefore, there is not enough space reserved for transmission lines, and the aircraft power supply is not modular in design.
During the early transformation, Yao Mengna and the others had no choice but to let several subsystems share the same power cord and common ground wire.
“As for the space problem of the aircraft, although the structure of the aircraft cannot be significantly modified, we can dismantle some unnecessary equipment. At least the receiving antenna for passive radar must be installed into the aircraft.”
Chang Haonan can do without the other things for the time being. Anyway, this J-Handian-7 is planned to be closer to an air defense suppression combat platform like the F16CJ used to perform SEAD (of course there is also anti-SEAD on the Chinese side) missions, and Full-time electronic warfare aircraft like the EA6B and EA18G will definitely have to be newly designed on the future J-11 platform.
But as the basis for the entire improvement, the signal receiving antenna of the passive radar cannot be omitted.
"Unnecessary equipment?"
Yao Mengna and Tang Changhong, who were standing next to the plane, were both stunned.
How can there be any unnecessary equipment on something like an airplane?
“Just like a machine gun.”
Chang Haonan walked up and patted a double-barreled 23mm cannon in the lower right corner of the JH-7 fuselage.
“The nose position must still be reserved for the original flat-panel slot antenna, so we need two antennas to be responsible for passive signal reception in the lower hemisphere and the upper hemisphere respectively.”
"We can slightly modify the vertical tail of the aircraft on the top, and install it on the bottom where the original cannon was."
In fact, this is also a common practice for several later electronic warfare aircraft. After all, with the development of the times With the advancement of close-range combat missile technology, there are fewer and fewer air battles in which machine guns can be used.
As for letting an electronic warfare aircraft go into a dogfight, even normal people cannot do it...
"But if the cannon is removed, will the aircraft's combat capability be affected... …”
Tang Changhong, the general manager of the new model Feibao, is still worried.
This is not just a matter for the aviation industry sector.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, the training methods and organizational capabilities of the aviation force were far less flexible than they would later be.
It can even be said to be a bit dogmatic.
For example, at the beginning of this year, the new tactics training conducted by the Air Force required mobilization at the entire military level.
Of course there is no other way. Since the overall training level of the aviation force in the past thirty years has been really difficult to describe, if such strict restrictions are not implemented and the basic skills are clarified first, it is impossible to know how many mistakes will be made.
In this environment where the Chinese Air Force has not even completed missileization, and only has a few dozen aircraft with beyond-visual-range combat capabilities, machine gun combat is the mainstay for quite a few units. , even the only way to fight.
So in the training syllabus, machine gun shooting against air and ground occupies a considerable share.
If you now create an aircraft without cannons, it means either updating the training standards, or treating electronic warfare aircraft as a new aircraft category and coming up with a completely new syllabus.
Training standards involve assessment standards, and assessment standards involve assessment results. In peacetime, assessment results are closely related to a series of personnel work such as awards, job promotions, etc.
In short, one move can affect the whole body, which is far from being summed up by "If you don't have machine guns, then you won't practice."
“Take a long-term view. This is no longer the 1970s. Missiles have undergone earth-shaking changes compared to those years. Besides, it is impossible for electronic warfare aircraft to engage in combat.”
Chang Hao Of course Nan is aware of the twists and turns involved, but as the complexity of aviation operations continues to increase, more flexible training and organizational methods are imperative.
If that doesn't work, you can also throw this single aircraft together with the Y-8 platform special aircraft of the North Sea Fleet.
In short, as long as your thinking does not slip, there are always more solutions than difficulties.
Tang Changhong held the side of the plane and lowered his head to think.
On the one hand, what Chang Haonan said does make sense, and in recent years, the aviation forces of the navy and air force have indeed updated their tactics and training methods.
On the other hand, there is really no better solution.
The landing gear bay of the JH-7 is designed inside the fuselage. The advantage is that it frees up wing space for large-sized ammunition. The disadvantage is that it takes up a considerable part of the fuselage space.
I really can’t find any free space.
If you don't dismantle the cannon, you can only dismantle the pylon on the centerline of the belly.
More troublesome.
So in the end, I nodded:
"Okay, let's change it according to your plan."
"In addition, we need to modify the overall power supply strategy, and it is expected to remain Pylon No. 3/7 used for the electronic warfare pod and the radar system share the 115V/400Hz AC power supply on the engine, and the remaining equipment uses another one to avoid impact conduction interference caused by drastic changes in the power of the electronic warfare equipment. ”
"Also, the power supply network must use a two-wire system and a shielding method. The control cables of each subsystem must be shielded and the ground wires must be shielded. Wave protection sleeves must be used and the ground wires must be assembled 50cm apart to ensure good grounding..."
Chang Haonan talked about the experiences he could think of one by one. These were summed up in more than ten years of work in his previous life.
With many things in engineering, if there is no master to guide you, you can only make progress if you suffer a loss.
For example, the issue of separately powering the weapon system and the electronic warfare system was because in a certain model he participated in, the passive interference launcher and another active interference launch system initially shared the same "Bomb Bay E Bus" power supply, and the latter will produce impact interference when powered on under certain circumstances, causing the primer of the interference bomb launcher to be fired, resulting in accidental projectile launches.
This fault "the aircraft will automatically release infrared decoys as soon as the jamming system starts working" troubled the project team for a long time. It was finally discovered that it was caused by the internal resistance coupling of the public power supply.
In short, with Chang Haonan's not-in-depth participation, the final stage of the J-Handian-7 modification work was progressed smoothly.
Now, there is only the last piece of the puzzle left before a complete "Wild Weasel".
Anti-radiation missile.
(End of this chapter)