China's transport, tanker & heavy lift aircraft - esp. Y-20/YY-20
- Thread starter Totoro
- Start date
Since WS-20 has higher thrust, wouldn’t replacing the WS-18 requires strengthening of the wings?
Not necessarily. If the original wings were designed from the outset to be rated for WS-20s anyway then it could be done fairly simply.
The bigger question for re-engineing older Y-20As with WS-20 is the rate of WS-20 production -- i.e.: it makes sense for the foreseeable future that WS-20s equip new build Y-20B airframes, and then only once WS-20s greatly exceeds the requirement of new build Y-20B numbers + spares, then they could look at re-engineing Y-20As