(Washington, D.C.) The Chinese are highlighting their new H-20 bomber in promotional advertisements, showing a covered air frame in a deliberate effort to raise speculation and mystery surrounding its emerging stealth platform … but will it arrive this year?
The People’s Liberation Army has announced plans to unveil the new aircraft in 2021, so many eyes await. To the extent that a shape could be observed beneath the tarp in the promotional video, a report in the Chinese-government backed Global Times said the images showed an aircraft with “not visible tail wing and two intakes in the back of the plane.”
The promotional PLA Air Force recruitment video for the H-20, which aired earlier this year, was timed to coincide with the 10 year anniversary of the first flight of the stealthy J-20 Chinese fighter jet. Both the J-20 and the emerging H-20 are built by the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China, which produced the video.
Details about timing and progress related to the H-20 were not discussed in the Chinese report, which did say the program was deliberately secretive about its status.
Coming months will shed light on several key topics still shrouded in mystery, such as the size, shape, configuration of the new bomber. Even more uncertain is the measure to which the H-20 integrates new generations of sensing, thermal signature management, computer processing and weapons applications.
H-20 Quantity
Also, how many will China produce? This may occur to U.S. weapons planners and threat assessment experts as quite significant, as the U.S. Air Force is planning to acquire large numbers of B-21s, possibly as many as 150 or more. The B-21 program is progressing very well and generating both praise and enthusiasm, so perhaps plans to potentially accelerate production or increase the total number of aircraft are in large measure prompted by an anticipated threat presented by the Chinese H-20?
