Chinese UAVs

Where is the third engine?

The two outriggers are engine pods that the tail structure is attached to and the body pod down the centre does not have an engine at the front or the rear... I wonder if they are mistaken... perhaps there is an APU in one of the engine pods to make it more autonomous for deployment from basic air strips or sections of motorway...

Most civilian aircraft with three engines mainly use all three for takeoff but then only run two engines for more efficient cruise (it means the two main engines can be less powerful and more fuel efficient but allows the aircraft to still be able to take off normally from normal airfields)....

Have to be careful drawing lines on photos and comparing sizes... especially photos taken from great distances.

If you look carefully the unmanned helicopter is on one side of the deck and the big helicopter is on the far side of the deck... which actually makes it look smaller and the unmanned helo look bigger.

In that video they said it weighs 500kgs... perhaps they mistranslated it and it is 5 tons but that would make it rather heavy.

It does not look 10m long in the video.

Which really doesn't actually matter... the physical dimensions are not important... speed and endurance and range are.

Of course it is all well and good making an unmanned helicopter but helicopters on decks are dangerous... for those not familiar with helicopters it is easier to fly them nose in to the wind... on a ship like an aircraft carrier the air can be swirling because the wind will be coming from a direction and can change but also if the ship starts moving the air over the deck can radically change direction in a second.

A helicopter just taking off or just landing will cope with a wind direction or wind speed change by turning its nose in to the wind and flying forward or backward to maintain position on the deck... that means in a conventional helicopter design the tail could be swung without any warning in any direction and lifted up or dropped down... the tail rotor is the most dangerous part of a helicopter on a deck... it is why Kamov with their coaxials dominate Soviet and Russian naval helicopter production and design because coaxials are much less sensitive to cross winds and gusts.

In the video he talks about engines losing power at altitude and their superior engine technology that solved the problem... makes me think they changed from a piston engine to a gas turbine...

Question - does China possess an equivalent of Getan 2 and Lancet drones?

It comes down to need.

Geran has a long flight range and a good payload so such a weapon would be very good for China, but with Lancet, it is evolving into an interesting system.

There is nothing magic about either system where you would say China or any other country couldn't make them, but having said that 10 years ago Russia didn't have either system either... and the military had no real plans for anything like them at the time.

Now that they have had drones used against them and have developed and used drones for themselves they recognise that in some areas they are very useful, and other areas not so much so they have not stopped making artillery and artillery shells and tanks and armoured vehicles to concentrate on making drones, but their drone production rate has increased immensely.

I am sure Russian troops and Chinese troops will train together and I am sure China will notice the massive increase in drone numbers and use in the Russian military and will take note of that and probably look to their own way of fighting and how that might fit in and be useful for them too.

In the 1990s most of my friends asked me what the internet was and why they would use it... these days they download more movies and programmes than they watch on normal TV.

Equally, I remember in the 1980s a few business types had cellphones. They were called brick because they were the size of housebricks with their enormous batteries and large antenna. Most people thought such people were weird and probably had big egos because they could not do without a land line when they were travelling around. In the 1990s and early 2000 more people started to use them, but when the first digital cameras came out and they started attaching them to phones most people wondered why everyone needed a camera with them all the time let alone a phone. These days the quality of the images is much better... I had some very disappointed relatives who thought the camera on their phone was a camera so it should produce great high resolution high quality images. They didn't understand the quality settings on their phones so they set them to allow the greatest number of images possible. They took important photos of children and family and it was only when they talked to me about it that they realised their mistake. When an image looks good on a cellphone screen it does not necessarily look good on an A4 printed page or even a TV screen... where it looks worse than useless.

The Chinese are smart and drones are cheap, so it is not like a super expensive risk to buy some.