H-20 bomber (with H-X, JH-XX)

weig2000 said:

The statement is obviously rather vague and can be interpreted very broadly and thus only a very wide range of first flight date could be speculated based on the statement, just like what you did above.

But we also have other information and one can Condicombine them to arrive at a slightly better prediction. A few other more or less significant "leaks" in recent years:

• General Ma Xiaotian, Air Force Commander, disclosed that China's long-range bomber is under development, in an official event (Air Force Day) in 2016.
• Earlier this year, XAC revealed in one of its major promotional video what looked like a fly-wing type of aircraft in silhouette at the end of the show as "Next Step."
  
• This leak from the current CCTV documentary announcing "major progress" in H-20 development, also the first time the name "H-20" is disclosed more or less officially.

Considering the rather authoritative nature of the people, organization and channel releasing the information, H-20 being a particularly secretive and strategic program (just remember how closely the US had guarded anything related to B-2 in its early years), as well as China's customary approach in handling information of this kind of project, it's safe to speculate that project H-20 has reached a certain significant milestone. It shouldn't be the finalization of the design, breakthrough in certain major subsystem, or even the start of the first initial prototype. It's more likely that the first H-20 has been under construction for a while and may have achieved a certain stage of completion.

Based on the above information and reasoning, I would say the first H-20 flight is likely to be one to three years away.

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In addition to the three points, there are two more concrete progress recently:

1. The recent revelation of the 3D printed wing frame few weeks ago.
2. The revelation of XAC finishing fabrication of the air duct, if I remember right the exhaust duct. This was a month ago.

CCTV 纪录片《永远的军魂》 第三集

"大型运输机运20和四代重型隐身战机歼20正式列装，新型远端战略轰炸机轰20研发取得重大进展，中国空军正式开启『20时代』。"

CCTV Documentary 《Military Soul Forever》 Episode 3

"The large transport aircraft Y-20 and the fouth-generation heavy stealth fighter J-20 are officially deployed. Research and development of the new long-range strategic bomber H-20 have made significant progress. The Chinese Air Force officially commence the "20 era."

at about 37:30

Is there a dedicated comedy section on this forum? Because this is unfiltered bullsh!t from your usual suspects (Chinese state media):

Trial flight soon for new type of Chinese stealth bomber
By Shan Jie Source:Global Times Published: 2018/10/9 23:08:41

The trial flight of China's new-generation stealth bomber Hong-20 may take place soon, military experts said on Tuesday after China's official television station confirmed the name of the bomber.

Disclosing the new bomber is a potential deterrence, Song Zhongping, a military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

"Usually the development of equipment and weaponry of the People's Liberation Army is highly confidential,"he said.

Revealing the bomber name before trials shows the Chinese aviation industry is gaining more confidence, said Shanghai-based news site thepaper.cn.

China Central Television confirmed in a documentary in August that "the development of new long-distance strategic bomber, Hong-20, has made great progress."

It was the first time "Hong-20" appeared officially. "Hong" is the first character of hongzhaji, "bomber aircraft" in Chinese.

Song said the public unveiling of the bomber suggested that it might have finished testing the hydraulic pressure, electricity supply and avionics systems.

"The trial flight will come soon," he said.

China's Hong-20 bomber has been under development at the Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute since 2008, Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta previously reported.

"The new generation of bombers can carry more bombs than previous H-6K bombers, have the advantage of stealth features and are able to strike targets from standoff ranges," Song said in a previous interview in April.

The Hong-20 could improve both defensive and offensive air force capabilities and "enable the army to possess stronger nuclear and conventional deterrence," Song said.

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SinoSoldier said:

Is there a dedicated comedy section on this forum? Because this is unfiltered bullsh!t from your usual suspects (Chinese state media):

Click to expand...

It actually isn't that out there for the aircraft to make its maiden flight "soon" as the earliest predictions that can credibly be made are within the next year or two. That part's somewhat fair depending on how one views the word "soon" in context.

But I'm not sure why global times chose to quote the Russian Gazette of all places and where on earth the Russian Gazette thought H-20 was being worked on at "Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute".

Bltizo said:

It actually isn't that out there for the aircraft to make its maiden flight "soon" as the earliest predictions that can credibly be made are within the next year or two. That part's somewhat fair depending on how one views the word "soon" in context.

But I'm not sure why global times chose to quote the Russian Gazette of all places and where on earth the Russian Gazette thought H-20 was being worked on at "Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute".

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I'll concede that the definition of "soon" varies from person to person, but this unsubstantiated claim all but came from a mere phrase from a CCTV (lol) program that spoke of a "milestone". Milestone could mean literally anything, from review of initial concept to prototype rollout. The reliance on a Russian source that called the H-20 a product of SARDI really compounds the author's ineptness at basic research.

SinoSoldier said:

I'll concede that the definition of "soon" varies from person to person, but this unsubstantiated claim all but came from a mere phrase from a CCTV (lol) program that spoke of a "milestone". Milestone could mean literally anything, from review of initial concept to prototype rollout. The reliance on a Russian source that called the H-20 a product of SARDI really compounds the author's ineptness at basic research.

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Oh I'm not sure about that, I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that there has not been some fairly official signs in the last two years referring to the next generation bomber in a manner that you'd expect for a project that was not at a fairly advanced stage of the project, like how weig mentioned in his post on the last page https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/plaaf-jh-xx-h-x-bomber-project.t6451/page-119#post-526480
I'm also not sure why you're saying "lol" to CCTV -- there is CCTV, and there is CCTV, and the credibility that is made on one programme doesn't necessarily reflect on the credibility of another one. There's a fair bit of nuance and common sense to it.

