Re: China's Transport Aircraft
It's actually 3 class of airplanes that china lacks the fundamentals to built.
1.Strategic airlifters.
2.narrow body civil airliners
3. wide body civil airliners.
1) is the backbone of strategic airlift power projection. the requirement is now being badly filled by those old Il-76s.
2) is the basis for ASW MPAs and electronic warfare platform. (AWACS, Airborne ground target radar (Riviet Joint, JSTAR, Sentry) ) those requirement are being filled right now with Y-8 but it is clearly not the optimal solution.
3) is basis for tankers and the larger electronic platforms. the hard end of the offensive airpower.
1) is being solved by the supposed Y-20.
2) is in short term supplied by Y-8/9 and Y-20/IL-476 buys, in long term C919 (737 class)
3) is supplied by IL-76 and Y-20 in the mid term. and in long rerm C929, (767 class)
The problem for the PLAAF goes beyond just airlift. It has a serious lack of AWACS, Sub hunters, EW platforms, strategic bombers, refueling planes and spy planes. In other words anything bigger than a fighter jet. While the PLAAF have been building up her modern fighter fleet and space capabilities at a brisk pace but in these support area's China is still lacking. This is the result of China's inability to build wide bodied planes. And a deal with Russia to buy IL-76 fell through because the Russians unilaterally jacked up the price of the planes after the negotiations where over. They did the same thing to India, the suspicion is that Russia wanted to move some of the production facilities for the IL-76 that are located in Uzbekistan to Russia and they wanted China and India to help pay for it by jacking up the price of these planes. Of course China and India refused and India went for the US made Globemaster. If the Y-9 that is comparable to the C-130 Hercules can go into production in significant numbers in the next few years, that will help to alleviate a lot of the pressure's for the PLAAF on this front. But the godsend for most of the PLAAF's problems on this front will still have to be the Y-20 and that is not going to be coming in years. And even when it's going to be produced it's still going to have to use Russian engines for a long time to come.
It's actually 3 class of airplanes that china lacks the fundamentals to built.
1.Strategic airlifters.
2.narrow body civil airliners
3. wide body civil airliners.
1) is the backbone of strategic airlift power projection. the requirement is now being badly filled by those old Il-76s.
2) is the basis for ASW MPAs and electronic warfare platform. (AWACS, Airborne ground target radar (Riviet Joint, JSTAR, Sentry) ) those requirement are being filled right now with Y-8 but it is clearly not the optimal solution.
3) is basis for tankers and the larger electronic platforms. the hard end of the offensive airpower.
1) is being solved by the supposed Y-20.
2) is in short term supplied by Y-8/9 and Y-20/IL-476 buys, in long term C919 (737 class)
3) is supplied by IL-76 and Y-20 in the mid term. and in long rerm C929, (767 class)