The modern Great Leaps Forward for China

August 15, 2009 · Posted in Uncategorized 

Feng has a very interesting listU1335P27T1D470212F3DT20071102080452 of military systems that recently joined the Chinese navy or air force, and constitute significant improvements in the capabilities of the Chinese military:

I’ve ranked these systems based on their importance to China’s national security, their quantitative and qualitative value and their significance to China’s overall military aviation and naval industry. […] I’ve also omitted high profile projects like J-10B, Z-15, H-6K, the large transport, CAC UAV (the one that looks like global hawk), because they are only in early stage of development, although they have a couple of prototypes in certain cases. I have also omitted high profile space missions from my list like Project 921 (the manned space mission), Tian-Lian (data link satellite), YaoGan series (the EO satellites) and the moon mission, because it’s hard to determine how much military value they really have.

The list features the usual high-profile suspects (ASBMs, DF-31, Type 094 SSBN, KJ-200/2000 AWACS) but there are also items that don’t often get mentioned when one discusses new Chinese capabilities: The Chinese GPS-equivalent, Type 022 FACs, the immensely important EW variants of the Y-8, the Z-10 attack helo etc. Definitely a worthy read.

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