Saturday, October 11, 2008

Latest Updates from PLA

Probably the biggest news to come out this week is the appearance of the Chinese Global hawk UAV. It's developed by CAC and has the name Sky Wing according to Huitong. This is the UAV in one of the airshows.

And you can find the video of the high speed taxing of this UAV here. Generally speaking, this seems like the second Global Hawk-like UAV that China has developed. WZ-2000, by Guizhou, is already in service with PLA Department of Chief Staff according to a recent PLA article. So, is this CAC version supposed to be more advanced and designed for PLAAF's use? I guess we will see more of this plane. It's almost surprising that we saw it unveiled so early (before even its first flight). Normally, this would suggest that the project is not very high in priority.

Also, it seems that there was a crash involving 2 J-8IIs this past week (I don't know the exact details). According to some sources, all of the J-8F planes in service have been grounded for now.

Onto PLAN, I have some image from 525 (a 054 class Frigate) and 138 (a 956EM class destroyer) from ESF visiting the port of Vladivostok. The Russians get a look at the military hardware that they exported to China.




I'm surprised that they didn't post news of this visit anywhere on the English news sites. Now, only 052C, 054A and 051C have not visited other countries making port calls.

Edit: I just got some fresh photos out of HP shipyard of the latest 054A. You can see the front mast forming now. And if you look carefully, you can actually see the aft-mast also.




And also, we got a picture of 2 more 022s in the HP shipyard. I'm sure there are more parked around the corner. We lost count of these little guys a long time ago.

4 comments:

Jiang said...

Hi, feng good post. I think I saw these news on www.163.com under the caterogary of millitary.

BTW, how accurate are the news there regarding Chinese millitary!!! One thing I noticed that they offen post news from the Westerb media and then simply translate them. Personally I think a lot of the news there are highly inacurate!! What do you think??
Also, alot of the Chinese member there are also posting crap while they have very little Chinese. millitary knowlege.

Feng said...

generally speaking, I would not trust those kind of forum. Not very accurate stuff at all.

Jiang said...

Hey Feng, a while ago on PDF you says that Su-27 series are some of the most overrated fighters and I believe you but then you mentioned how terrible SU-30MKK's air to air combat capability is, you said that even JF-17 can clear SU-30MKK out, if this is true then J-8F can also clear Su-30 out in BVR(maybe not WVR) without too much trouble, right??

If this is the fact then I think SU-30 really are overrated, I think the indians notice that too otherwise why would they try to buy fighters that are lighter, yet much more expensive than Su-30.

Feng said...

Well, the MKKs are not as good as the MKIs in air combat. That's a well known fact. JF-17 might not be better than MKK per se, but they will win a good share of the battles. I certainly think J-8F can beat su-27/mkk also. The main issue with su-27 and mkk are its avionics/radar. Also, you have to think that the exported R-73/77 missiles are just not as good as some of the other contemporary missiles. That's one strike even MKI can't avoid.