Less than a week after Chinese state media said the H-20 stealth bomber program was
making “great progress,” there are now reports that the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, or PLAAF, might be planning to publicly reveal the plane during celebrations the mark the 70th anniversary of its founding in 2019. It has also emerged that the PLAAF showed off a logo featuring the silhouette of a flying wing-style aircraft at a recent official gala promoting plans to establish a “first-class strategic bomber division,” which may also be a nod to the up-coming H-20.
Defence Blog was among the first to spot the stories regarding the H-20’s possible participation in a PLAAF anniversary parade that appeared
on Oct. 15, 2018. It’s not clear when that event might actually occur, but the official founding date for the service is November 11. A China Central Television broadcast in August 2018 had been the first to officially use the bomber’s nomenclature and the presenter reaffirmed that the plane was a “new long-distance strategic bomber,” which many took as an indication that the design
was increasingly mature.
On Oct. 11, 2018, the PLAAF’s own website published a story regarding a
morale-boosting gathering at an unspecified bomber unit assigned to the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command. On the backdrop of the main stage of the event was a logo featuring the outline of what appeared to be a tailless flying wing aircraft with winglets.
Details about the H-20’s exact design and capabilities remain limited, but experts have widely described it as a flying wing type that is broadly similar to the U.S. Air Force’s B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. Since the silhouette does not clearly reflect any existing PLAAF aircraft, bombers
or otherwise, it is possible that it could be a reference to the future stealth bomber.
It is important to note that PLAAF’s own report on the gala did not make any reference to the H-20. The other state-media reports did not include any official, on the record statements from Chinese government officials.
Global Times, a newspaper that operates under the auspices
People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, carried what appears to be the sole
English-language report on the PLAAF gathering. That story also appeared to claim to have received a statement from Northrop Grumman that the B-2's design omitted features such as winglets to maximize its stealth capabilities. It's true that any flying wing aircraft without them would have less of a radar signature, but it seems highly unlikely that the American defense contractor would have given the Chinese state-run media outlet any such detail on or off the record. The exact phrasing in the story might be a translation error.
There is the immediate potential for the news of the H-20s developments may have gotten confused in some way with China’s apparent recent fielding of
the H-6J, the latest in the H-6 family, which is a modernized maritime patrol and strike platform. Based on the modernized
H-6K, this aircraft will likely have many of the same features, including the necessary range to operate throughout the immensely strategic
South China Sea and the ability carry up to six
YJ-12 supersonic anti-ship missiles at a time. However, the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)
operates the J models, making it harder to see how this news would get conflated with reports about the PLAAF’s future H-20.
