Re: China's transport plane capacities
There may be another reason why will the development of the new transport plane be so transparent and why we will see full sized mocukps long before the first flight.
Export potential.
Unlike j10 and other planes, a transport plane is considerably less important asset to keep its technical abilities under wraps.
More importantly, there is a very noticable gap in making in heavy lift market. C-17 is ceasing production, IL76 has been on the market for decades, there are hundreds of them flying around and will need replacing in the next 10, 20 years. Newer variants of il76 have been advertised but so far have been produced only in very small numbers. Production capabilities for il76 seem to have atrified, as we could have seen in the china order of 35+ planes, which proved to be far too much of a bite for the production lines.
Other contenders are pretty much non existant, as theyre smaller planes, some even in different classes of propulsion, etc.
Near future strategic airlifter market is up for grabs and it seems chinas new plane is very well positioned to have first bids at it.
