Andrew S. Erickson

Aircraft Design and Construction Advances

The Y-20 is the third example of a new trend in which AVIC has moved beyond cloning and copying and can now successfully meld aspects of multiple foreign airframes (and technical advice) with domestic designs and improved, domestically-manufactured systems. The J-20 and J-31 were the first two Chinese-made aircraft to make this leap, and now the Y-20 has done so as well.

The Y-20 differs clearly from other heavy transport aircraft like Russia’s Il-76, America’s C-5 and C-17, and Europe’s A400M in fuselage shape, wheels and flap actuators. PLA experts quoted in a story appearing on the English-language website of the People’s Daily claim that the Y-20 outperforms Russia’s Il-76 and say it boasts “Chinese characteristics in supercritical airfoils, integrated avionics, cabin equipment, composite materials and their processing.”  The experts say the plane has three aircrew, a 15-meter height and 47-meter fuselage length, a 66-ton maximum load capacity and a maximum takeoff weight of just over 200 tons. Its capacious cargo hold can “carry the vast majority of combat and support vehicles of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA),” including the PLA’s heaviest tank, the 58-ton Type-99A2. It can transport them even to underdeveloped “airstrips” thanks to its “strong adaptability to [substandard] take-off and landing fields.” This suggests the PLA has carefully noted the ability of the U.S. C-17 to land on rough dirt airstrips and serve forward combat bases in Afghanistan.

Interestingly, two researchers at China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center asserted in 2007 that a “large transport aircraft” with approximately these specifications would have “performance superior to [that of the] IL-76.” Coupled with Xinhua’s 2008 announcement that one-third of China’s initial 60 billion yuan ($9.6 billion) investment in its state-prioritized large aircraft program would be for military transport aircraft, and a CCTV-7 report that the Y-20 would be unveiled by the end of 2009, this suggests that the Y-20’s development was long-planned. Certainly it is a long-term program.

“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 period,” the PLA experts cited on the People’s Daily website state. “Therefore, 2017 is the earliest date by which the PLA Air Force will have home-made large transport aircraft.” This would suggest that the 2017-20 period will see the PLA potentially taking simultaneous large-scale deliveries of the Y-20, as well as fighter jets like the J-20, and possibly the J-31, the J-15 and J-16.

Driving Additional Jet Engine Investment

The Y-20’s capabilities are reportedly close to those of Russia’s Il-476, with one important exception: The Y-20’s Russian D-30KP2 engines lack the thrust and efficiency of the Il-476’s PS-90A76 turbofans. In a sign that even China’s aviation Achilles’ heel – engines – is now receiving major resources, China is developing a high-thrust turbofan called the WS-20 to fill this role as part of a major aeroengine resource and technology push. While progress will likely take time, reports suggest China could invest up to 300 billion yuan ($49 billion) in jet engine development by 2035. Acquisition of foreign technology and breakthroughs in recruiting foreign experts could help accelerate China’s jet engine development.

Financial considerations and a belief that Chinese jet engine makers are behind the Russian technical curve will likely motivate Russia to permit transfers of additional jet engines over the next 2-3 years despite the significant risk AVIC will reverse engineer key portions, if not the entire powerplant. Meanwhile, Ukrainian engineers are already readily available, and their Russian counterparts may become increasingly so as Russia moves its aviation contractor headquarters from prime city real estate near aging engineers’ apartments to Zhukovsky Airfield, which lies 45 km from downtown Moscow and is a long commute even under the best of circumstances given the capital’s congested roads.

Future Directions

The last two years have yielded a growing body of evidence that China is enjoying significant success in simultaneously managing multiple advanced aircraft programs. At present, no other nation can—or does—allocate so many personnel and financial resources so rapidly toward achieving national strategic goals.

That said, the Chinese aerospace sector also has a number of key weaknesses that will be exposed if continuing budget increases fail to yield commensurate technical breakthroughs in critical unproven areas, including aeroengines, electronics and avionics.

So far, by exploiting open source study, commercial joint ventures with tech transfer and industrial espionage, China has been able to leapfrog and save costs and time as it closes its technical gap with advanced aerospace power such as the U.S., Russia and certain European countries.

Yet the closer China comes in capability to other advanced aviation powers, the less of a follower’s advantage it will have, raising questions about how much Chinese aerospace expenditures will need to rise in order to have a chance of creating a comprehensive global aerospace power, as opposed to one that makes snazzy airframes, but struggles with critical subsystems such as the engines and electronics. To boot, getting the hardware right is only part of the challenge, since being able to employ it effectively will require millions of man-hours invested in maintenance, training and learning how to integrate platforms with each other to operate in a way that the whole is more powerful than the sum of the parts.

In short, the Y-20 is a point of national pride and a substantial breakthrough for China’s large aircraft programs, but to begin thinking of it as a true military advancement, we need to see a Y-20 undertake a long flight with heavy cargo, then turn around and do the same thing on a return flight. Proof of an aircraft’s reliability and effectiveness lies in real objectives successfully achieved under real world conditions. A long and interesting road lies ahead for the Y-20.