hallo84to be honest, Z-15 is produced under a sino-eu joint venture, the Chinese partner is responsible to produce the body, all engines and electronics are fitted in Europe, and it’s smaller than Mi-17 & S-70c-2 in terms of power and loading capacity. It’s mainly designed for VIP or personnel transportation. it’s designed based on civil aviation standards and less adaptable for military purposes.
Chinese Z8( Super Puma) is about the same size of the Mi-171, and a high altitude version was immediately developed after the Sichuan earthquake. But i dont think many Z8s have been deployed in Chengdu Military District(where we need high altitude helicopters the most) yet. i bet the testing & evaluation process is not over.
Reverse engineering the S92 is simply not an option. Actually after the Sichuan earthquake, the US government allowed Sikorsky to supply S-70C-2 parts to its Chinese client. In fact, IIRC, Sikorsky used photos of one PLA S-70C-2 executing disaster relief missions as a publicity commercial on magazines, i’ve been looking for that pic for a long time but cant find it anymore. Under the table, the Chinese government seems to hold good relations with American arms producers, GE, Boeing, Sikorsky…Money and market just beat ideology there.
Z-15 is a military designation so you can bet its not just for civilian use. AC352 is what its called officially.
BTW the military version is already confirmed. Turbomeca is working with the chinese to develop a new version of the Ardiden engine.
Re: Z-15/EC175 “6-ton” Development (New CMH)
Heli-Expo 2010: Turbomeca working on alternative engine for Chinese EC175
February 20, 2010
Turbomeca is working with Chinese manufacturer AVIC on an alternative engine for the EC175/Z-15 helicopter.
Speaking on the eve of Heli-Expo in Houston, CEO Pierre Fabre told reporters that the company was working with the Chinese on a development of its Ardiden engine, called the WZ-16. The WZ-16 will be a derivative of the Ardiden 3 which is also going to be fitted to the Kamov Ka-62.
The Ardiden engine is already flying in the HAL Dhruv, Advanced Light Helicopter, but the uprated versions, will be capable of producing 1,800-2,000 shp, making them ideal for six-eight tonne helicopters.
It follows the first flight ceremony of the EC175 in Marseille back in December in which Eurocopter CEO Lutz Bertling revealed that the Chinese were looking to an alternative powerplant to that being used in the EC175, the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6C. Fabre said he was confident of achieving a 10-15 % improvement in fuel burn on the Canadian engine.
The company revealed engine sales had dipped by 15 % selling 300 fewer engines in 2009 compared to 2008. The company was spending 11 % of its turnover on research and development and working on reducing the rate of in-flight shut-downs with the aim by 40 % by 2016.
Fabre said he was looking to Asia for increased sales in the next 30 years, pointing that China only has around 600 helicopters but could see equal the 6000 or so helicopters operating in the United States in the next three decades. In 2009 60 of engines were to replace old engines, with 40 % new sales, Fabre believes that by 2039, 60 % of sales would be for new engines.
By Tony Osborne – Rotorhub.com Editorial Team
Also PLA already operates AS532s and purchasing more would be more logical than servicing decades old S-70
hallo84salute to the good people, the PLA soldiers and in this particular thread, the manufacturer and designers of the S-70C-2 helicopters served in the 512 Sichuan earthquake. S-70C-2 is a very reliable helicopter and always the first choice in executing high altitude rescue and disaster relief missions in China.
Hope the US government will one day lift the embargo on S-70s and its successors.:p
Wow zombie post came back to life…
Btw PLA has a lot of different options now.
They can opt to reverse engineer the S92 they have with Chinese maritime search and rescue or choose to adopt more AS332L1 or AS532 SUPER PUMAs currently in service with PLA.
The new Z-15/EC175 is another option PLA can use to replace the aging Bloack Hawks.
hallo84So they are comparing it to decades old Il-76MD?
Wow, impressive. :p
Impressive attempt at flaming while adding no value to the discussion.
BTW when did Il-76MD get a 60+ ton payload?
hallo84Official confirmation from the chinese
SAF expert: Y-20 outperforms Il-76
(Source: China Youth Daily) 2013-01-18
A news spokesman of the Ministry of National Defence (MND) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) confirmed at the regular press conference of the MND held on December 27, 2012 that “China is independently developing its large transport aircraft to strengthen the building of air transport capability”.
