It probably won't be regarded as such, but HQ-19 is the biggest deal so far in Zhuhai air show.
Now, China has arguably the best non-ICBM ranged BMD system on the market.
I would imagine there is plenty of demand for this in the Middle East.
PLA Anti-Air Missile (SAM) systems
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It probably won't be regarded as such, but HQ-19 is the biggest deal so far in Zhuhai air show.
Now, China has arguably the best non-ICBM ranged BMD system on the market.
I would imagine there is plenty of demand for this in the Middle East.
This is awesome. The TEL seems to be Taian Special Vehicle, from the cab. But it's different to those of HQ-9. The wheel diameter looks close to Belarus's MZKT-7930 Astrolog (1.4 m). Using that as assumption i arrived at total length of about 13 m for the vehicle. The missile canister is 7.8 meters with diameter of 78 cm.
The missile might be 7 m length with diameter of 70 cm. The weight can be predicted from E.Fleeman's book to be about 3.7 Metric tonne per missile. Maybe lighter if kinetic warhead is used.
Military experts such as Andrei Martyanov and Scott Ritter repeatedly said that Russia makes the best air defence systems (S-400, S-500), an expertise developed from the Soviet era when NATO beefed up its quantity of aircraft and the Soviet lacked of resources to match in this area... so instead they focused in strengthening their air defence systems.... and then China and the USA are racing for the second best nowadays.
The Soviets started working on air defence systems in Stalin's time. Moscow and Leningrad were air bombed by the Germans, Minsk was totally destroyed, the Soviets had the smaller air force, and that was also the case against the US and its allies after the war was over.
So the Soviets developed the first modern air defense system, and for this they recruited German scientists who worked on the Wasserfall program. This was a massive program, with static defenses around cities using one system (S-25 Berkut), mobile defenses to guard key targets using another system (S-75 Dvina), and a flying air defense system (La-250 aka Complex K-15) to cover the gaps in covering the vast expanses of Soviet territory against bombers. The SAM program development allegedly cost as much to develop as the Soviet nuclear weapons program.
And the investments into upgrading these systems, replacing them with more modern variants, never stopped.
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Military expert such as myself say that China makes the best land-based air defense. For naval systems, it is a toss up between China and the US.
antiterror13
Brigadier
Kind to elaborate? I thought Russia is pretty good in land based air defence, I don't see anything equivalent to S-500 in Chinese land based currently in service
Late HQ-9 likely work similarly to S-500 (able to engage high end ballistic missiles endoatmospherically). S-500 mostly an incremental upgrade to S-400, which in turn is one to S-300. China has also continually upgraded HQ-9s, but doesn't advertise it much.
China in addition to that has well proven exoatmospheric defenses (HQ-19) and a "proper" GBI equivalent (DN-3) instead of those weird nuclear tipped SAMs Russia relies on for limited anti ICBM defense.
In the short/medium range sector, China is also firmly in the lead, Russia only has a few S-350 out, while China's lineup is heavily stacked with HQ-16. China has widely proliferated laser anti drone/rocket defenses.
The Russian systems are formidable but China is just even further beyond. It's been a long term key requirement for China's need to defend against potentially numerically superior enemy air force.
S-500 uses a modified version of the anti-ballistic missiles used in the S-300VM4. The main thing is the new 'Yenisei' AESA radar.
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So this is the Chinese version of Thaad?