I do not mean dumb bombs. I mean satnav guided bombs. Sure, they're pricier than a dumb bomb, but they're still some 40 times cheaper than a missile with even better guidance, engine and wings.
I don't see it as black or white issue. In fact, I see a huge gray area in between. Maybe 10 or 20% of the guided munitions you use in the campaign, even in its early stage, will be high cost standoff munitions. And those will indeed be used to soften up the defenses a bit, but they will not come even close to removing them completely. Removing defenses completely takes weeks or months or years, depending on the exact war. Often time you will not even know just how well defended each target is.
Plus, in most situations there will be many more requirements overlapping within the same timeframe. China will not be able to afford going methodically and first establishing air superiority in the air. then getting rid of all the SAMs, then starting to hit other ground targets en masse. It will be an overlap of all three in most situations almost from day 1. There will be huge political and geostrategic motives to conduct the air campaign quickly, without waiting for perfect conditions that would yield minimal casualties.
Needs of a weeks long air campaign against a mid class opponent country is for tens of thousands of guided weapons. Only part of those will be standoff missiles, due to simple small inventory issues. (which are again there due to cost) I shudder to think what a campaign against a larger enemy would entail - there could be a need for well over a 100 thousand guided bombs within a single year. (I hate to be vague but since the rules of SDF forbid political discussions it's not wise to use actual country names as that usually leads to further offtopic discussions)
So while I agree that consideration would ideally certainly be made to allow for effective carriage of nonpowered, direct attack PGMs, I think ultimately they are (as I wrote at the bottom of the last page) likely secondary or even tertiary payload priorities for the likes of H-20 and JH-XX.
To be in a situation where you are interested in using aircraft like H-20 for dropping direct attack PGMs, you have probably already won the hard part of the high intensity conflict.
its just such a narrow use case - for when you're already winning - for a highly specialized plane. if you're already winning and there's some minor air defense left, unstealthy fast strikers like J-16 are fine. This was shown by use of Su-25 and F-15E in previous conflicts even in presence of air defense. And if you really need the payload, just have optional hardpoints... but always have the primary mission - high value missile striker - in mind.
Depending on the distance of the enemy, depending on the variety and quantity of targets that you are seeking to outright eliminate, and depending on the extent with which you can allow the enemy (or other third parties) to detect and track your bomber/strike sorties, it could be very conceivable where the use of stealth bombers to conduct bombing raids with PGMs makes sense.
I think it is fair to say that it makes sense for H-20 and a notional JH-XX to be designed in a way to accommodate an effective payload of direct attack PGMs -- but simultaneously, that the priority payload type driving the design and configuration of each aircraft's weapons bays will likely be relatively large standoff missile systems.
For example, B-2 is capable of carrying 16 JASSMs internally -- relatively large powered cruise missiles -- but are also capable of carrying up to 80 230kg class bombs that includes PGMs.
In the case of H-20, I imagine something similar will be possible, but obviously with the primary configuration likely to be carrying large powered cruise missiles rather than unpowered PGMs.
