China is looking to increase its air tanker fleet after its fighter jets, bombers and surveillance aircraft conducted an “island encirclement patrol” of Taiwan earlier this week.
As the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) extends exercises in the Western Pacific, refueling will become a problem for its strike aircraft.
The People’s Daily has already confirmed that the PLA’s Northern Theater Command will organize war-games to prepare pilots for more aerial refueling missions. But to do this, China will need to increase its air tanker fleet.
Yin Zhuo, a PLA Rear Admiral-turned military commentator, told the state broadcaster CCTV that a squadron of H-6K Badger bombers were capable of piercing the Second Island Chain after aerial refueling.
He was referring to the strategic containment line in the Pacific, which runs along the Ogasawara Islands and Volcano Islands of Japan, as well as the Mariana Islands, a United States territory.
Yin’s comments triggered speculation that the air tanker fleet could get an enhanced version of the new Y-20, which was brought into service as a cargo plane in 2013, and is known as “Chubby Girl”.
Reworked as a refueling workforce, it would take over from the 12 1950s-era H-6U tankers, which are too small to support long-distance air combat.
“Assuming air superiority within the first island chain and farther east of Taiwan, the combination of Y-20 aerial refueling and the H-6K bombers’ long-range missiles, puts the United States and partner forces operating outside the Second Island Chain, such as Alaska and Hawaii, at risk,” The National Interest magazine, which covers international affairs, reported, citing David Barr, a career intelligence officer with the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet.
Developed by the state-owned Aviation Industry Corp of China, the Y-20 has a bulky fuselage, hence the “Chubby Girl” nickname, a shoulder wing and heavy-duty retractable landing gear,
The aircraft’s maximum takeoff weight is 242 tons and has four D-30KP-2 engines. The tanker version being developed would carry 110 tons of fuel, enough to refuel 20 J-10 fighters, according to Yin.
In addition, the PLAAF has been conducting exercises with its upgraded H-6K bomber, including aerial refueling.
Sitting duck for long range air to air missiles!
Sitting duck?
Same as US planes.
Sisters and cousins will add to the growing family.
Even if it’s true,. Who supplies the DNA test kits ? Your truly USA !
China has every right to document every citizen. Don’t know what’s the issue of human rights ? Every country has a data base of its citizens. The US even has started micro chipping people, like dogs and cats are micro chipped.
(Sitting ducks)
Aren’t all tankers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tanker_aircraft, AWAC’s alike, slow, cumbersome, and, SITTING DUCKS? Baffled.
Unless of course they are strategically positioned such that are 『 both are fully secured 』 and out of range of all enemy fires as our prized Aegis systems and our pride-inducing mighty CV’s are when we launch those J-15 sorties and rain those Tomahawks on the defenseless warrior on the ground?
“Or, is it just the C-919’s, Y-20’s, the H-6 tankers, the KJ-50’s, that gets presented with anti-aircraft missiles all gift wrapped for the Xmas tree because they all have an ominous anomaly “Made in China” label affixed.
So, which is it?
;(
(Sisters and cousins)
Sorry, but, the word “reunification”, for these Easter Islander wanna be’s, is still a massive malignancy known as “Ing-en’ism”…
If I’m not wrong about this, Darwin’s law of evolution, will prove that, to enable this transformation to take place, that it will take millenniums for this blood to be infused together and the malignant blood throughly cleansed and neutralized by the genetic of the benign ones.
I think we’ll see the word “reunification” happen way sooner for the Koreans than it do for us Chinese.
It’s simply not in the genomes of the Chinese animal to have a grasp of the word “reunification” . Our nature is “Why should I bow to you as Emperor when I myself can be one”?
Sad but true of the Chinese animal….
.