PLA AEW&C, SIGINT, EW and MPA thread

[Jeff Head]

Erieye is 425 km against a 3gen fighter targets.
ZDK is greater.

E-3 is about 400 km

Phalcon is quoted to track 100 at 370 km.

KJ-200 is > than all.

Actually, the Block 30/35 versions of the E-3 Sentry (All E-3B/C aircraft) has a pulse-Doppler radar range of over 250 mi (400 km+) for low-flying targets, and the pulse "beyond the horizon" radar has a range of over 400 mi (650 km+) for aircraft flying at medium to high altitudes.

The latest block 40/45 upgrade (E-3G) characterisitcs are highly classified, but will have enhanced detection, C4 and range.

 

[no_name]

Anyone know what this is?

 

[Blitzo]

underside of KJ-2000(?)

 

[no_name]

Looks like it. I never really studied the underside of KJ-2000 carefully. I thought those side bumps were radars but they are just the landing bay.

 

[Deino]

Seems as if the PLAAF has received an additional KJ-200 !!!

 

[asif iqbal]

So what's the name of the aircraft which has the balance beam? Is it called KJ-200, is it also known as Y-8? If so what variant

Secondly the aircraft that has the nose cone is called Y-8, same as KJ-200, again very confusing when it come to Chinese AWACS because the aircraft with the nose cone looks like a Y-8 but the one which the balance beam looks like a Y-9 like the PAF ZDK-03

Deino that aircraft looks nice, any idea why China went for balance beam rather than rotodome? I mean the platform can clearly take a good sized rotodome

 

[Totoro]

I have a theory on that, which may be just a wild guess. Balance beam may use a lower frequency band antenna than the pakistani system. if true, then the pakistani system would get either a bit greater precision for the same sort of technology level as the chinese counterpart, or the same precision for a cheaper, less advanced back-end system behind the antenna.

Both solutions may be perfectly adequate for pakistani needs, which are, at most, countering the indian air force. indian fleet won't have low rcs planes before 2020. at best, and even then it is unlikely they will comprise more than 150 planes before 2030.

now, chinese needs are a bit different. Their worst case adversary may be the US. countering their low rcs planes requires low frequency arrays, which the balance beam layout offers. A bit of a drop in resolution and gaps in coverage may be acceptable for the chinese if they have more platforms in the air than the pakistanis and get better counter-stealth radars.

of course, we don't know for sure which bandwidth kj200 uses but the array itself is roughly 25% larger in every direction than the very similar erieye array. (and also some 25-30% larger than one in zdk-03) it may be enough to make the array edge closer to the low end of S band, inching towards L band.

 

[Deino]

So what's the name of the aircraft which has the balance beam? Is it called KJ-200, is it also known as Y-8? If so what variant

Both ... that type is actualyl called Y-8W and KJ-200 ... not sure why ... it even has a third designation Y-8GX-5 since it is the fifth member of the "New High" family.

Secondly the aircraft that has the nose cone is called Y-8, same as KJ-200, again very confusing when it come to Chinese AWACS because the aircraft with the nose cone looks like a Y-8 but the one which the balance beam looks like a Y-9 like the PAF ZDK-03

Deino that aircraft looks nice, any idea why China went for balance beam rather than rotodome? I mean the platform can clearly take a good sized rotodome

That's indeed strange, to Your first question I think the "old" designation Y-8 was simply used for some years when the Cat. III platform was already produced for the special mission aircraft but the tactical transport was still far away ... at least for serial production as a transport. As such in fact nearly all tate production special mission types are de facto a Y-9 without the rear-loading ramp, which only has the transport version, which gained finally the new number.

For Your second question ... Actualyl I'm not sure but IMO both designs were originally concurring projects and most likely the one with the Balance Beam was the better one. As such it was ordered by the PLA and the losing design was developed for export. But for that theaory I have no confirmation.

Deino

 

[asif iqbal]

about AWACS i disagree, well i dont know about the PLAAF but i do know about the PAF and it has nothing to do with winning and lossing designs, there is no way Pakistan would be buying something from China which has deficiency’s, infact i doubt China would even sell a lossing design to Pakistan as Erieye is already a formidable AWACS aircraft, PAF knew the capabilitys it was looking for so China knew the level of sophistication it had to achieve for a sucessful order

the reason why PAF got rotodome was simple, because thats what they needed having already operated the Swedish Erieye which is a balance beam

also this one, KJ-200 suffered major set back when in 2006 one of them crashed, so balance beam was out of the question for export to Pakistan as China was reluctant to export balance beam until they solved the issues with it therefore they turned to rotodome on a modern platform

the requirement for Pakistan Air Force was tall order, it had to have the range, endurance and detection which fitted PAF doctrine

also ZDK-03 has the ability to switch its modes, for when its doing maritime patrol to when its doing ground search, which allows it to perform many different roles in many different threat enviroments, in addition with rotodome you can provide 360 degree cover, for balance beam that is inherint operational drawback, it could not and would not meet the requirments set by the PAF

once the operational requirments were evaluated, it was then decided to reduce the Erieye order to just 4 units, as the ZDK-03 was suffcient

as to why PLAAF didnt buy one, well i guess they have thier own requirment, which i think no one really knows

 

[tphuang]

about AWACS i disagree, well i dont know about the PLAAF but i do know about the PAF and it has nothing to do with winning and lossing designs, there is no way Pakistan would be buying something from China which has deficiency’s, infact i doubt China would even sell a lossing design to Pakistan as Erieye is already a formidable AWACS aircraft, PAF knew the capabilitys it was looking for so China knew the level of sophistication it had to achieve for a sucessful order

the reason why PAF got rotodome was simple, because thats what they needed having already operated the Swedish Erieye which is a balance beam

also this one, KJ-200 suffered major set back when in 2006 one of them crashed, so balance beam was out of the question for export to Pakistan as China was reluctant to export balance beam until they solved the issues with it therefore they turned to rotodome on a modern platform

the requirement for Pakistan Air Force was tall order, it had to have the range, endurance and detection which fitted PAF doctrine

also ZDK-03 has the ability to switch its modes, for when its doing maritime patrol to when its doing ground search, which allows it to perform many different roles in many different threat enviroments, in addition with rotodome you can provide 360 degree cover, for balance beam that is inherint operational drawback, it could not and would not meet the requirments set by the PAF

once the operational requirments were evaluated, it was then decided to reduce the Erieye order to just 4 units, as the ZDK-03 was suffcient

as to why PLAAF didnt buy one, well i guess they have thier own requirment, which i think no one really knows

ZDK-03 was developed according to PAF requirements and KJ-200 for Chinese requirements. That's that.

As for KJ-200 crash, the same fix to the category 3 platform for KJ-200 also was applied to ZDK-03's platform. They are using the same platform. So, I don't see how that's a valid point.