Ping!
"China set out for developing its AWACS plane, in a joint venture with Russia and Israel since '97. When American pressure killed this project, China has been pursuing the development on its own, which was dispersed over 50 research institutes since late 2000."
Well this was the clinton years, so hard to blame israel for wanting to do business with them on sensitive tech like this while our own government's political party at that time was being funded in part by china.
Sorry for the loss of the chi=com soldiers but so very glad their little airplane crahed and burned.
guess they didn't get a chance to purchase the blueprints from klinton before he left.
They are most unhappy with the failure of this effort.
This unhappiness is share by the next group of crew members.
Big crew. AWACS only have about half that.
The Gone-Jing 2000.
Maybe if the Chinese are nice the Russians will loan them the Buran.
It's possible that the crashed aircraft is not the KJ-2000 awacs prototype. The Chosun Ilbo is essentially quoting a Hong Kong newspaper which when writing about the PLA, usually ends up using cobbeled together internet rumours.
The KJ-2000 does not have a 40-man crew.
It is likely that the crashed aircraft was a Y-8 Transport.
I think I might have found the problem...
"According to military experts, it was modeled after the Illushin-76 transport plane of Russia."
SPECIFICATIONS
Flight crew: 5
Mission crew: 10~15
Max take-off weight: 190,000kg
Patrol speed: 600km/h
Patrol height: 5,000~10,000m
Service ceiling: 10,200m
Ferry range: 5,000km
Endurance: 7.7 hours