China's transport, tanker & heavy lift aircraft - esp. Y-20/YY-20

GiantPanda said:

Off topic but the small transport slot above the Y-12 and eating into whatever role is left for Y-7 could be filled by the KJ-600 platform and its COD variant. That would allow short field supply plus special missions near frontlines. KJ-600 and COD could well be adopted from the Navy for land use.

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If they could stretch the expected KY-600(?) and de-navalise it to reduce empty weight, it could IMO be a relatively simple and cheap fix to replace aging Y-7s with the added bonus of good takeoff performance due to originally being a carrier transport. If Y-30 is going to be a Y-9 type transport with ~25 ton of payload I think it could be pretty overkill for Y-7's mission set. Considering PLA has not outright retired Y-7s and to my knowledge kept a decent amount of them in serivce probably means they still see purpose for a Y-7 class transport.

Tomboy said:

If they could stretch the expected KY-600(?) and de-navalise it to reduce empty weight, it could IMO be a relatively simple and cheap fix to replace aging Y-7s with the added bonus of good takeoff performance due to originally being a carrier transport. If Y-30 is going to be a Y-9 type transport with ~25 ton of payload I think it could be pretty overkill for Y-7's mission set. Considering PLA has not outright retired Y-7s and to my knowledge kept a decent amount of them in serivce probably means they still see purpose for a Y-7 class transport.

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The PLA probably do think that the Y-8/9 (and the upcoming Y-30) family is pretty sufficient for conducting the same mission sets as the Y-7, whilst being more capable than the Y-7. TL; DR - The Y-8/9/30 can do everything that the Y-7 does, and then some more.

Hence reason for keeping the Y-7 in service could be to keep the airlifting capacity filled while waiting for newer Y-9 units and the currently-WIP Y-30 to be rolled out.

Going forward, keeping only the Y-8/9/30 category instead of both the Y-8/9/30 and Y-7 categories of airlifters likely also help a lot in terms of simplifying and streamlining procurement, deployment, logistics and maintenance efforts.

Y-20Bs.

References:

Tomboy said:

If they could stretch the expected KY-600(?) and de-navalise it to reduce empty weight, it could IMO be a relatively simple and cheap fix to replace aging Y-7s with the added bonus of good takeoff performance due to originally being a carrier transport. If Y-30 is going to be a Y-9 type transport with ~25 ton of payload I think it could be pretty overkill for Y-7's mission set. Considering PLA has not outright retired Y-7s and to my knowledge kept a decent amount of them in serivce probably means they still see purpose for a Y-7 class transport.

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They haven't retired the J-7 either. Roles will be eliminated or transitioned as the last of the aircraft are stricken from the order of battle. There is no place for a point defense fighter like the J-7 in the modern PLAAF so there will be no replacement.

Not retiring an entire fleet now does not mean there is a future for the role and it's happening not just in China. There are still A-10s around for the USAF but there will be no replacement as the dedicated ground attack fighter role is dead.

Y-20B.