Military Applications for ARJ21?

Does anyone think the PLA will use the ARJ21 for military applications such as AEW, ELINT, battlefield surveillance, management, command and control (similar to JSTARS)? Although it would be a fair number of years before the Chinese industry would roll out ARJ21 based concepts, would it be feasible for the aircraft to conduct any of the above roles? To me it seems to be a promising aircraft, and I imagine the PLA's doctrine will lean more towards net-centric based warfare in the coming years - so to me it appears to be a match. Presently China has multiple development projects in the above stated fields, but the numbers are often in the 1 or 2 range.

Perhaps sometime from 2015, is it plausible to think China will be able to roll out systems similar in concept to the Gulfstream G550 Phalcon - basically an AESA AEW on ARJ21 - as well as something similar to the Raytheon R1 Sentinel?

Probably not. The usage of the GE engines as well as other Western sourced avionics equipment would have contract stipulated they won't be for military use. You can mod an ARJ-21 for CCP VIP official use though, just like some Boeing 737s. I remember those pics of 737s with sat uplinks, and there was some furor that the planes are going to be used in some kind of AEW or ELINT use but it turns out that these planes were for CCP VIP or official use.

I don't think so for ARJ21 because it was meant more for commercial market. However, if PRC will use the aircraft, they might use it for some kind of special mission aircraft for the Special Forces, like communication, transportation, or the sort.

crobato said:

Probably not. The usage of the GE engines as well as other Western sourced avionics equipment would have contract stipulated they won't be for military use. You can mod an ARJ-21 for CCP VIP official use though, just like some Boeing 737s. I remember those pics of 737s with sat uplinks, and there was some furor that the planes are going to be used in some kind of AEW or ELINT use but it turns out that these planes were for CCP VIP or official use.

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Are there no civil jet engine projects in the making? It would make sense to capatilize on the success of WS-10/WS-13. However not sure how does that fit in with ARJ's engine requirements.

maglomanic said:

Are there no civil jet engine projects in the making? It would make sense to capatilize on the success of WS-10/WS-13. However not sure how does that fit in with ARJ's engine requirements.

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There is one based on WS-10 for the large transport, but at current time, they can only produce turboprop engines for Y-7/8. Even for H-6K, they had to buy D-30KP2 engine from the Russians.