China's transport, tanker & heavy lift aircraft - esp. Y-20/YY-20
- Thread starter Totoro
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Latest satellite imagery of Xi'an AC. Posted by @琴石2022 on Weibo.
Top left parking area has a large aircraft with what look like canards. Reminds me of N757A. Is this a known test-bed aircraft?
Yes. Known for many years. It's a highly modified Tu-204C.
This pic shows it, with some aspects blurred out, but we can still see the "wings"/canards.
This specific image was from like 2016-2017 from memory, so veritably ancient. But the weird appearance of the aircraft and lack of high profile coverage sometimes makes people surprised when they see it on satellite I suppose
I see. It is to the J-20 program what the N757A was to the F-22?Yes. Known for many years. It's a highly modified Tu-204C.
This pic shows it, with some aspects blurred out, but we can still see the "wings"/canards.
This specific image was from like 2016-2017 from memory, so veritably ancient. But the weird appearance of the aircraft and lack of high profile coverage sometimes makes people surprised when they see it on satellite I suppose
Possibly/probably
Looks like the same aircraft are visible as @ACuriousPLAFan's. Can anyone ID them?A high-resolution satellite image of XAC taken a week ago. Pardon the resolution, but the file size is quite moderate.
I still see at least a couple Y(Y)-20As.
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In retrospect, quite curious they saw blurring canards(which were probably testing out contents of leading edges) was more important than everything else.