H-20 bomber (with H-X, JH-XX)

dasCKD · 2025-06-28T13:20:28-0400

as.karo said:
How will USAF pilots navigate without GPS? Will they use stars in the sky or Chinese beacons?

Using OTH radar systems to function as improvised GPSes, using US beacons, using flight log data in combination with compass information and spotted landmasses to approximate current location, or, if necessary, yes, using celestial navigation. These bombers are meant to penetrate deep behind the traditional front lines, deep into enemy airspace where the electronic environment would be complete havoc even without the navigational satellites being downed. It would quite frankly be gross negligence if there was no effort to create backup navigation systems in case traditional GPS/Beidou was somehow denied to the aircraft.

as.karo said:
Besides, "stealth bombers" are not very stealthy for LW radars.

I have no idea where you're getting that information from. One of the stated reasons why 6th generation aircraft are being built without tails was the significant signal optimization against longwave radars.

Tomboy · 2025-06-28T13:25:09-0400

dasCKD said:
Satellites are expensive and, more importantly, very very easy to shoot down. Even if a satellite + launch costs only a million USD each.

Have fun shooting down mega constellations like Starlink. This is going to be the future of recon sats and probably future spaceborne AEW systems. Starshield is already operational and have over a hundred starlink like satellites in orbit, these satellites are rumored to be able to reach sub 0.5m resolution via onboard SAR. Sure you can definitely down a single satellite in LEO but what about thousands of them? There is just simply no way currently to dealing with these mega constellations right now.

CMP · 2025-06-28T13:29:06-0400

Tomboy said:
Have fun shooting down mega constellations like Starlink. This is going to be the future of recon sats and probably future spaceborne AEW systems. Starshield is already operational and have over a hundred starlink like satellites in orbit, these satellites are rumored to be able to reach sub 0.5m resolution via onboard SAR. Sure you can definitely down a single satellite in LEO but what about thousands of them? There is just simply no way currently to dealing with these mega constellations right now.

EMP in LEO will take them out at scale without needing to physically destroy them. Sure, you would take down your own nearby satellites in the process, but it would be a really good red button to ensure a form of satellite MAD.

dasCKD · 2025-06-28T13:30:09-0400

Tomboy said:
Have fun shooting down mega constellations like Starlink. This is going to be the future of recon sats and probably future spaceborne AEW systems. Starshield is already operational and have over a hundred starlink like satellites in orbit, these satellites are rumored to be able to reach sub 0.5m resolution via onboard SAR. Sure you can definitely down a single satellite in LEO but what about thousands of them?

Those satellites are tiny and are in space. They don't have anywhere to dump their heat and can be cooked from the ground by a sufficiently big laser or DEW system. You can also fire lots and lots of small anti-satellite satellites whose only purpose is to collide with these SAR satellites for significantly less weight and cost than the satellites themselves, since all they really need is a basic guidance system and some ionic thrusters to guide them into the satellite constellation. There's also systems that China are themselves playing with a while back, like the satellite that can kidnap other satellites. If you're really cheap and desperate you can also Kessler syndrome entire orbits to deny any satellites the LEO completely for even cheaper than anti-sat sats or lasers. Also this is straying very far away from the topic of the H-20 so we probably should stop discussing this here.

valysre · 2025-06-28T13:31:08-0400

as.karo said:
Will they use stars in the sky

The SR-71 (being older than the GPS constellations) used a combination of inertial navigation and stellar navigation. You say this as a joke, but if the SR-71 could perform flights at Mach 3+ deep in enemy territory, and still navigate over reconnaissance targets with high enough accuracy to produce useful photography, and then return home, then I have no doubt that a bomber today can replicate this.

Tomboy · 2025-06-28T13:45:11-0400

CMP said:
EMP in LEO will take them out at scale without needing to physically destroy them. Sure, you would take down your own nearby satellites in the process, but it would be a really good red button to ensure a form of satellite MAD.

This won't only kill nearby satellites but kill every single satellite passing through the effected region. Not only doing this would cripple effectively all satellite in LEO and cause global mayhem, doing this would be illegal under UN law and would carry significant backlash by effectively everyone and hence should only be used as a last ditch effort. This option shouldn't even be realistically considered unless full on WW3 happens.

dasCKD said:
Those satellites are tiny and are in space. They don't have anywhere to dump their heat and can be cooked from the ground by a sufficiently big laser or DEW system. You can also fire lots and lots of small anti-satellite satellites whose only purpose is to collide with these SAR satellites for significantly less weight and cost than the satellites themselves, since all they really need is a basic guidance system and some ionic thrusters to guide them into the satellite constellation. There's also systems that China are themselves playing with a while back, like the satellite that can kidnap other satellites.

Again, why with these future technology that isn't proven or even tested, laser cooking satellites from the ground is a joke. Sure your mass anti satellite constellation could work but currently all work that we know of this concept remains theoretical. For the satellite grabbing experiment, I doubt it'll work since each of those satellite are quite expensive so have fun building and launching enough of them to deorbit your enemies satellites faster than they can launch new ones. Being fully realistic, current and near future ASAT weapons just aren't designed to be effective against these mega constellations.

