Z-20 (all variants) thread

Really if the Pla wanted a stealth helicopter, I think they now have or will have inside the next decade the capasity of building one without need of reverse enginering. We know they now have 2 stealth aircraft, have spent years reducing z9's RCS, wz10 clearly has a hull defined by a goal of RCS minimizing and IR defusion. If they did build a steath copter in all likely hood they would keep it on the QT as long as possible much like the US did or tryed too.

montyp165 said:

I wonder if any of the bits from the stealth chopper recovered from Pakistan could be incorporated in the Z-20's development?

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It was pretty thoroughly wrecked by the SEAL demolition crew, if the news photo and the account on "No Easy Day" is creditable in this regard, just a banged up tail section can't be of much use to the Chinese anyway. The part that the Chinese would wanted most - comm gear, engine and transmittions - are in the main fuselage and that part is in pieces, no good to anyone.

Other things goes, nothing the Chinese can't make at this time, alas a generation or two behind - sure, composite airframe and rotor, high performance engine are yet behind the curve, but still, stuff like NVG flight system and digitized cockpit isn't that new to Chinese.

Body work wise, there's a lot of guess work based simply on the survived tail section and that's where accuracy stops - the guesswork is what used by Dragon model and the props in the movie "Zero Dark Thirty". Now, the supposed "stealth" or "noise reduction features" are mostly dead weight and shaved a lot on the performance if you don't have the right engine to mate it with, which is exactly where the Chinese still fall short.

northstar said:

The wreckage was retured to US but the may have taken detailed photos..

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Having the real thing, feel it, do detail analysis on it, run testes on these thing, etc is important, trying to learn from just photographs is quite another thing, and basically having been in the engineering business for some time now, looking at photographs no matter how detail these photograph was is basically quite useless.

rhino123 said:

Having the real thing, feel it, do detail analysis on it, run testes on these thing, etc is important, trying to learn from just photographs is quite another thing, and basically having been in the engineering business for some time now, looking at photographs no matter how detail these photograph was is basically quite useless.

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trying to reverse engineer, or recreate from photograph (or even worse photograph of tid bits left over from a destroyed machine) is like trying to read a book by staring at the cover, when you want to recreate the whole content, one need to know at least or more of half of the story in the book

the China takes photograph of Stealth Blackhawk, or takes pieces of downed F-117 is just wild media story turn propaganda against China

paintgun said:

trying to reverse engineer, or recreate from photograph (or even worse photograph of tid bits left over from a destroyed machine) is like trying to read a book by staring at the cover, when you want to recreate the whole content, one need to know at least or more of half of the story in the book

the China takes photograph of Stealth Blackhawk, or takes pieces of downed F-117 is just wild media story turn propaganda against China

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Nonetheless, that's what the Russians and the Europeans accusing the Chinese for all those years...at defense exhibitions taking pictures in great - even rude as some might put it -micro details, then in a year or so Chinese defense-industrial complex will churn their analogue copies....

Don't know what the Russians actually do in response, at least the French practice a new policy of denying all Chinese visitors to their defense exhibitions.

we have learned a bit about stealthhawk inparticular that that unit was grounded via a stall at power likely caused by the extra weight of silent rotors and structual changes. photos are one thing but not the only worry cyber intrusion and aquision of develupers like China's recent buy out of A123.

MwRYum said:

at least the French practice a new policy of denying all Chinese visitors to their defense exhibitions.

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Which is a really stupid thing to do. Unless the French do not value business with the chinese or that they don't like Chinese money.

I mean... come on, sooner or later the defence system is going to make it to the television and everyone is gonna had a good look from the TV. If the chinese could simply reverse engineer something by looking at photos... they could also reverse engineer the entire product by watching the TV showcasing that product. So... yeah, couldn't understand what was the mentality of the people out there.

rhino123 said:

Which is a really stupid thing to do. Unless the French do not value business with the chinese or that they don't like Chinese money.

I mean... come on, sooner or later the defence system is going to make it to the television and everyone is gonna had a good look from the TV. If the chinese could simply reverse engineer something by looking at photos... they could also reverse engineer the entire product by watching the TV showcasing that product. So... yeah, couldn't understand what was the mentality of the people out there.

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Don't worry, they'd just say since the EU's embargo still in force, they can't sell anything to the Chinese anyway...

Said to be work on the Z-20. Not sure if they're gleaning info on the NH-90 or that's what it's going to look like. It doesn't look as wide on the top as the NH-90

whatever that is, it looks like a 15 ton helo. Three engines, very large cabin... Looks more like z8 successor than anything else.