China's transport, tanker & heavy lift aircraft

siegecrossbow

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Aerial refueling from a YY-20 tanker.

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Scary to think that just a few years ago PLAAF had very limited air refueling capabilities. I won’t be surprised if it has the largest tanker fleet in the Asia Pacific region within the next five years.
 

ACuriousPLAFan

Brigadier
Registered Member
Scary to think that just a few years ago PLAAF had very limited air refueling capabilities. I won’t be surprised if it has the largest tanker fleet in the Asia Pacific region within the next five years.
All we are waiting for right now is for Y-20Bs with WS-20 engines to enter mass production. Once that has begun, the YY-20Bs would naturally arrive in the PLAAF in larger numbers as well.
 
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asif iqbal

Lieutenant General
All we are waiting for right now is for Y-20Bs with WS-20 engines to enter mass production. Once that has begun, the YY-20Bs would naturally arrive in the PLAAF in larger numbers as well.

with almost 60 in service and maybe close to even 100 with all the manufacturing and production in place China will need to keep the production going throughout the 2020s to fill its transport needs

US built apex 280 x C17 Globemasters + 130 x C5 Galaxy

Russia built around 60 x An-124
and 70 x An-22 and many others

so no doubt China will need over 200+ x Y20 of all variants
 

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
with almost 60 in service and maybe close to even 100 with all the manufacturing and production in place China will need to keep the production going throughout the 2020s to fill its transport needs

US built apex 280 x C17 Globemasters + 130 x C5 Galaxy

Russia built around 60 x An-124
and 70 x An-22 and many others

so no doubt China will need over 200+ x Y20 of all variants

Remember the US also has 500 Tankers.
So I see at least 300 Y-20 tanker variants as well
 

lcloo

Captain
I won't speculate what was the cause of the incident or accident until we have official or leaked insider information.

The section with the green primer painted pannels covers the main landing gear and the APU. It could be anything related to the landing gear or the APU, or a significant impact damage by external objects.
 

antiterror13

Brigadier
Scary to think that just a few years ago PLAAF had very limited air refueling capabilities. I won’t be surprised if it has the largest tanker fleet in the Asia Pacific region within the next five years.

What country in APEX that have larger tanker fleet than China? Do you count the US and Russia?
 

ACuriousPLAFan

Brigadier
Registered Member
with almost 60 in service and maybe close to even 100 with all the manufacturing and production in place China will need to keep the production going throughout the 2020s to fill its transport needs

US built apex 280 x C17 Globemasters + 130 x C5 Galaxy

Russia built around 60 x An-124
and 70 x An-22 and many others

so no doubt China will need over 200+ x Y20 of all variants
200x Y-20 of all variants simply isn't enough. I recall an official from XAIC or CASIC some years ago stating that China needs at least 5/600-800x Y-20s of all variants.

Another solution would be cargo drones or Unmanned Transport Planes (UTP), which can be built in larger numbers with shorter periods of time and fewer resources and manpower required to plug the gap of China's transport aircraft fleet. However, the maximum cargo dimension and payload weight which they can carry are certainly much smaller than the Y-9 and Y-20.

I have written about this in the Chinese UAV/UCAV Development Thread in late-June last year:

In that post, I have suggested somewhere around 15-18 tons. Can be rather unrealistic. @Michaelsinodef suggested UTPs with cargo-capacity of 4-5 tons or 8-10 tons, which would be simpler to achieve and easier to field by the PLAAF and PLANAF.
 
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