CMP · 2025-06-28T13:52:25-0400

Tomboy said:
Not only nearby but killing every single satellite passing through the effected region. Not only doing this would cripple effectively all satellite in LEO and cause global mayhem, doing this would be illegal under UN law and would carry significant backlash by effectively everyone and hence should only be used as a last ditch effort. This option shouldn't even be realistically considered unless full on WW3 happens.

EMP isn't future anything and the capability should be on the table as an option in any kind of direct great power war. Especially if your own satellite capability is already disadvantaged or otherwise compromised relative to your adversary. Also, UN "law" is just a loose recommendation when it comes to any P5 nations or any other nation acting under full diplomatic protection by a P5 nation.

4Tran · 2025-06-28T14:02:20-0400

While the B-21 is cool and all, it's not designed for penetrating the most advanced air defence grid in the world. It's a product of the early 2010s where the narrative was still on the Great War on Terror, and the reason for its existence was the B-2 was too expensive and was too much overkill for the kind of bombing missions the USAF wanted to perform. The B-21 should have better stealth, but it's meant for air defence networks that either have been already degraded or aren't from a peer rival.

Aval said:
Perhaps a bit of a stretch, but I've observed a (possible) increased prevalence of the "Hi/Lo" mix for Chinese next-gen military platforms procurement.
Not in a strictly "more expensive/less expensive" sense, but in how both designs would cover the same core role but have their own specialisations to cover additional (secondary) roles that the other in the mix cannot, and furthermore covers both ends of the "revolutionary/conservative" design axis to hedge bets with unproven technologies.

J-20 and J-35/A

J-36 (J-XDC) and J-50 (J-XDS)

Type-004 (new CVN) and Type-003a (Fujian sibling)

I suspect this is because a Hi/Lo mix is the optimal approach to procurement, the main limiter being funding. And there seems to be more money going into the PLA these days.

Could it be possible that the anticipated bomber will also follow this doctrine, and so the conflicting rumours are the result of two separate designs being developed concurrently?
So we could be seeing both a subsonic and supersonic bomber emerge, with different characteristics in unrefueled range and payload. Both would be able to do the same core role (strike within 2IC), but one is specialised for it, while the other has capability to strike 3IC (or further).

There's also the possibility for unmanned drones to fit into this mix. The WZ-X we are seeing may be the B-2 equivalent, a subsonic bomber of a tried-and-true design for strike in the 2IC, while the H-20 is repurposed and redesigned for a more exotic role (like supersonic design, and strike 3IC or CONUS). Or there might be two manned bomber programmes.

I think that the PLAAF is trying to get the H-20's requirements just right before committing to a design. It's a bit less of a Hi-Lo mix and more a matter of what else China has in the inventory which impacts what the H-20 is required to do. tphuang's point makes a lot of sense. If the J-36 can already reach Guam then the H-20 would have to do even more in order to justify its existence.

I feel that something similar is happening to the JH-XX. The PLAAF is probably trying to figure out if a dedicated fighter bomber makes any sense when this is a role that can be carried out by a multitude of UAVs.

dasCKD · 2025-06-28T14:16:48-0400

Tomboy said:
Again, why with these future technology that isn't proven or even tested, laser cooking satellites from the ground is a jokeSure your mass anti satellite constellation could work but currently all work that we know of this concept remains theoretical. For the satellite grabbing experiment, I doubt it'll work since each of those satellite are quite expensive so have fun building and launching enough of them to deorbit your enemies satellites faster than they can launch new ones. Being fully realistic, current and near future ASAT weapons just aren't designed to be effective against these mega constellations.

At which point you can kessler the entire orbit. There's not really any way to argue against expense here. A fragmentation warhead behind a significant skin of metal can create a system that shreds thousands if not hundreds of thousands of mini satellites. Those satellites will also explode into more fragments that will kill the orbit and render any number of satellites you attempt to put up there dead on arrival for orders of magnitude less than what it'll cost to put the satellites up there. If that's what needs to be done to keep the stealth bombers safe and your enemy knows that you literally have no answer to their bomber fleet they're going to do it.

dingyibvs · 2025-06-28T14:36:47-0400

Tomboy said:
This won't only kill nearby satellites but kill every single satellite passing through the effected region. Not only doing this would cripple effectively all satellite in LEO and cause global mayhem, doing this would be illegal under UN law and would carry significant backlash by effectively everyone and hence should only be used as a last ditch effort. This option shouldn't even be realistically considered unless full on WW3 happens.

Again, why with these future technology that isn't proven or even tested, laser cooking satellites from the ground is a joke. Sure your mass anti satellite constellation could work but currently all work that we know of this concept remains theoretical. For the satellite grabbing experiment, I doubt it'll work since each of those satellite are quite expensive so have fun building and launching enough of them to deorbit your enemies satellites faster than they can launch new ones. Being fully realistic, current and near future ASAT weapons just aren't designed to be effective against these mega constellations.

LOL, UN laws. I think if you've got B2s dropping GBU57s on your command centers UN laws have gone out the window a long time ago.

H-20 bomber (with H-X, JH-XX)

dasCKD

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Tomboy

Junior Member

CMP

Senior Member

dasCKD

Junior Member

valysre

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Tomboy

Junior Member

CMP

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4Tran

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dasCKD

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dingyibvs

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