H-20 bomber (with H-X, JH-XX)
- Thread starter Deino
- Start date
Of all the wars that USA has been involved in since WW2, no one has been able to bring the war to the American homeland, and to bring the cost of war to the American people directly.
The USA has many bases surrounding China right now, but China does not have many that can reach the USA. That means, any war will be fought locally via neighbouring countries that surround China. China will be defensive from its homeland.
So - a H20 that can reach and touch the USA is of significant value to China, imho.
asif iqbal
Lieutenant General
pretty sure US has very good radar coverage over Russia since the era of the Cold War anything from the Russian side might not be a good idea
The Pacific is vast and big and I am sure China has worked out some blind "corridors" where a stream of H20 bombers can transit through
H20 needs to be high in stealth , ultra long range and a very heavy payload
they also need a very large number of these bombers, China need to be able to create a air bridge over to the US mainland
a sustained heavy bombing campaign of the Western Seaboard and even if possible the Eastern Seaboard needs to be in place
there is absolutely no point in taking out the US assets in the Pacific if they can simply rebuild and come back at a later date like the did against Japan in WW2
maybe that is why H20 is delayed and delayed again as they might be changing the operational requirements
also with advances in J20, J35, J36 and J-XX the H20 might benefit from some of these emerging technologies on those platforms
H20 will also benefit from rapidly advancing technologies like AI which also could be the reason for the delay
H20 will serve well into the 21st century they might as well get it right from the start
This is honestly something a very big carrier, like 150k ton displacement, might be very useful for. A big carrier capable of launching heavyweight planes would allow China to do mid-Pacific refueling. The US has Hawaii, and with a proper carrier with a proper carrier-capable tanker they'd be able to strike the US mainland with the H-20 without making the H-20 massively larger than the US B-21. At the moment, a B-21 style H-20 launched from mainland China could comfortably attack Guam, Hawaii, and Alaska, all of which are important basing locations for US military nodes, but can't really effectively bring attacks against the US homeland.
I think any notion of a carrier vastly larger than the usual 100,000 ton or so CVNs is pretty out there and even if China were to pursue that plan it would take probably 10-20 years before it became operational. It's value is also pretty questionable when there might be other options such as stealth tankers, refueling from smaller aircraft that are already carrier capable, etc. This is all assuming PLAAF really does want H-20 primary mission to be striking US mainland which I'm skeptical of.
The shortest route to reach US mainland from China is to take off from Heilongjiang, fly over the Russian Far East, skirt south of the Kamchatka Peninsula, Aleutian Islands, then reach the US West Coast. Assuming we are doing a peace time patrol and avoids entering other country's air space except Russia, this route measures about 75,00 km one way and 15,000 km round trip. This is not much further than the combat range of the Tu-160 and totally doable with air refueling.
Alternatively, if we choose a Pacific route without entering Russian airspace, Japan will be in the way making the jounery much longer. We have to fly through the Miyako Strait and Izu Islands, two choke points heavily monitored by radar, before reaching Calfornia. The distance is about 20,000 km round trip which, IMHO, is beyond the reach of PLA's current technologies.
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asif iqbal
Lieutenant General
not only a significant value but I would say a pre-request is to to able to bring huge amount of firepower to the US mainland
especially Newport News, Ingals shipbuilding, Bath Iron Works and Groton, Connecticut amongst others
H20 is probably been redesigned and its missions have probably been redeveloped to give China a True Global Strike across the Pacific