Project Sword
Recently, a mysterious object mounted on the belly of the J-16 fighter jet has sparked heated discussions among military fans. It's mysterious because it's a bit of a quadruple: you say it's a pod, and there's a hook underneath it, which is obviously a pylon;You say it's a pylon, and there's a glass window in front of it, which is obviously a viewing pod. Actually, it's a dual-purpose device, and it's called the Falcon-II forward-looking infrared pod.
The J-16 mounted Falcon-II pod.
In fact, this is not the first appearance of the Falcon-II pod, as early as the beginning of 2020, it has appeared in the official media picture. The purpose of the Falcon-II is to navigate at night and complex weather, and the infrared sensor is in the square glass window in front, which can directly project the infrared topographic map onto the display screen or head-up display of the aircraft, so that the pilot will fly at night or in foggy days, and will not hit the mountain, which is conducive to ultra-low-altitude penetration.
The Falcon-II pod is a generation ahead of the famous "Blue Shield" system in the United States. This is because the AN AAQ-13 navigation pod of the "Blue Shield" system also needs to install a terrain tracking radar, while the Falcon-II does not need it. There is no way to do this, the "Blue Shield" has been equipped with troops since 1987, and at that time, except for professional attack aircraft, the radars of all US fighters did not have terrain tracking functions. Our J-16 is different, it is an active phased array radar as soon as it comes up, and when flying at ultra-low altitudes, it can stare at the sky and the ground at the same time, without delay, so the Falcon-II naturally does not need to install a terrain tracking radar.
The "Blue Shield" system mounted on the J-16.
Another advanced feature of the Falcon II is that it doubles as a pylon. The U.S. military's "Blue Shield" system is actually divided into two parts: an AAQ-13 navigation pod and an AAQ-14 aiming pod, which occupy two pylons, while the Falcon-II is very small because it does not have a terrain tracking radar, and the pod itself can be used as a transfer beam under the pylon, and the "Falcon-III" aiming pod is directly hung below. This design is very practical for fighters with few hardpoints like the J-10 and Thunder.
Falcon-III "Aiming Pod.
The Japanese F-2 fighter has an aiming pod directly under the homing pod, which is similar to the "Hawk-II III".
From the previous introduction, you can know that the reason why the Eagle-II can lead the "Blue Shield" generation is because the carrier aircraft itself has an active phased array radar. So, in the era of machine-sweeping radar, who is more advanced than the US military in the night navigation pods hung by our fighters?
Unfortunately, our fighter didn't have a navigation pod at the time, but we did develop one. After the end of the Gulf War, after seeing the tremendous power of the "Blue Shield" system, China also began to study the night pod technology, and the final result was the "Blue Sky" system. Because the reference object is AAQ-13, the shape and design ideas of the "blue sky" system are highly similar to the former, the whole system is also composed of a set of forward-looking infrared sensors, a small terrain tracking radar and corresponding processing equipment, it is said that this was born in 2000 or so, the "blue sky" night navigation pod, has reached the level of similar foreign products.
The "Blue Sky" system mounted on the J-10.
The reason why "Blue Sky" was not equipped was probably because the Chinese Air Force at that time was under tremendous pressure on air defense, with air defense as its main mission, and ground attack was the main business of artillery and the Second Artillery. Moreover, the navigation pod is expensive, such as the export version of the American AN AAQ-13 pod, which dismantles the terrain tracking radar, and still costs as much as $1.38 million, which is obviously unaffordable for the Chinese Air Force at that time. The most important thing is that the Chinese Air Force also lacked a suitable mount platform at that time - J-11 full-time air superiority, Su-30 is not compatible with domestic equipment, J-10 pylons are too few, and the low-altitude flight performance of the Flying Leopard is too poor......Therefore, it was not until the J-16 was put into service, and the Chinese Air Force was not short of money, and our fighters were hung up with the navigation pod, which basically caught up with the new generation of navigation and aiming two-in-one "Litning" pods widely adopted by the US military.
I want to insert a sentence here, in fact, more than half of the world's fighters do not have navigation pods, and the reason is the same as ours before, poor. For poor countries, it is already very painful to buy a third-generation aircraft, and it is even more painful to use it to attack the ground, and to engage in ultra-low-altitude penetration at night, it is uncomfortable to drop one for half a year, and it is enough to launch missiles from a distance. This also means that more than half of the world's fighter planes do not have the ability to attack the ground at night.
Optoelectronic system of the F-35.
Okay, let's get down to business. In the era of fourth-generation aircraft, the navigation pod was completely eliminated, and the low-altitude night navigation function was all integrated in the electro-optical distributed aperture system (EODAS). For example, the EODAS of the F-35 has a total of six infrared sensors throughout the body, allowing the pilot to obtain 360-degree holographic images without dead angles, search, indication, missile warning, lethal effect evaluation, auxiliary day and night navigation and take-off and landing collision avoidance and other functions in one go, which can be called a hero in the optoelectronic system.
The EOTS system used for targeting by the F-35 integrates infrared optical laser irradiation mode, with a full set of optoelectronic fire control functions such as high-resolution imaging, automatic tracking, infrared search and tracking, laser indication, ranging and laser point tracking, and is directly installed inside the nose.
Optoelectronic system of the J-20.
Our J-20 also uses a similar optoelectronic distributed aperture system to the F-35, and the Su-57 is miserable, EODAS is there, but the performance is much worse, and I have to continue to top a big ball in the nose (IRST infrared search and tracking system), EOTS simply does not, and you have to hang a pod for ground aiming, and it is estimated that the stealth performance is not good, so it is not difficult to build it.
The Su-57 still has to hang a pod for ground attack.
The F-22 is the worst, there are no two, one is that it was developed too early, the optoelectronic system has not yet been miniaturized, and it is too difficult to build it all;Second, they are the purest air superiority fighters, and they don't need them. But in the past two years, the Raptor has also hung up the pod, which should not be for ground attack to grab the F-35's job, but to see that the J-20 stealth is too strong, and its own radar found that the distance has been greatly shortened, so it has to hang up the infrared search and tracking pod, otherwise it is not as good as the F-35 ...... to fight over-the-horizon air combat with the J-20
The F-22 was re-attached to the pod.
From the evolution of the night navigation system of Chinese fighters, it can be seen that we have always "crossed the river by feeling the eagle sauce" and have taken advantage of the latecomer. But now the J-20 optoelectronic system has gone hand in hand with the F-35, and there is no stone to touch. In the future, what will the optoelectronic system of fighter planes evolve into, and whether China can take the lead in coming up with a next-generation plan, will test the innovation ability of our military workers.