It's likely 7x Y-20s by now.
Interesting presence of a KJ-500 at Egypt as well.
China's transport, tanker & heavy lift aircraft - esp. Y-20/YY-20
- Thread starter Totoro
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It's likely 7x Y-20s by now.
Interesting presence of a KJ-500 at Egypt as well.
Exercises or Egyptians testing the KJ-500 for a possible future J-10/J-35A operation?
Presence of the KJ-500 makes it seem more like an exercise than delivery? Also, isn't it more likely to ferry the J-10s from China to Egypt instead of disassembling and freighting the parts over by Y-20?
Or maybe this is just the support equipment?
Or maybe this is just the support equipment?
Flying a squadron of 4.5th gen fighters in Egyptian Air Force livery over most of Eurasia, ferry flight or not, could seem aggressive and be unnecessarily problematic.
What's more interesting is the KJ-500. An insurance policy against US/Israeli sabotage? Like a stealth suicide drone?
The Y-20s returned to China rather quickly, so they're likely there for delivery.
Egypt's F-16s are supported by a fleet of US made E-2C AEWs, which implies that a reasonable chunk of the Egyptian Air Force's C4ISR infrastructure are built around US made communications equipment.
So if Egypt wants its military's newest toys to be free of persistent US surveillance, acquiring the KJ-500 to complement the J-10CE makes complete sense.
asif iqbal
Lieutenant General
any idea what is going on with these Y-20 flights and KJ-500 AWACS
these are high ticket items why no fighter escort ?
these are high ticket items why no fighter escort ?
J-10C E for Egypt — A Fantasy Made Real.
KJ-500 is probably there to demonstrate the kill chain in case they are interested in integrated system. I guess they want to keep it as non-threatening as possible? Basically don’t make a huge fuss until the deal is closed.
To maintain design and production expertise, there has to be a constant flow of work. If the flow stops for just a few years, there will be knowledge gap (people moving to other jobs) that would be hard to rebuild again. This means that so long as this class of aircraft is needed in the forseeable future, there has to be works on the continious improvement and upgrade of Y-9 or a new design of Y-30. In this respect it doesn't matter if the aircraft is called Y-9XYZ or Y-30, they are essentially the same thing. The need of developping Y-30 is the same need of production of Y-9.
A good example in industry is telecom 4G, 5G and now 6G, even though most users of 5G do not feel the difference from 4G, the industry has to keep the R&D running (yes reshuffling codes for feature improvement without fundamental differences).
An opposite example is Russia losing human competence due to stopage of weapon development, or US loosing capability in shipbuilding etc. An engineer in the 20s and early 30s is in learning stage, in late 50s the person is enterring the stage of waiting for retirement, it is only less than 20 years being the most productive time and you need to make sure this generation is handing over their experiences to the new comers. Involved in the full flow (> 10 years) of developping just one type of aircraft is a luck.
This is also why China has this "produce a generation, develop a generation and study a generation". It is a infinite loop of maintainging the flow.