This Is The Chinese Plane That America Needs To Worry About

Y-20

Sebastien Roblin, National Interest: Forget About China's Stealth Fighter or Aircraft Carriers. This Is the Plane America Needs to Worry About.

The Y-20 is critical for Beijing. Here's why.

As China rises to the status of a global superpower, it is looking to acquire assets on a scale possessed previously only found operated by the United States: a huge fleet of gigantic, globe-spanning cargo planes. Indeed, its new Y-20 “Chubby Girl” transport is the largest aircraft in production since the U.S. completed production of the C-17.

The U.S. Air Force currently operates nearly six hundred C-130 Hercules, C-17 Globemaster and C-5 Galaxy cargo planes. The People’s Liberation Army Air Force only as around 145 transports according to figures from Flight Global, of which 43 are Y-7s only capable of lifting six tons. For global ‘strategic’ lift capability, the PLAAF relies on twenty-two Il-76MD jets purchased from Russia which can lug 53 tons of cargo in their portly holds. For example, after the outbreak of civil war in Libya in 2011, the PLAAF mustered four Il-76s to evacuate its citizens.

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WNU Editor: Here is an easy prediction. Within a decade or two there will be just as many Chinese air transport planes flying as American.