Chapter 1083 I Am Big, but Very Light

Although Didier Casore was aware of possible problems at the first opportunity.

But almost at the same time, he had already taken the initiative to make amends in his heart——

The requirements for flight quality of early warning aircraft are not as high as those of business jets.

As for military products, concessions can be made in many areas.

Slower speed?

It's not a big problem. Anyway, the early warning aircraft hovers on the edge of the battlefield most of the time. Only the process of rushing to the mission area requires speed.

Moreover, the Falcon 8Z is an aircraft with a cruising speed close to Mach 0.9. Combined with this straight-shaped antenna, which has very small resistance at first glance, it is faster than a propeller or a platform such as the ERJ145, and it can go far enough.

The aerodynamic noise is louder...it's not a big problem.

War is not a vacation, it just passes through patience.

If it doesn't work, the operator can just hand out noise-canceling headphones.

The maneuverability and serviceability are not very good...

It’s okay, military aircraft pilots and ground crew can both practice!

As for operating costs and the like, that's not a problem.

The reason for this kind of thinking is not entirely because he himself advocated cooperation with China from the beginning, and now he would lose face if he failed to achieve success.

Technically speaking, the design and production of the Falcon 8Z's airframe structure are completely completed by Dassault, which is a part that can be 100% controlled.

Compared with the Érieye balance beam or Falcon conformal array solutions that bring huge additional risks in terms of aerodynamics and operation, although the design proposed by Liu Yongquan also has risks, if you really want to solve it simply and crudely, you can also solve it in a simple and crude way. At the expense of slight loss of flight quality, we only start from the level of structural reinforcement.

Calculating everything inside and out, the part that Dassault can control in its own hands can actually increase a lot.

Although Casore himself is the head of the aerodynamics department, he is also the senior leader in charge of the Falcon 8Z project. Therefore, he has already begun to figure out how to provide adequate supplements to the body at the lowest possible cost. Too strong.

Of course, for this kind of engineering matter, qualitative thinking alone is definitely not enough.

To strengthen, you must at least have a specific reinforcement goal.

Therefore, after Liu Yongquan briefly introduced the system called "highlight", Casore took advantage of an opportunity and asked directly:

"Dr. Liu, what is the approximate weight range of the entire antenna group system you provided?"

The specific mass distribution of the equipment can definitely be calculated after the detailed design is completed.

But a simple total system weight indicator is not an important data.

Kasore asked this, just to make a preliminary judgment on the difficulty of the follow-up work.

That’s why I’m talking about scope.

However, the completion of this radar system called "Gaoming" far exceeds Kasore's imagination.

Therefore, Liu Yongquan immediately gave a specific number:

"About 1.2 tons. Of course, it needs to be adjusted according to the characteristics of the aircraft platform, but the fluctuation will not exceed 5%."

Faced with this answer, Kasore's first reaction was...

Bewildered for a moment.

In fact, for early warning aircraft, the radar antenna itself only accounts for a small part of the external load.

For example, the entire antenna group of the E2C early warning aircraft weighs two tons, but the Yagi antenna of the AN/ASP145 radar is only about 770 kilograms.

The rest are the radome, radar support frame, rotating mechanism, and of course the data transmission system.

Generally speaking, active phased array radar has a large number of T/R components, so the antenna itself weighs more than traditional mechanical scanning radar.

For example, the antenna weight of Erieye System’s PS890 radar reaches 900 kilograms.

Although there is no complex rotating system, the cooling system and signal and power supply cables that are more complex than mechanical scanning antennas in turn add a lot of weight.

As a result, the external load of the entire machine still reached about 1.3 tons.

The straight-shaped antenna in front of him, although it further reduces the weight of the support system, is almost one-third larger than the PS890 in size.

Calculating this, the antenna itself must weigh about 1.2 tons.

The whole system is more in line with normal results when it is around 1.8 tons.

