Aren't kill confirmation gonna be hard for the H20 as well, since it's most likely to launch stand off missiles/muntions from many hundreds of kilometers away from the target though.
H-20 bomber (with H-X, JH-XX)
- Thread starter Deino
- Start date
H-20 is far and away their most important upcoming project in the aerospace side of things. Nothing comes close to it.
How is ballistic missile able do the job of H-20?
That is *a* mission for the H-20, not the *primary* mission for the H-20. I'd argue killing bases and large sites is the much bigger deal for the capabilities the H-20 will bring. Even hundreds of miles away though the H-20 will be able to see things that your ballistic missile cannot, and meanwhile the H-20 will be able to act as a forward positioned sensor node after its launched its payload in that sort of stand off strike mission profile.
If the H-20 has the range and ability to sneak by and launch from the east of Guam, that would definitely complicate US air defence planning since you now have more sectors that need to be monitored and systems added to protect from new vectors of attack.
That's *presumably* the goal.
If I remember correctly, wasn’t it speculated or rumored to be able to carry smaller 4 anti ship missiles? It would also be able to give an carrier strike group an headache as well beside the islands.
Ah, I should've remembered that Global Times articles sound like they've been put through a dozen languages in google translate. I agree in that case that going that deep into semantics probably wasn't very useful. "Major" does make a lot more sense.
You do make a good point about attack profiles and volume of fire. It would definitely be harder to detect cruise missiles fired from a VLO bomber than a ballistic missile launch.
I'm not so sure about response times though. An IRBM can get to its target in around 20 minutes or less, that's pretty hard to beat for a subsonic bomber, unless you're already airborne and in a position to launch when a target is detected. But against static targets like military bases, I agree the additional volume of fire is probably much more important.
I'm new to PLA watching as a whole, but I'm under the impression that the H-20's primary mission would be striking heavily defended targets within contested airspace (i.e. if you sent an H-6 there it would get shot down). I was originally wondering "why would you need to send a VLO bomber and wait several hours to bomb someplace like Guam, when you can just send a salvo of DF-26s and get it done in less than half an hour?" But the points made my other forum members in response have already enlightened me about the advantages a VLO bomber enjoys over IRBMs for certain missions, even if it isn't a complete subsitute.
There's a difference between time between launch to strike and time between identification to attack. But these aren't apples to apples comparisons in attack profiles. Different kinds of mission profiles require different capabilities for maximum success.
if that's all it's capable of doing, then H-20 won't be a very successful project.
think what you can do with an aircraft with 4500 km combat radius carrying over 10t of PGMs and also commanding a fleet of UCAVs doing the same. Now, if you add Y20U into the equation, it would be able to go even further than that.
Sure, but being able to threaten a carrier group is still relevant as an option even if it doesn’t actually do it during a conflict. It just adds another headache for US planners to mitigate if they send carriers into range.