Any reason why China is producing them soooooo slowly? It must not because they are incapable, are they waiting for next gen helicopter to come come online to produce them in mass?
By comparison, US military have over 6500 active helicopters
Americans move everything and anything using helicopters, from supply’s around the battlefield to 155mm howitzers, they also have brilliant designs like the Chinook which have time tested capability’s, Canada is taking delivery of the CH-46F which can lift 13+ tons which is same as the total weight of AC313!! Boeing is in talks with United States Army about making a Chinook which lift almost 18 tons, it’s a testament to the design and airframe which can continually be re-enforced
For China and its geographical location, its vast topography and ever changing landscape helicopters would be proved useful, from natural disasters, border disputes, wars, disaster relief in floods and earthquakes they are crucial
China is surrounded by country’s which could result in disputes this require short notice deployment for China, and for that having the air transport reduces the alert level and eases the burden on the military, otherwise you need a large standing army on high alert 24/7 365 days a year which drains vital resources like in Pakistan, having the capability to air drop large number of soldiers quickly and efficiently both inside and outside the country does anyway with the old “stand on guard” tactics
For China, I think each Aviation Regiment should consist of 5 flight groups, of which are 3 transport groups and 2 attack helicopters groups, the 3 transport groups made up of a heavy lift, a medium lift and a light/utility helicopters and the 2 attack helicopter groups made up of 1 WZ-19 and 1 WZ-10 helicopters, each flight has 2 squadrons of helicopters each squadron has 12 helicopters, so a aviation regiment looks like this
2 x 12 Heavy lift
2 x 12 Medium lift
2 x 12 light/utility helicopter
2 x 12 WZ-19 low cover
2 x 12 WZ-10 top cover
Each regiment therefore has total 120 helicopter’s, there’s 1 aviation regiment per province on average so that’s 22 Aviation Regiments requiring 2,640 helicopters in total
These kind of numbers and helicopters could air transport at minimum at least 2 Divisions possibly 3 depending on readiness and combination of Y-7/8/9/IL-76 and new Regiments of Y-20 Transport could manage another 2 Division’s in essence almost 40,000 troops in total
By no means is this a national priority and probably will never happen, but it’s the kind of numbers we are looking for which is decent for China, or even bare minimum and forecasts for the helicopter market in China is sitting around this figure for the next 10-15 years
Having the capability to drop 4-5 airborne division’s, with at least one outside the country will certainly add much needed rapid deployment capability to the PLA which will be beneficial in peace and wartime