Therefore, Kasore thought he didn't understand it at first.

So he added another sentence:

"I'm not referring to the weight of the individual antennas, but the entire external radar group, including the radome and other servos..."

Unexpectedly, Liu Yongquan nodded directly:

"What I'm talking about is the weight of the entire external load, which is around 1.2 tons, and will not exceed 1.3 tons at most."

"In addition, the size shown in the picture is the one with the best performance among our series of solutions. If the user does not have a particularly high pursuit of detection range, then the external load can be further reduced to around 900kg. Of course, the antenna The size will be reduced accordingly to about 8 meters.”

"..."

This result, which was so good that it was almost unreal, made the venue suddenly quiet.

All that was left was the breathing of a dozen people and the whine of the projection equipment dissipating heat.

As for Kasore himself, his mind was in a mess, and he even didn't know what to think.

The maximum payload of the Falcon 8Z is designed to be 1850kg. If all the external equipment is only 1.2 tons, then as long as the number of operators and internal equipment is slightly controlled, the total mission load can be limited to the payload weight.

There is no need to bother with any structural reinforcement.

As for 900 kg... it can almost be installed directly on the Falcon 6Z, which is two sizes smaller.

Not only that, it can even allow the AWACS and business jets to achieve most of the same production line, only a few more steps in the final assembly process, and no need to go through the process again after leaving the factory.

Although these details are insignificant and do not seem to have any impact on performance, they can greatly reduce costs and shorten delivery cycles.

For users who are in urgent need of spot goods, the attraction is undoubtedly extremely high.

Moreover, there is another non-technical advantage-

In the short term, the only AWACS that can compete with the Falcon 8Z platform AWACS should be the Gulfstream G550+Falcon jointly developed by Elta Electronics Industries and General Dynamics.

Find David to buy AWACS.

And it was a futures deal...

If there were no competitors, it would probably be like this.

After all, the situation of the ring project is quite special, and everyone is bound to have some luck.

But if there is a competitor that is apparently made in France, has similar or even better performance, and can be provided almost as spot goods.

Then most users may have to weigh it.

The only question is...

How is this done?

It can't be that this pole is an external antenna, and even the antenna cover and cooling system are saved, right?

Fortunately, Casore still has the most basic rationality, so he didn't ask such an outrageous question.

But in a trance, he still blurted out:

"The radar solution you provided...is it really an active phased array?"

Compared to the active phased array radar (AESA) where each radiator needs to be equipped with a separate T/R component, the passive phased array radar (PESA) has only one central transmitter and one receiver, so the weight of the antenna itself is generally much smaller than that of the same size...strictly speaking, the same area of ​​AESA.

In the previous communication, the two sides had always used the slightly ambiguous term "electronic scanning radar".

Therefore, it is not completely unreasonable for Casore to come up with this idea.

But it made Liu Yongquan on the opposite side laugh.

However, he is not an expert in the field of electronic technology, and Guo Lin is still in Jinling and cannot leave, so he gave the right of interpretation to Fan Jimin, a project deputy from the Electronic Technology Group next to him.

The latter was a little bit overwhelmed at this time, but after all, it was a serious question raised by the foreign partner, so he still answered solemnly:

"Regarding this, our radar system is indeed an active phased array, and this will be reflected in our cooperation agreement."

At this point, perhaps worried that it was not convincing enough, he paused for a while and added:

"In fact, we have not systematically developed passive phased array radars, please rest assured, Mr. Casore..."

Although AESA is undoubtedly more advanced than PESA, in the technology tree, the two actually have a parallel relationship with common front-end technology, rather than a sequential relationship.

Having said that, Casore could only assume that the Chinese had some special tricks in the field of AESA.

After writing down a few key points in his notebook, he thought he had calmed down and signaled Liu Yongquan to proceed to the next stage of the meeting.

However, Casore would soon find out.

Lightness is only the most insignificant advantage of this radar...