Recently, a picture of J-20 fighter No. 2013 prototype appeared on the internet, which shows pylons under wings of J-20, indicating that J-20 fighter may adopt the “beast combat mode” in the future to perform ground attack missions – probably with guided bombs.
Judging from the pictures, under wings of the J-20 fighter should be multi-unit pylons, capable of carrying a variety of weapons.
Both pylons and weapons under the wings have RCS, and radar waves will reflect multiple times among them and the fuselage, increasing aircraft RCS. Not to mention that the volume and weight of multi-mount pylons would be larger than ordinary ones.
Therefore, most stealth fighter would hide its weapons in pods instead of externally mounting them. For example, F-22 fighter never uses any external pylons except during its early testing. However, the US Air Force has introduced “beast mode” for its F-35 fighters deployed in the UAE, which have adopted this model to perform combat missions and have achieved good results.
Analysts pointed out that in the future, when J-20 fighter adopts the “beast mode”, large laser / satellite composite guided bombs could be mounted under its wings to attack solid ground or underground targets; besides, in some low-intensity battlefields, J-20 would also be able to carry bombs in operations.