Should be possible, bomb bay doors use similar principles -- they can fold open and when closed shouldn't have too adverse an effect on RCS
H-20 bomber (with H-X, JH-XX)
- Thread starter Deino
- Start date
All aspect, broadband VLO can't be compromised on whatsoever when you shoot herdsman for sure ! But people think that B2 can do circle arround s400 so why not feeding the troll ?
Rather than absolute VLO it is more important that the H-20 has speed. And besides speed, also the ability to be mass manufactured.
For China to make an equivalent to B-21 and then build 20 of them is likely not too difficult. They already have top class grasp over stealth tech. But such a use of H-20 merely relegates it into an unicorn that won't affect the battlefield anymore than the 20 B-2s owned by USA.
The Chinese Air force lacks a mainstay bomber aircraft to deliver PGMs. Small relics from the cold war era kept on life support maintainance won't cut it. H-20 needs to carry on the torch from the H-6. Having an almost full VLO bombing fleet in the hundreds will be a powerful, even decisive, assymetric advantage against peer and near peer enemies.
The only question is if China can construct them efficiently enough, which if looking at past data of Chinese industrial capability, the answer should be yes.
For China to make an equivalent to B-21 and then build 20 of them is likely not too difficult. They already have top class grasp over stealth tech. But such a use of H-20 merely relegates it into an unicorn that won't affect the battlefield anymore than the 20 B-2s owned by USA.
The Chinese Air force lacks a mainstay bomber aircraft to deliver PGMs. Small relics from the cold war era kept on life support maintainance won't cut it. H-20 needs to carry on the torch from the H-6. Having an almost full VLO bombing fleet in the hundreds will be a powerful, even decisive, assymetric advantage against peer and near peer enemies.
The only question is if China can construct them efficiently enough, which if looking at past data of Chinese industrial capability, the answer should be yes.
I don't think speed is a big factor in the H-20 bomber design.
I think survivability with VLO is the by far the most important design goal.
Keeping costs of production reasonable is definitely be in the design teams' mind, with the B-2 being a prime example of cost overrun.
Making it high speed as well would make it prohibitively expensive, and would negatively impact fleet numbers.
I think survivability with VLO is the by far the most important design goal.
Keeping costs of production reasonable is definitely be in the design teams' mind, with the B-2 being a prime example of cost overrun.
Making it high speed as well would make it prohibitively expensive, and would negatively impact fleet numbers.
That seems overtly optimistic on what China can afford, a massive fleet of stealth bombers is going to be crazy expensive. Bombers fell out of popularity due to the effectiveness of ballistic missiles and long range stand off munitions, a small fleet of vlo stealth bombers will be sufficient for deep penetration strikes towards high value targets while normal air assets take care of the rest.
That is the US model as a result of the end of the cold war and peace dividend.
The US requirement going forwards is to aim to get triple digits for B-21.
In the case of H-20, I would not be surprised if they aim for high two digits at least.
But in the case of the US they have the largest aerospace companies with decades of experience building vlo aircraft at a relatively high volume (for stealthy aircraft anyways), for China they only really started going into stealthy aircraft in the last decade and a bit , with J-20 count below 200 close to 10 years after initial production start. It will take some serious investment into tooling and personnel to scale up to mass production of VLO bombers.
Your previous argument was about one of cost and suggesting that the US procurement of stealth bombers was deliberately limited by the utility of conventional bombers with standoff weapons and ballistic missiles.
My point is that the US procurement of B-2's was limited not because of those factors but rather a result of the end of the cold war.
In the case of China's aerospace industry, it will entirely depend on how much resources the govt and military wants to allocate to H-20 procurement to enable the procurement of a given scale.
But it will not be a reflection of stealth bombers having an undetermined role that other platforms are somehow able to do just as easily, and it is incorrect to conclude H-20 production will parallel B-2 procurement, given the vast differences in strategic climate each nation is/was facing at their respective time periods.
If you want to say "we don't know how many H-20s the PLA will buy" then that's okay.
If you want to say "the PLA will buy H-20s in a similar way to the USAF that bought B-2s" then that is a much more dubious statement.
I concede that the situation between the PLA and US is not exactly comparable so that numbers between b-2 and H-20 cannot directly translate, but I'll also argue that costs still play a huge factor in numbers procured, since as far as I know, the b-21 is projected to cost a eye watering 500 million+ each, that is why the US's mainstay heavy bomber is still the b-52.
Even if china can do it at half the price of the b-21 that's like 2 J20 for each H-20, it would be more economical for the PLA to instead acquire a large fleet of say tu-160/b-1 equivalent at lower costs, as to me the main utility of a VLO bomber is anti-shipping, which is also done quite well by a mach 2 bomber at basically half the price.
Well obviously this far in the development cycle we probably won't get a new heavy bomber other than the H-20 for a while, but one can dream. (A tu-160 in Chinese black Camo would be a sight to behold)