Aircraft Lovers Group
Hobbies & Interests
This group is open to everyone who likes any kind of aircraft
"New" Chinese Stealth Drone: Sharp Sword...
(view original)
Post a comment
Description
... Or a hoax to keep the US on their toes?
Hoax or not, it's gonna be the laughingstock of the internet due to plot device and the stupidity of certain people online, as well as misplaced nationalism...
... I mean, look what happened to the Iranian F-313 stealth fighter, or any other new weapon systems developed by a "Third World" country (Iran, China, North Korea, etc.) these days, they all get mocked mercilessly!
As for the actual drone, it's most likely a early prototype without any of the fancy equipment that the production models will have... probably just built for testing the design's aerodynamics.
Some said the same about J20. Yet it exists. Yes, I see what you mean and you are right, I only say that it's not 100% fake.
Nobody believed the F-313 because, frankly, Iran simply does not have the industry to design a home grown fighter that would rival those of major world powers, and its announcement came just after the country was caught faking missile launches.
The realty is that one can't really predict the performance of a stealth aircraft simply by aircraft geometry. Anyone with an undergrad aerospace engineering degree knows how to build a UAS, so the pictured aircraft could effectively be anything from a couple of engineers' pet project they built in their free time to the most advanced aircraft ever built. China's military is notoriously opaque to the public (which has some advantages and some disadvantages), so there is no point speculating on the performance of any of its aircraft that are currently in development.
The Q-313 was never a 5th gen in the first place. It's more like a cheaper/simplified version of the F-117.
I highly doubt that it is fake, but I also doubt that it is near operational capacity, yet.
Time will tell.