The WZ 7 Soaring Dragon is a HALE reconnaissance UAV with a distinctive rear wing ,operated by China. Range is approximately 7000KM at cruise speed of 750KPH. The WZ 7 has been spotted tailing US ships in the Taiwan Straits and conducting recon of US construction within Luzon in the Philippines.

[-]

Ragnarok_Stravius@reddit

American Aircraft: Eagles, Hawks, Falcons, Warthog, whatever.

Chinese Aircraft: VIGOROUS DRAGON! SOARING DRAGON! ERECT DRAGON!

Like, just Dragon would suffice.

[-]

particlegun@reddit

UK: Tornado, Hurricane, Typhoon, Tempest, Shagbat.. oh wait (yes I know it's called the Supermarine Walrus)

[-]

The Chinese names all have only two syllables. Each new name just changes the first syllable. Its simple and easy to pronounce and remember in Chinese, but the effect gets lost when translated into 5 syllable english words

[-]

PhantomRaptor1@reddit

Makes me wonder what names you would get if the names were transliterated instead

[-]

Havoccity@reddit

Menglong (J10), Weilong (J20), Xianglong (WZ7), etc

[-]

PippaPiranha@reddit

Strike Eagle, Super Hornet, Fighting Falcon, Flying Fortress, Stratofortress…

[-]

I_Go_BrRrRrRrRr@reddit

To be fair, the Strike Eagle and Super Hornet are variants of the Eagle and Hornet respectively

[-]

Rich_Razzmatazz_112@reddit

(waving arms) they aren't the SAAAAME!!1!!

[-]

this-is-a-bucket@reddit

Modern Chinese uses bisyllabic words a lot, so just “Dragon” would sound really weird as a name for a new piece of tech. One-word names are more of a Classical Chinese thing.

[-]

Maar7en@reddit

The US needs a small interceptor drone that has one purpose: slapping little "the whole Sky belongs to us." Stickers on these things. China will cry, it will be funny, they will attempt to do the same and bump a globalhawk out of the sky, the US will have a valid reason to missile any chinese drone out of the sky, more crying.

[-]

UndeadZombie81@reddit

r/NonCredibleDefense

[-]

Maar7en@reddit

Thought I was already there.

[-]

dicrydin@reddit

Bro sorry for the downvotes I tried to do my part to rectify this. Anyway thanks for this shit comment because without it I would have never found that little gem of a sub. I just spent hours of my Sunday morning on it. Downvotes suck but your comment brought a little more happiness to a strangers life.

[-]

Maar7en@reddit

Don't worry bud. Imaginary internet points don't matter, but regardless I have so many that 10 less won't even make a dent.

NCD is a magical place, glad you like it.

[-]

Bloodiedscythe@reddit

Bro is stroking it to the thought

[-]

Maar7en@reddit

Damn right I am.

Do the funny America.(I also just realised this wasn't NCD)

[-]

Blurbeeeee@reddit

What is the aerodynamic penalty of a trussed wing like this? I know it does a lot for structural stiffness, but I’m curious about the tradeoff

[-]

KerPop42@reddit

It's not just a trussed wing, it's a rhomboidal wing, aka a box or closed wing. The idea is that it reduces wingtip vortices by not having an end to the wing. Also, forward-swept wings have this benefit of entraining the air towards the fuselage, which reduces the wake.

I'm sure there's an optimization problem in there where the extra wing causes more drag than the wingtip vortices and wake its reducing, but I'm a big fan of box wings for the reason above.

Also, like the other person said, you can have thinner wings, which I think would make it better for slower flight? But I'm less clear on that area.

[-]

jjp82@reddit

I kind of agree and disagree as a true box wing has no wingtips and this does.

[-]

TyGuy223@reddit

It's been awhile so I could be misremembering, but doesn't the air flow down the span of the wing increase toward the tip? Since the top wing attaches about half way between root and tip, I'd think any benefit to reducing induced drag would be negligible. Those winglets probably do more to help induced drag since that's what they're there for, so I'm leaning towards what the other guy said about it mostly being there for increased fuel load.

Is probably also a mess of an optimization problem with no obvious solution like you suggest haha

[-]

KerPop42@reddit

Airflow tends to be entrained towards the tail in a swept wing; in backward-swept wings this means it gets entrained towards the tips, but in forward-swept wings this mean it gets entrained towards the fuselage.

Additionally, the connection point partway along the span may act as a wind fence, interrupting that spanwise flow. And the connections certainly eliminate the wingtip vortices from the tailward wing.

But yeah, overall a very busy design, and yeah I agree it's for the thinner wings

[-]

SerTidy@reddit

Makes sense. Thanks

[-]

Grape-Snapple@reddit

when referring to the rhomboidal shape, is it the shape made from both pairs of wings themselves (box is visible from bird's eye) or the point where the forward-swept wingtips join the main wings (box is visible from front and back views) ?

[-]

KerPop42@reddit

So I'm not a professional, and I think it's niche enough that there aren't necessarily formal naming conventions, but if it doesn't look like a box from the top, like one wing is directly on top of the other, I think it's usually called a closed wing or a loop wing.

I don't think there are many serious designs where the trailing surface is at the same height as the leading one, because of interference concerns when in level flight. So the box is usually always visible from the front.

[-]

Delicious_Lab_8304@reddit

I think you mean benefit*

Greater lift - more fuel efficient, more range.

[-]

A_Vandalay@reddit

This shape would reduce the strain on the wing fuselage joint. Normally this isn’t a huge issue because the majority of the aircraft’s fuel load and therefore weight will be in the wings. Based on the relatively thin wings here and massive fuselage it seems likely that almost all fuel is internally stored in that fuselage. And for a mission profile that mandates long loiter times that is likely a very large fuel weight.

[-]

Super-Skymaster@reddit

“This is Soaring Dragon!"

Les Grossman:

"Okay, Soaring Dragon. Fuckface. First, take a big step back... and literally FUCK YOUR OWN FACE! Now, I don't know what kind of pan-Pacific bullshit power play you're trying to pull here, but Asia, Jack, is my territory. So whatever you're thinking, you'd better think again. Otherwise I'm gonna have to head down there and I will rain down an ungodly fucking firestorm upon you! You're gonna have to call the fucking United Nations and get a fucking binding resolution to keep me from fucking destroying you. I am talking scorched earth, motherfucker! I will massacre you! I WILL FUCK YOU UP!"