What a Chinese aerospace magazine cover tells about China’s future stealth bombers.
By Rick Joe
May 03, 2018
In the last few weeks, a magazine cover for prominent Chinese aerospace magazine Aviation Knowledge featured a pair of stealthy bomber aircraft concepts. A small number of English language articles have commented on this aircraft, speculating whether its presence on the cover of Aviation Knowledge may indicate some subtle official Chinese military backing for this concept, and what its relationship to the future Chinese stealth bomber – commonly referred to as H-20 – might be.
This piece will seek to explore the current body of understanding towards the H-20. The potential role of the aircraft concept shown in the magazine will also be discussed.
Stealth Bomber Background
The world’s first true stealth bomber is the U.S. Air Force’s B-2 Spirit, an aircraft that first entered service in the 1990s. To today, the B-2 remains the single lone stealth bomber type in service among any military in the world.
The United States is looking to develop a new stealth bomber dubbed the B-21 Raider to enter service in the mid 2020s, and Russia is also known to be pursuing a stealth bomber of its own, commonly dubbed the PAK DA. China is the third nation developing a stealth bomber.
Official Chinese interest in a stealth bomber like the B-2 cannot be ascertained, however it is likely the PLAAF would have been informed of the B-2 through military intelligence well before the B-2 first deployed on its public mission. The B-2 first demonstrated its capabilities in the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo, and it was a B-2 that bombed the Chinese embassy in the country — an event that China maintains was deliberate, and which the United States maintains as an accident. If the Chinese leadership were not aware of the capabilities of the B-2 before then, they would certainly have been conscious of it afterwards.
Official Chinese interest in a stealth bomber was also muted, and some cases of espionage acquiring B-2 related technologies only suggested China had interest for the applied technologies behind a stealth bomber. The extent of research and development, and political will, could not be ascertained.
Therefore, from the early 2000s up to 2010, it was generally assumed that research and development into a stealth bomber was being conducted, and China would one day develop and produce such an aircraft. But whether it would emerge in the immediate future or longer term future was unknown. No official designation for this bomber existed, but in popular circulation it was referred variously as H-8, H-9, H-10 and H-X.....
From my research the H-20 is a subsonic stealth bomber more like the B-2 the representing picture in some Chinese sources is called the H-18 stealth bomber and by its shape should be able to achieve supersonic speed would likely be come after the H-20. See link below for H-20 stealth bomber.
H-20 Strategic Stealth Bomber: Details
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