One thing that has really peaked my curiosity about the weapons bay doors on the J-20 and particularly the upper side bay doors, are the notches on the doors for the missile rack brackets. Its fascinating that the Chinese engineers went through all the trouble of designing those notches which must have their own separate door for each notch. That seems such a complex set of mechanisms involved in order to give the pilot the ability to close the doors once the missile is extracted.
So instead of what we've seen on the F-22 and the F-35 so far with the idea of weapons bays is that the lock on target occurs, pilot presses the 'fire' button and the door opens, missile extracts and fires in succession, then bay door closes.
In this case here with the J-20, with those additional notches and smaller door panels for the notches, I'm guessing the idea is that the pilot has the luxury of pulling the missile out of the bay, then door closes leaving just the brackets and missile protruding until he decides to fire and then weapons bay door opens again, bracket retracted and bay door closes.
Am I right in this assessment? If so, did the Chinese designers & engineers figure this was a better way to deal with the firing of the missile so that it maintains low observability more so than the American method, or is there a different reason? It seems like quite the bit of engineering and process involved which makes me wonder what advantage were they trying to get out of that?