Currently, the representative types of large transport aircraft are the U.S. Boeing C-17 Globemaster III and Russian Ilyushin Il-76, and only the U.S. and Russia in the world are able to develop large transport aircraft.
Named as the Y-20, China’s first large military transport aircraft carries the dream and expectation of millions of Chinese people. Compared with the Il-76MD, the Y-20 has larger volume, more reasonable fuselage space and layout, and higher engine power.
The Y-20 not only outperforms Il-76 but also has Chinese characteristics in supercritical airfoils, integrated avionics, cabin equipment, composite materials and their processing.
The performance parameters of the Y-20 are quite close to those of Russian Il-476. Operated by three aircrew members, the Y-20 has the highest load-carrying capacity of 66 tons, a fuselage length of 47 meters, a wingspan of 45 meters and a height of 15 meters, and bears the maximum take-off weight of a little more than 200 tons. It has a traditional layout and strong adaptability to take-off and landing fields, as evidenced by being able to take off and land at airstrips and carry the vast majority of combat and support vehicles of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
As to the engine, China is actively developing high-thrust turbofan engines. Currently, the Y-20 can not be equipped with such advanced engines but be fit out with the imported D-30KP2 engine temporarily. The performance of the engine is not as good as that of the PS-90A76 turbofan engine of the Il-476, therefore, the thrust of China’s Y-20 is much inferior to that of the Il-476.
However, the Y-20 will have significantly-improved flight performance after being equipped with China’s independently-developed high-thrust turbofan engines, thus ranking among the world’s advanced large transport aircraft.
Now, the Y-20 is in the phase of test and finalization. If everything goes well, the Y-20 will have to undergo a minimum-three-year-long flight test and a minimum-five-year-long comprehensive test. Therefore, 2017 is the earliest date by which the PLA Air Force will have home-made large transport aircraft.
By Zhang He and Li Wei respectively from the Command College of the Second Artillery Force (SAF) and the National Defense University (NDU) of the PLA
hallo84Is there any info regarding the VLS? Will it be completely wrong to say that, those VLS looks same in size to the one installed on Talwar class frigates for Klub/Brahmos.
If by chance, all 64 are of that size, then it means, it is also possible to have 256 x Shtil-I VL class of missiles or a combo of Shtil-I & Klub.
Also, is there been any collaboration on new naval VL system between Russia and China?
Should be a integrated design for both HQ-9 and HQ-16 as indicated by Chinese standard VLS requirement . It is capable of both cold and hot launch. Hot launch cells will have independent exhaust channels. Must accommodate three types of missile length at 9 m, 7 m and 3.3 m. Missile diameter must be less than 0.85 meter. Each module consists of 8 cells and each cell is capable of a quad pack of smaller missiles.
Conceivably this is a universal launcher for DH-10,YJ-62,HQ-9,HQ-16,CY-1(anti submarine rocket).
hallo84Come on guys! Waaaaaaaay too many assumptions are being made on the basis of a small number of pictures!
Twin nose wheel gear and a possible tail hook does not make it into a carrier fighter! Many land only fighters have tail hooks and twin nose wheel configuration, for that matter there are many carrier fighters that only had a single nose wheel!
To my eyes the front undercarriage lacks the heavy bracing back into the airframe to take the catapult loads or a nose bar. I can’t particularly make out the details of any tail hook. If it is intended for STOBAR operations we will find out in the future. I am inclined to think this is a stealthy land based twin engine fighter in the same class as the J-10 rather then an alternative to the J-20. Considering there have been multiple reports that the CAC J-10B has a SAC rival that is entirely in keeping with what we are seeing.
Until we see more of it in operation it is way too early to make such sweeping statements with such certainty! As it is the PLANAF will have its hands full with the J-15 to even consider qualifying such an experimental design.
It’s not PLAAF(or should I call them China Airforce now?) tradition to use tailhooks for airstrip landings. I don’t think any airports have arrestor cables installed aside from the one tasked with training carrier ops. Also none of the other PLAAF planes have this feature. So this point is probably moot.
