WZ-8 Supersonic Reconnaissance UAV

FighterJock

FighterJock

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Is there any information about the new supersonic drone at the top of the photo Deino? Any idea as to the name is.
 
overscan said:
I think this project was initially said to be a testbed for high speed, hypersonic engines. This looks more like an aerodynamic testbed using off the shelf rocket engines to me. Maybe the scramjets / turboramjets are coming later :)
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Or maybe it's air launched (hence the flatbed truck, and it does have lugs on top) and the rockets boost it to high speed-altitude and it glides the rest? :confused: Think Kh-22/32.
 
This article from 2017 was posted on Chinese forums as possibly related. Apparently its about rocket powered UAVs, and says prior to the paper being published, the rocket drone had been tested (or experimentally performed) 18 times. With no power system failure, and only one camera failure occurred.

The mission profile is launch from a carrier aircraft (e.g. H-6), rocket power climb, level flight, rocket burned out and gliding back. The rocket working time 35 minutes, the total flight time is one hour and 30 minutes, the working height is "near space". The aircraft is reusable but the rocket engine not.

There's separate evidence of a nose cone looking like the nose of this previously displayed, apparently designed for temperatures approx Mach 3.0.

5FE1929E-9C22-43A2-8402-3A667D9145CC.jpeg
 
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It feels to me like its saying total mission time (or perhaps the H-6 'carry time') was 1 hour 30 mins, with 35 mins for the WZ-8 flight, I'm not sure it means 35 mins burn time on the rocket like lots of the Chinese forumers seem to be thinking. We don't have proof this article is related either.
 
RanulfC said:
So it's essentially the X-34?

Randy
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No. More like a reusable D-21. speculation is that it could provide targeting against CVBGs when launched from H-6s. Maybe that recent H-6 mod, with the recess in the belly, is for this thing.
 
Hi.

As always, the Elixir news organization discussed at length this newly unveiled drone in their french-based information canal, eastpendulum.com with hard-to-find information.

A.

www.eastpendulum.com

Drone de reconnaissance : Supersonique ou Hypersonique ?

Longtemps considéré comme un drone hypersonique, le nouvel engin conçu par l'Institut 611 Chengdu serait "seulement" supersonique. La réponse sera révélée dans un jour.
www.eastpendulum.com www.eastpendulum.com
 

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Hi.

Attached are two pictures (with unedited file naming for proper SEO) taken from eastpendulum.com website.

Both pictures — taken by and credited to lixin哎呀 — showcase what elixir / hk299692458 / henri kehnmann / eastpendulum describe as a composite-based nose for a supersonic UAV manufactured by GAIC (Guizhou Aviation Industry Corporation) and exhibited sometime ago in an non-identified trade show.

If you can read between the (French) lines, these pictures could be connected to the DR-8… or not.
If they do, the temperature resistance would be 350°C (see board captions), meaning DR-8 would only be supersonic.
If they don't, then the composite nose must be associated to another yet undisclosed project (or prototype / test article).

Other option: these pictures would still be related to a hypersonic something (DR-8 or not) before any thermal insulation cover material and processes is applied.

Hmmm... These interesting information tend to blur the picture.

Any comment anybody?

A.
 

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overscan said:
This article from 2017 was posted on Chinese forums as possibly related. Apparently its about rocket powered UAVs, and says prior to the paper being published, the rocket drone had been tested (or experimentally performed) 18 times. With no power system failure, and only one camera failure occurred.
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Thx.

A
 
Mini-Isinglass, adapted to the capacity of the smaller H-6 launch platform? 35min is 2100s, no way that is referring to rocket burn time - even upper-stage engines with multiple relights reach only about 1/3 of that duration.

The nose cone Paul mentions is probably what antigravite posted here. High-res photos of the UAV indicate a spherically-blunted metal nose cap though, so it might be faster than the temperature limits of that sample indicate.
 
I don't understand also why it has a landing gear. If this has only two rocket engines, the return weight will be fairly low given the size of the thing. A parachute recovery or even skids would seems more suited.
 
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Or maybe 35 minutes burn time is the answer to why the engines are not reusable despite liquid propellants? But then where does it store all that fuel?
 
TomcatViP said:
I don't understand also why it has a landing gear. If this has only two rocket engines, the return weight will be fairly low given the size of the thing. A parachute recovery or even skids would seems more suited.
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The gear also reads to me as a strike against the "Targeting Carrier Groups" theory, unless the idea is to fly around to the east of the carrier and launch toward the mainland.
 
Not being an aeronautics engineer, is the lack of heat shielding indicative of this being something with a low mach number? Or high mach with low burn time?
 
