Aerial refueling from a YY-20 tanker.
Scary to think that just a few years ago PLAAF had very limited air refueling capabilities. I won’t be surprised if it has the largest tanker fleet in the Asia Pacific region within the next five years.
China's transport, tanker & heavy lift aircraft
- Thread starter Totoro
- Start date
Scary to think that just a few years ago PLAAF had very limited air refueling capabilities. I won’t be surprised if it has the largest tanker fleet in the Asia Pacific region within the next five years.
All we are waiting for right now is for Y-20Bs with WS-20 engines to enter mass production. Once that has begun, the YY-20Bs would naturally arrive in the PLAAF in larger numbers as well.
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asif iqbal
Lieutenant General
with almost 60 in service and maybe close to even 100 with all the manufacturing and production in place China will need to keep the production going throughout the 2020s to fill its transport needs
US built apex 280 x C17 Globemasters + 130 x C5 Galaxy
Russia built around 60 x An-124
and 70 x An-22 and many others
so no doubt China will need over 200+ x Y20 of all variants
Remember the US also has 500 Tankers.
So I see at least 300 Y-20 tanker variants as well
A Y-20 that apparently had been repaired after experiencing some damage to its fuselage from an emergency landing.
Indeed. During the teething period some air traffic controllers didn’t give the proper instructions for landing. Things you have to figure out one step at a time sadly.
It look like the track fairing got damaged too. Hit approach threshold light pole of runway if it's a landing mishaps or It look like a ground incident from a service truck with an aerial platform.A Y-20 that apparently had been repaired after experiencing some damage to its fuselage from an emergency landing.
lcloo
Captain
I won't speculate what was the cause of the incident or accident until we have official or leaked insider information.
The section with the green primer painted pannels covers the main landing gear and the APU. It could be anything related to the landing gear or the APU, or a significant impact damage by external objects.
The section with the green primer painted pannels covers the main landing gear and the APU. It could be anything related to the landing gear or the APU, or a significant impact damage by external objects.
antiterror13
Brigadier
What country in APEX that have larger tanker fleet than China? Do you count the US and Russia?
200x Y-20 of all variants simply isn't enough. I recall an official from XAIC or CASIC some years ago stating that China needs at least 5/600-800x Y-20s of all variants.
Another solution would be cargo drones or Unmanned Transport Planes (UTP), which can be built in larger numbers with shorter periods of time and fewer resources and manpower required to plug the gap of China's transport aircraft fleet. However, the maximum cargo dimension and payload weight which they can carry are certainly much smaller than the Y-9 and Y-20.
I have written about this in the Chinese UAV/UCAV Development Thread in late-June last year:
Chinese UAV/UCAV development
This is how freight is loaded onto the #drone cargo ship TP500, designed by the 603 Xi'an Institute of the AVIC group on behalf of the company Yitong UCA. The drone has a carrying capacity of 500kg. A larger version, TP2000, is currently in development..
www.sinodefenceforum.com
In that post, I have suggested somewhere around 15-18 tons. Can be rather unrealistic. @Michaelsinodef suggested UTPs with cargo-capacity of 4-5 tons or 8-10 tons, which would be simpler to achieve and easier to field by the PLAAF and PLANAF.