Chinese-European transport helo project
- Thread starter Sczepan
- Start date
regarding Mi-171, basically talks about a domestically assembled Mi-171 getting delivered. The deal was signed in 2007 and I think they did some testing on this. It's produced by Sichuan Lantian helicopter limited company, which is formed by Mil and 5701 factory to provide production, sales, customer supporter and maintenance service. Starting from this year, this company is now producing Mi-17 series according to Russian standard. The main duty is Mi-171 for PLA (looks like the first assembled one is for civilian). Ulan Ude delivered a Mi-171 kit in May and this was assembled and passed flight test by June. Right now, it looks like they are just assembling from the kit, but they will be incorporating more indigenous contents later. They are talking about producing 1 per month here, but I think they gotta be producing more than that in the future once they get familiarized, because even Z-8 series is getting produced more than that.
The EC175 helicopter is 7-metric-ton class between the AS365 Dauphin (4/5 metric tons) and the AS332/EC225 Super Puma (9/11 metric tons), while the Mi-171 is EC225/EC725 class.
The EC175/Z-15 will probably end up in PLA service - with the PLA's history of militarizing "civilian" eurocopter choppers and co development/production of this one just increases the likelihood EC175/Z-15 will join the PLA...
I'm not sure what exact niche it will fill though - one may think it may be a PLA "blackhawk", being used for the navy, army and air force, but it's MTOW is right now just too low, unless they put in better engines or modifies the airframe a lot.
I think the PLA will be sticking with the Mi-17/171 for a good few years, until the 10 tonne helicopter we've been hearing about comes into service, which will probably be along the lines of a blackhawk, or maybe NH-90.
On that note, does anyone know what kind of development stage the 10 ton chopper is at and/or when it may enter service and/or production?
This is the talking about the first raining exercises of the year performed by the 6th Independent Regiment located at Qingdao, Shandong. The units here are 9xx6. It says this is PLAN's first naval helo regiment. It has at least 4 Z-8JH (95x6) and several Z-9Cs (96x6) from this set of pictures.
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The Mi-17 and the EC-725 are in the Blackhawk weight class, so the PLA can modify the Super Puma design in that direction. The Z-15 would make a good light ASW helicopter, it does carry more than the Z-9.