Y-20 at Airshow China 2018 in Zhuhai city in China's Guangdong province, November 7, 2018. AP Photo/Kin Cheung
Insider: China's air force has big plans for its biggest planes
* China's rapidly growing military has impressed and worried its rivals.
* China's strategic airlift fleet is the fastest-growing in the world.
* That fleet's expansion reflects Beijing's broader military ambitions.
China's rapidly growing military has added dizzying numbers of ships and aircraft, but the fastest-growing platform may be its airlifters, the heavy-duty planes designed to haul troops and supplies.
China now operates 11% of the strategic airlifters in service but is set to reach 18% by the end of the 2020s, making it the fastest-growing fleet in the world, according to Aviation Week.
Like other Chinese military hardware, the airlift fleet is based on Soviet-era designs.
Since the 1990s, Beijing has used a small number of Il-76s and variants for transport and other missions.
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WNU Editor: Large airlift fleets is what makes a nation a super-power, and China's air-force is definitely gearing up to have that capability.
3 comments:
China has an "Asian state of mind" as Japan has before WWII. 6 aircraft's carrier vs 2 on the American side, a much more strong navy vs the American one, a much better air force than the American one let aside the army which was probably the biggest vs the 17th of the world for America.
Bottom line: Japan win at the beginning and lost at the end.
Jac,
I noted your comment. I just finished one of the better books I have read in my 75 years. It's entitled The Barrier and the Javelin. It covers the February to June, 1942 period and the naval fighting and many aspects of it involving Japan and America. H.P. Willmott is the author. Quite the historian and his books reflect it.
Then there's Shattered Sword. The Battle of Midway.
Roger
The long term costs aren't the costs of punching out hundreds of copies of Slavic cargo planes. China negated those costs by standing on the shoulders of Russia.
The actual costs come later. The costs of maintaining the airplanes and crews and fuel and equipment and bases involved in sustaining a global mil supply chain. The costs of actual diplomacy and strategic compromise. As opposed to financial strip mining and intimidation. Creating a friendly infrastructure.
The costs of a supply chain for the sole benefit of just one fascistic Sino nation. In areas where the local populations want nothing but to cut your arrogant Chinese Communist throats.
A Sino nation with no membership in any organization with shared strategic goals or aims. Just a string of coerced/leveraged 3rd world backwaters and racketeered, corrupt UN Orgs. False legitimacy - just like organized crime.
GRIFTERS,
R,
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