Re: Type 081 LHD
I'm surprised China never reverse engineered all those Blackhawks it received from the US pre-embargo. They would have been perfect for an LHD.
The rumor is that the PLA thought about reverse engineering the black hawk, but then decided it was over-engineered and over-price, thus not suitable to be reverse engineered at the time.
This was in the late 80s, early 90s, so that position may have changed as China's technological and industrial base has grown with its economy.
Some of those black hawks that the PLA bought are certainly still in operation, which will probably mean that there has been some level of RE, if only to allow replacement of common parts.
There was a case a few yours back about some guy getting sent to prison in the US for trying to export restricted parts and components to China, and one of the items he tried to ship over was black hawk engines. So maybe that is how the PLA managed to keep the black hawks flying this long.
But I think the main bottleneck China has faced with its helos is the same as its jet fighters - engines.
The outside shape of a helo is hardly cutting-edge stuff, and even if you designed it badly, the things don't fly anywhere near fast enough for that to be a serious problem. If China can crack the engine issue, making never designs become a piece of cake in comparison.
Since helo engines are quite similar to jet engines in that the hardest part in their design and manufacture is not the layout of the engine itself, but the materials science needed to make the various parts strong and heat-resistant enough to allow the design to work.
With China having seemingly at last managed to master a relatively modern and capable turbofan jet engine, hopefully the material science break-throughs make in the WS10 programme would be able to feed into helo engine design and allow the Chinese to finally build decent helo engines, and once that happens, China's helo problems should be largely solved.
