Any news on Chinese AWACS fleet?

I think it is really no question that in any likely future scenario early warning and real-time C4 activities would play a great role in the conflict. US-Indian joint excercise proved back in 04 that even USAF plans are not at all invincible without the full AWACS coverage. Indian Sukhoys, Mirages but even old MIG 21 bis could find create winning positions over F15Cs...

In a conflict I am sure that in a future conflict PLAAF would face an enemy with some kind of AWACS support thus they would be in a really handicapped situation if they could not counter it with own AWACS support. (Of course asymmetric warfare like mass attack to overload the AWACS defence is also an option but a very costly one...)

I think it is a really challenging area as not only the development is cost and time consuming but the development and practise of tactics takes additional years. Think about the Russian example when the development took most of the eighties to develop a reliable A50 version and then first practise utilizing two A50s happened only at the desert storm period (which was by the way a great data intelligence (sigint) opportunity for the Russians). Now China has enough resources maybe the same or more then the Russians back in the early nineties but the time is also a critical factor to introduce the new doctrine and procedures...

Still in development with competiting and supplementing designs among the following:

A-50 with 3 face phase array
A-50 with rotating array
Y-8 with balance beam array
Y-8 with rotating array
Y-8 with AEW and surface surveillance radar

Hi Crobato,

I assume that an A50 with a phase array radar would be quite a formidable tool, although it would have a blind spot...at the rear.

Is there something similar at the Japanese airforce (E3 with a phase array radar)?

The KJ-2000 has it's ESA modules placed in a triangular configuration, so there is no blind spot, and no need to rotate the radar dome. Im pretty sure this project has finished developement by now, and is testing. After all, quite a bit of rescources went into it.

The other Y-8AEW's are all testing too.

crobato said:

Still in development with competiting and supplementing designs among the following:

A-50 with 3 face phase array
A-50 with rotating array
Y-8 with balance beam array
Y-8 with rotating array
Y-8 with AEW and surface surveillance radar

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well, I prefer IL-76 over A-50, but anyhow, I haven't heard anything about KJ-2000 with rotating array. Are you sure about that?

Also, there is always the Y-7 with rotating array that they would put on carriers?

The Y-8 mushroom one should be for export only.

The IL-76 with the rotating array is B4043, which has the light colored radome. Different pics in the CDF showed the position of the radome not being the same between the pictures, suggesting there is movement. Basically I think it is the same 3 faced phase array system used on the other two planes, but with the rotational movement added to give it some flexibility on covering some weak spots in the radar.

a couple

of them neigboured

I was wondering, why didn't the PLAAF choose to build a rotating radar dome? is it technically more difficult or something? 3 radars on one plane is just a huge waste, isn't it?

I was wondering, why didn't the PLAAF choose to build a rotating radar dome? is it technically more difficult or something? 3 radars on one plane is just a huge waste, isn't it?

Click to expand...

==Phased array radar (some report even suggest AESA) are more advanced than the conventional mechanically scan radars, it can achieve a larger scanning area and higher scanning rate, and by letting three radars facing three different directions, the refresh rate of information is also dramatically increased, as the refresh rate of rotating radomes are limited by the speed of their rotation, and due to wide scanning area of phased array, three antenna is sufficient to cover the 360 degrees, thus making the rotary mechanism unnecessary.