There are more clear pictures of the front landing gears that you can take a look. It’s looks quite a bit beefier than what is normally on other Chinese fighters.
Aside from super etendard, which catapult capable plane has single nose wheel? I don’t think this is a general trend.
The J-20 competition rumor you are talking about was started by Feng as his disinformation campaign to see how many publications buy into it. It’s all for a good chuckle.
hallo84I shoot exclusively RAW format.
It does cost a bit of time to post process every picture afterward but there are extreme benefits.
Raw lets you play with exposure and let you recover blown out bright spots from either metering error or simply user error causing you to take a shot with too much or too little light.
A JPEG is almost set in stone. Not much you can do to recover whats missing in the white blown out bright spots in pictures.
With RAW you can still get something. It won’t be perfect but at least you can have a decent looking picture. It has certainly saved my butt a few times when I forget to set ISO back to low or accidentally changed flash settings etc. Its the difference between getting a usable shot or getting none at all.
hallo84Here’s a bigger pic
hallo84where’s the tail hook then?
here’s a carrier aircraft with beefy gears and dual front nose wheels
The duel wheel is probably for CATOBAR operations.
Eventually PLAN is going for a catapult carrier.
Take a good look at the large high res picture.
I see the tail hook where the stinger is.
It’s semi recessed into the tail stinger.
BTW the JT-9 trainer does not do CATOBAR hence no need for dual nose wheel.
hallo84I’d take a good look at the landing gears.
Beefy back gears. Dual front nose wheel. My money is on a navy plane for carrier ops.
hallo84I don’t say that it’s impossible for an inferior aircraft to win. For example i ‘ve seen on tv greek F4 PI2000 pilots being quite optimistic about their own chances in BVR against F16s (but with Amraams). But, having their bums handed to them, implies a systematic defeat for the chinese Su-27, which in BVR seems quite improbable for me. What can you do with AIM-9 in BVR??? Fly low and hope to approach undetected and then go to merge? And how many times did they manage that before the Chinese realising where to look? Somehow manage to blind with ECM the Su radars so that they can’t shoot you in BVR?
And in WVR the F4 isn’t the most agile aircraft of the world either. I can understand a very good pilot managing to make a fool of a Su pilot, but again, this in a systematic level? Didn’t the chinese react at some point?
I guess improbable things happen, but, if Su-27s lose badly against F4s with AIM-9, then what would happen against F16s or worse? Somehow i doubt that the chinese are so negligent with the trainning of their pilots.
lol have any of you seen an actual training exercise? They are dog and pony show with predetermined scripts. So the results really means nothing.
I’m sure the Su-27 never ever engaged in BVR range and were severely limited in engagement envelope. The same goes for the F-4 but less so. (just being realistic here)
hallo84Clearly, it would complicate matters greatly if a PLAN carrier group is located seaward of the island.:rolleyes:
And risk getting sunk by a torp? lol
Nah that carrier will never get into the deep water side of the island where there is no land based air support to be called upon.
hallo84Possibly not if you’re Taiwanese.
yes Taiwan is so far from The asian land mass that PLA need a carrier to get to it. :rolleyes:
I’d be worried if I have claims on the spraltys. :diablo:
hallo84Off topic I know, but: Has the Korean KF-X design been “frozen” yet?
Nope. Still looking for partners to fund the project.
hallo84No the MODs procurement and operation of those Mi-17 was purely to support training of Afghan pilots and would of had no bearing on US procurement decisions.
The Mi-17 was pretty much the only choice, the Afghan National Army Air Force (ANAAF) is pretty much standardised on the type, thats what their pilots and ground crew know. Any other choice of helicopter would bring an unnecessary logistical and training burden, actually they have talked about retiring the Mi-35 in favour of the Mi-17 due to the logistic burden. The Mi-17 is also pretty much designed for Afghan operations with its good hot and high capability and robust design.
There has been some mutterings in America and a protest from Sikorsky about US tax money going to buy Mi-17/Mi-171 rather then rebuilt S-61 Seaking but the US has made the right choice.
Mi-17 has lower operating cost anyway right?
Afghanistan is cash striped. No fancy plane is needed.
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