PLAN Zubr Large Air Cushion Landing Craft

gelgoog said:

What about the engines? The engines for the Zubr LCAC used to be made in Ukraine. Russia has designed the M70FRU gas turbine engine at UEC Saturn as a replacement and it was accepted into production a couple years ago. But I never heard of them actually ordering or producing any engines for serial ships.

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ACuriousPLAFan said:

Will need a top-down view of the 728 to confirm.



(Might as well reply to both at once)

Indeed. Zubr/728 are very useful for cross-strait ferrying of troops and equipment during Taiwan AR.

Even so, there are obvious operational limitations to Zubr/728, even for the cross-strait Taiwan AR scenario.

In order for the Zubr/728 to cross the strait, offload troops and equipment before returning to the mainland - All within one round-trip journey - The only locations and regions where landing and deployment locations for the Zubr/728 can be considered feasible are:
1. Islands - Within the Taiwan Strait only, i.e. Kinmen, Matsu and Penghu; and
2. Mainland Taiwan - From Keelung to the north until the northern shores of Tainan to the south.

Anywhere further than the aforementioned locations and regions (e.g. Tainan, Kaohsiung, eastern coastlines of Taiwan, Lanyu Island and the Ryukyu Islands) will require Zubr/728s to conduct at least one underway refueling throughout the entire to-and-back journey. Otherwise, larger ships with longer endurances (072-series LSTs, 071 LPDs, 075 LHDs) are required.

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