Unmanned vehicles formations at the parade (based on Chinese sources):

Formation I (recon): 2x WZ-8, 3x BZK-008A artillery spotting, 3x BZK-008 (aka CH-91) reconnaissance, 3x Ryu Ying (aka Sky Saker FX500)

Formation II (strike): 1x GJ-11 Li Jian (Sharp Sword), 1x GJ-2 Wing Loong II, 4x JWS-01 (aka ASN-301, copy of IAI Harpy)

Formation III (special): 6x BZK-008A ELINT, 3x BZK-008A EW jammer, 2x HSU-001 robotic mini-sub
 
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I don't really see any large openings for camera lens though. I guess they could be directly under the belly and thus not noticable from these images. but that would preclude side looking cameras and thus probably also preclude significant stand off recon ranges.

if this thing is meant to actually get very close to point of interest to photograph it, then it could still get threatened by SAM (or even ABM systems) even if is cruising at 35-50 km altitudes. what sort of speed would it need to fly at to maintain 50 km, though?
 
China was putting their best foot forward to impress everyone. If those lugs could be unscrewed in 5 minutes, they would have been.
 
kitnut617 said:
It looks super sleek, but it's got two huge lugs poking out the top ---
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coanda said:
Yeah, you'd think they would at least align them with line of flight.

Might be on explosive bolts tho...
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flateric said:
who told that they are regular flight equipment? may be only used for transportation
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Moose said:
China was putting their best foot forward to impress everyone. If those lugs could be unscrewed in 5 minutes, they would have been.
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Look like standard mounting lugs used for lifting and transport. They don't look like they come off so they may be structural, which would make sense in context for moving them around and then attaching to the launching vehicle. The normal boost/glide, (I think that's the correct mission parameter for the design) AoA is going to be slightly nose high, (very much like the way they are set on the trailers) which puts the lugs in the aerodynamic 'shadow' of the fuselage during supersonic flight. I also don't see any indication of doors or hatches for letting a camera peek out during flight but those could be covered.

Randy
 
may be related ... or not

The invention discloses a high-altitude high-speed unmanned aerial vehicle landing and grounding state control method. The invention aims to provide a safer and more reliable control method. The control method of the invention is realized by following technical schemes: a high-altitude high-speed autonomous take-off and landing type unmanned aerial vehicle landing control system acquires the information of a differential GPS, and the altitude values and validity signals of an inertial navigation GPS, an atmospheric engine A, an atmospheric engine B, a radio altimeter A and a radio altimeter through a flight control computer, judges whether a certain device malfunctions, sets altitude information and valid bit information if the device malfunctions; whether one altitude source is valid is judged according to the altitude values and validity signals of the difference GPS and the inertial GPS, and if the altitude source is valid, whether the altitude source is within an altitude thresholdis judged, if the altitude source is within the altitude threshold, left main landing wheel load sensor and right main landing wheel load sensor signals are collected for 5 consecutive beats; and whether wheel load is real for 5 consecutive beats is judged, and if the wheel load is real for 5 consecutive beats, a landing and grounding state flag is set, and ground measurement and control system station commands are collected, and landing and grounding state operation is performed.
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LoL they are talking about debouncing the landing gear sensors. Its what we do in engineering to detect real and fake button presses. But they are leaving out the amount of time interval for the 5 bounces. Its a 30,000ft document.
 
rooster said:
LoL they are talking about debouncing the landing gear sensors. Its what we do in engineering to detect real and fake button presses. But they are leaving out the amount of time interval for the 5 bounces.
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I'm not certain they are, the phrase used is "5 consecutive beats", if a better translation of "beats" is "cycles", then it could be referring to the function in question running 5 times, which has an implicit duration. I actually wrote the weight on wheels function for 757RT (the 777 PFCS prototype) and the requirement was fairly similar.
 
Moose said:
China was putting their best foot forward to impress everyone. If those lugs could be unscrewed in 5 minutes, they would have been.
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Unless the message they wanted to send was, "we're launching these from a plane".
 
sferrin said:
Moose said:
China was putting their best foot forward to impress everyone. If those lugs could be unscrewed in 5 minutes, they would have been.
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Unless the message they wanted to send was, "we're launching these from a plane".
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I think that launching drones from a plane is a bad idea, look at what happened to the M21-D21 when the USAF tried to launch the D-21 from the mothership it crashed causing the death's of the two crew members.
 
FighterJock said:
sferrin said:
Moose said:
China was putting their best foot forward to impress everyone. If those lugs could be unscrewed in 5 minutes, they would have been.
Click to expand...

Unless the message they wanted to send was, "we're launching these from a plane".
Click to expand...

I think that launching drones from a plane is a bad idea, look at what happened to the M21-D21 when the USAF tried to launch the D-21 from the mothership it crashed causing the death's of the two crew members.
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A solitary event doesn't negate the success of thousands of other missions flown. (Probably tens of thousands given the plethora of drones going all the way back to the 60s.)
 

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