This is not including the many additional rumours and indications from the usual boards and grapevine that suggest this is the case as well.

I'm also fairly sure you were around in the late 2000s when some official statements about the next generation fighter started getting thrown about as well, and the current state of H-20 rumours and official nods to it, do not feel dissimilar to the pre J-20 reveal years.



That said, the author of the article is obviously someone who isn't very familiar with the project. Not sure why they chose to quote the Russian Gazette.

But, the quote from Song Zhongping is not particularly illogical and and Song's specific quote alone can be taken while ignoring the rest of the article.
That isn't because I specifically think Song himself is uber credible, but because his conclusion is a fairly sensible one that the rest of us can also sensibly extrapolate based on what we've seen and what we've heard.

Bltizo said:

Oh I'm not sure about that, I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that there has not been some fairly official signs in the last two years referring to the next generation bomber in a manner that you'd expect for a project that was not at a fairly advanced stage of the project, like how weig mentioned in his post on the last page https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/plaaf-jh-xx-h-x-bomber-project.t6451/page-119#post-526480
I'm also not sure why you're saying "lol" to CCTV -- there is CCTV, and there is CCTV, and the credibility that is made on one programme doesn't necessarily reflect on the credibility of another one. There's a fair bit of nuance and common sense to it.

This is not including the many additional rumours and indications from the usual boards and grapevine that suggest this is the case as well.

I'm also fairly sure you were around in the late 2000s when some official statements about the next generation fighter started getting thrown about as well, and the current state of H-20 rumours and official nods to it, do not feel dissimilar to the pre J-20 reveal years.



That said, the author of the article is obviously someone who isn't very familiar with the project. Not sure why they chose to quote the Russian Gazette.

But, the quote from Song Zhongping is not particularly illogical and and Song's specific quote alone can be taken while ignoring the rest of the article.
That isn't because I specifically think Song himself is uber credible, but because his conclusion is a fairly sensible one that the rest of us can also sensibly extrapolate based on what we've seen and what we've heard.

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The article vacillates between sheer lousiness of research and vague statements that do not bring much to the table. On one hand, quoting a Russian news source just about ruins whatever credibility the article had in the first place. On the other, Song's statements doesn't tell us anything more than what the average Joe knows.

The authoritative reports on the H-20 can be counted on one finger. We have Ma Xiaotian's statement from 2015, research paper that studies flying wing designs (posted by Henri K.), the recent 3D-printed engine interface (which might or might not be related to the H-20 in the first place), and a recent report of a construction of an Iron Bird test rig. This article isn't any of the sort.

When multiple "big shrimps" report on the rollout of a prototype (or at least construction thereof), then perhaps we can entertain the possibility of a near-future reveal, but until then these CCTV reports are hyped far beyond their actual worth.

SinoSoldier said:

The article vacillates between sheer lousiness of research and vague statements that do not bring much to the table. On one hand, quoting a Russian news source just about ruins whatever credibility the article had in the first place. On the other, Song's statements doesn't tell us anything more than what the average Joe knows.

The authoritative reports on the H-20 can be counted on one finger. We have Ma Xiaotian's statement from 2015, research paper that studies flying wing designs (posted by Henri K.), the recent 3D-printed engine interface (which might or might not be related to the H-20 in the first place), and a recent report of a construction of an Iron Bird test rig. This article isn't any of the sort.

When multiple "big shrimps" report on the rollout of a prototype (or at least construction thereof), then perhaps we can entertain the possibility of a near-future reveal, but until then these CCTV reports are hyped far beyond their actual worth.

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The global times article is all over the place.

But the specific claim made by the Chinese military commentator guy about suggesting that H-20's initial flight might be "soon" I think is entirely sensible
You're right, his statement doesn't tell us anything more than what any of us know --- but I wasn't suggesting that he was giving us any new information. Rather I was challenging why you believed his statement to be strange or laughable, because unless I've missed something, I thought that the general impression was that the first H-20 has been under construction for a year or more now, to be expected to emerge in the next few years.


Of course, we've had various rumours and photos that may or may not have been related to H-20, but I was more referencing the various points weig mentioned in the last page to be some rather authoritative sources making direct reference to the next gen bomber.
First of course we have Gen Ma's statement
Then we have earlier this year the teasing of the bomber at the end of the XAC/AVIC video
And now we have this programme directly mentioning H-20 as well

All in the background with the understanding that the first prototype may have been under construction for a little while -- so I see nothing particularly outrageous about Song's saying "the first flight will come soon". If anything I'm a bit confused at your

I mean, the only way I can make sense of your is if you believed that Song was suggesting that we would see H-20 fly imminently like within a few months or something, but I think that would be a strange way to interpret it, because I don't think we've had any media personalities or commentators mention the imminent revelation of a new plane or ship or project within merely a few months of when it emerged. But what we have seen is references to projects that would emerge within a couple of years, which is how I'm interpreting his statement and would be entirely within the reasonable bounds of what we know of H-20's development so far.

Judging by Y-20 timeline so H-20 should fly 2019-2020

J-20, Y-20, Z-20 and now H-20

The key is the 20

SinoSoldier said:

Is there a dedicated comedy section on this forum? Because this is unfiltered bullsh!t from your usual suspects (Chinese state media):

Click to expand...

Are such statements really necessary for this forum, even if the source is inaccurate?