I suggest we not undersell China's ambition, China has every intention of competing with the US on every playing field, China will be adding refueling as a priority, especially when we consider Africa, and similar missions.
China's transport, tanker & heavy lift aircraft
- Thread starter Totoro
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I suggest we not undersell China's ambition, China has every intention of competing with the US on every playing field, China will be adding refueling as a priority, especially when we consider Africa, and similar missions.
The way you write it makes it seem like it is generally accepted that global power projection capability has some sort of relationship with per capita income (or per capita GDP, wealth etc).
I envision the PLA and PLAAF to seek the ability to deploy globally if circumstances call for it. I certainly do not envision a worldwide permanently forward deployed stance.
And I suggest that China focus purely on defense and allow the US to spend itself broke.
Why shouldn't Chinese people want to be wealthy? Why should they prefer to waste resources on a global military presence when an impregnable local defense will be far cheaper?
As I implied when they start putting air refuelling probes on their strategic transports start to worry, but till then its surely innocent till proven guilty.
It would be hilarious to hear the argument that an ABSENCE of a refuelling probe equates to blinding ambition, especially since its not as if the Chinese don't have or don't know how to add one and have to steal it first, before doing so!
The ONLY Chinese base in Africa, Djibouti, has a 400m long air strip so I guess they'll need to extend that a fair bit for any 'mythical' Africa mission with a fully loaded Y-20. But, hey, why should facts, get in the way of some really good innuendo!
As this is the J-20 thread I'll stop now before I really annoy those coming here for some Chinese Stealth Fighter goodness
I want to clarify that I'm not suggesting China would seek a global military presence, however I do believe China would want to seek a global power projection capability.
The former suggests that China would want a long term or permanent high level military presence around the globe, whereas the latter merely suggests that China would want the ability to deploy military forces around the world if circumstances demanded it.
I do not consider global power projection capability to be mutually exclusive from having a very capable regional or local defensive capabilities or continuing to develop national wealth.
Much of the power projection relies on already having forces near the potential conflict zones around the world per-emptively, which is expensive. Thinking of Gulf War, Iraq War, without already having bases in the region, I don't know if it would have gone as well as it did for US.
Brumby
Major
Given China’s growing national interest around the world, it is a natural extension that there would be corresponding demand for expeditionary tactical airlift capability pertaining to :
(1) Humanitarian assistance/disaster relief;
(2) Noncombatant evacuation operations;
(3) Personnel recovery missions; and
(4) Participation in alliance building military exercises
There are many recent examples that we can point to including flood relief assistance to a number of countries, search and rescue of MH370 and participation in Aviadarts exercises.
