Image at source (likely fan art)
Posted on 01/24/2018 8:52:09 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
China is developing a surveillance plane designed to be launched from the country’s newest aircraft carrier and fitted with a radar system to spot enemy stealth jets, military observers say.
State media confirmed for the first time on Monday that China was building its first carrier-borne early-warning plane called the KJ-600.
The announcement comes as the United States has deployed F-35 stealth jets to bases in Japan and other parts of the Asia-Pacific over the last year, challenging China’s air defences in the region.
Chinese military observers said the KJ-600 would be fitted with an advanced active electronically scanned array, or AESA, radar which could enable it to spot stealth aircraft such as US F-22s and F-35s.
Beijing-based military expert Li Jie said the new surveillance plane could also become a command centre in the air.
“AESA can detect stealth fighters at a very long range,” Li said.
He said the aircraft would fill a critical weapons gap with the US and improve the combat effectiveness of Chinese carrier battle groups.
Li said the KJ-600 would likely be used on China’s third aircraft carrier under construction in Shanghai and be compatible with its advanced electromagnetic launch system (EMALS). EMALS can launch jets more quickly and effectively than the ski-jump ramps used on China’s first two aircraft carriers.
US-based military website Eastern Arsenal reported last year that the KJ-600 was being built by Xi’an Aircraft Corporation, weighed 25-30 tonnes, was powered by twin turboprop engines, and had a large AESA radar on its fuselage.
Military analysts said photographs of the KJ-600 suggested it was very similar to the E-2 Hawkeye, the US’ all-weather, carrier-capable tactical airborne early-warning aircraft.
Military analyst Zhou Chenming, also based in Beijing, said the KJ-600 radar system would put the plane on a par with US early-warning aircraft.
“The biggest advantage of the KJ-600 is it’s equipped with a more sophisticated radar and communication system allowing it to monitor a wider range of signals and even detect stealth fighters in a certain angle,” Zhou said.
For now, China’s aircraft carrier combat group is restricted to shipboard surveillance radars, which have a limited range because of the Earth’s curvature.
Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies’ Maritime Security Programme at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said the development of the KJ-600 suggested China wanted its carrier group to function far from shore.
“If China’s carrier group is designed more to operate closer to home waters, it would rely on shore-based early warning support,” Koh said.
“But with [the early-warning] planes, it implies that the People’s Liberation Army Navy carrier battle group is designed for distant sea operations ... requiring ... a more comprehensive early-warning umbrella.”
But Li and Zhou disagreed over whether the KJ-600 would also be used on China’s first two aircraft carriers.
Li said surveillance helicopters were a better option while Zhou said the KJ-600 could be equipped with a one-off rocket propeller to launch from the vessels’ ski-jump ramps.
Image at source (likely fan art)
AWACS Chinese style?...................
Woah...
AESA was never created to detect stealth so this article is moot. AESA emits a reduced radar signature while scanning across a wide range of frequencies.
Not to mention these people believe just because an F-117 went down thanks to a well-programmed SA-3, they can do the same to a more modern stealth platform. I’m sure it can be done but no one has really tried to shoot down an F-35 or F-22.
C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me.
Props for loiter time.
A single AESA array on an AWACS style aircraft can’t see stealth craft, no. However, it’s been shown that if someone has two or preferably three or more radar systems that are datalinked, they *can*. Not well enough to get a missile lock but well enough to vector fighters to it.
Want to bet these have datalinks?
Also, it should be mentioned that in exercises when deprived of their AWACS support, the F-22 and F-35 actually have lost to older fighters.
“I’m sure it can be done but no one has really tried to shoot down an F-35 or F-22.”
The economics of stealth is questionable. We invest huge amounts of money in a plane, which at its inception has x capability to penetrate defenses. The plane’s technology will remain relatively static over its life. The detection systems, however, are relatively cheap and will benefit from Moore’s law as time goes on. They will be more and more networked and process faster and faster. I think, eventually, the platforms we have invested in so heavily will be next to useless. So what if it has the footprint of a sparrow if the system looking for it reports a sparrow doing Mach .8?
Frankly, I think we have bet too heavily on the wrong horse. I’d like to see more investment in autonomous drones. They are relatively disposable and relatively cheap.
Wonder how much of the technology was given to them by Slick or Bammy?
Funny how that looks a whole lot like an E-2. The Chinese wouldn’t be stealing ideas from us, would they?
$12,548,710.60. — the cost, per drone, of 10 MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft the Air Force announced Monday that it is buying. Drones are a lot of things, but cheap ain't necessarily one of them. Nov 6, 2012
The key word was “relatively.”
“The cost estimates in the NDAA for the cheapest version of the F-35, the Air Force’s F-35A, are the following. (Note these costs as just for production and do not include R&D.). “The 2014 procurement cost for 19 F-35As will be $2.989 billion.”
This piece fails to take into account that our military is not sitting idly by while other Nations improve their technology.
The Chinese are a good 15 yrs or more behind us in both technology and force size. They won’t catch us unless we sit on our asses and get complacent.
Of the 19 aircraft carriers on this planet the United States of America operates 11 of them including 10 in service and one Reserve. China is reported to have three.
It is possible that just one of these monsters can annihilate an entire country. Along with these ships we have our MIRVED Missile subs,constantly on patrol and numbering 20 in total. Each sub carries 24 missiles with each missile having 8 independently targeted warheads. Each warhead is from 20-25 times more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. This adds up too about 4000 nukes which can be targeted on any location on the planet within 7 days or less.
Any nation attacking us will do so with the full knowledge heir Nation will be obliterated within hours of the attack by them.
Be patient for every measure there is a counter measure which also leads to a counter counter measure ad naseum.
In the meantime, the Indians are working on.....
Nice looking, slow, target.
Ummmm... Our nation HAS stood idly by under Obama. Are you aware that our tech ‘showpiece’ DDG-1000 destroyer currently doesn’t have any working weapons systems and the main gun on it will never work because we couldn’t be bothered to buy ammo for it? And that we actually deployed the ship like that?
Same thing with *our* AWACS aircraft. Except the Chinese have AWACS killer missiles and we... don’t.
Wonder how much of the technology was given to them by Slick or Bammy?
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Slick gave them literally everything available at the time which he know about.
Bammy came so late there really was not much left, however, they did manage to get NSA’s operational procedures, operational team members’ names and positions and the biggy: Methods and Means via their stooge, Eddy Snowjob.
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