The J-36 (if that really is its name) is designed to combine supersonic performance with all-aspect stealth. That’s also the goal of the US Next Generation Air Dominance program,
currently stalled by budget and policy issues.
There may be more. Anonymous Chinese internet commenters with better records for accuracy than others say that the new arrivals are part of an air warfare ‘tea set’ and that we have not yet seen the ‘teapot’—the long-expected H-20 stealth bomber; this will probably be an analogue to the Northrop Grumman B-21.
The J-36 planform unequivocally speaks of stealth and supersonic speed. It is a modified version of the Hopeless Diamond, the first shot by Lockheed’s Skunk Works at all-aspect stealth, which got that name because it could not be made to fly with 1970s technology. Another variation on the planform was tried in 2003 with Northrop Grumman’s X-47A Pegasus unmanned combat aircraft demonstrator, which did fly. Once.
On the J-36, the diamond is stretched into a double-delta to reduce transonic and supersonic drag. It has a leading-edge kink, a change in sweep angle. That’s not ideal from the standpoint of radar cross-section but, as Northrop Grumman’s cranked-arrow designs have shown, it can be lived with. There is an unbroken edge and chine line around the aircraft, and all sensor apertures are inside it (not the case with the J-20 and other fighters). That is the foundation of all-aspect stealth.
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