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Notes -
NGAD prototypes flew years before China's next-gen fighter broke cover. IIRC the US had one flying in 2020. We just didn't advertise.
If the jet can't even be shown to the public then it must be in a fairly early stage of development. Only a few months ago it looked like the whole project was going to be cancelled or turned into a family of systems. These air-superiority fighters can't be kept hidden forever, people have to be trained about them, they'll need to be fielded to airbases...
Furthermore, the Chinese could've and surely were secretly flying their next-gen jets before revealing them.
Public reveals should have more weight than allegations of secret techniques. It shows that a design has been largely worked out and that it's closer to deployment.
I half agree with you.
The thing is that countries will debut aircraft and not procure them. For instance the J-35 debuted in 2012. To the best of my knowledge, the Chinese military has not procured them. Russian examples are the Su-47 and (so far) Su-75. The F-20 is a good American example. The Chinese have debuted two prototypes; they might procure neither or both and they could have been at any stage of development. It is also of course possible that countries would reveal or conceal their aircraft for foreign or domestic political/psyop reasons. In the case of the recent Chinese stealth fighters, they debuted on Mao's birthday, so the data might have been chosen more for its symbolic purpose and less for relevance to their maturity.
The United States has a long history of IOCing and even operationally using aircraft before they are public.
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These prototypes look nothing like the 3D models you have now, however.
I have never seen pictures of those prototypes, not have I seen any 3D models of NGAD.
I've seen promotional or imaginary images, none of which, except probably the two 2D teaser posters that came out after Boeing was announced as the NGAD winner, did not necessarily (to my knowledge) had any visual similarity with "real" aircraft. I still don't think we know much about how NGAD will look.
If you have images of the prototypes or 3D models of NGAD I would be extremely interested to see them, provided I can do so without violating US espionage laws ;)
Do you imply that F-47 is not “NGAD”? The one from 2020 presumably was like that Boeing art.
No. Where's the 3D model?
I don't think literal concept art like this should be taken to necessarily mean anything. (At least three NGAD prototypes flew, so maybe it was real, or maybe it was just something an artist thought would look cool in a press release.)
Do you mean that this “artist's rendering” of F-47 is 2D? Well, I admit this possibility didn't occur to me, but now that I look closer…
It looks two-dimensional to me, man. I would like to see the top-down planform. And the view from the sides. And the rear. And from underneath :p
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