Key Points and Summary – China’s secretive H-20 stealth bomber program is more likely a sophisticated propaganda campaign than a credible near-term threat.
-Developed by a company with no history of designing its own bombers, the H-20 is being touted with ambitious and likely unachievable features, such as supersonic speed for a flying-wing design.
-The strategically timed release of grainy photos and videos is seen by analysts not as a genuine reveal, but as a “cheerleading” effort by the Chinese Communist Party to project power, secure funding, and create a perception of technological parity with the U.S. that may not exist.
The H-20 Bomber Lie?
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) system for designing and building aircraft, like so many aspects of the Chinese Communist Party-controlled military, is a copy of how the former USSR’s combat aircraft sector was organized.
In the Soviet system, the Tupolev Design Bureau was responsible for designing heavy strategic bombers. Their People’s Republic of China (PRC) analog is the Xi’an Aircraft Corporation (XAC), located in Shaanxi province.
XAC may be the design center responsible for bomber aircraft, but it has never really designed a heavy bomber during its existence. The sole bomber aircraft the company has been building for almost 60 years is the H-6 series of aircraft, first provided to the PLAAF in 1958 in the form of the Tupolev Tu-16.
The Chinese, who had no chance of designing a new bomber on their own, signed an agreement to license-produce the Russian aircraft, first at the Harbin aircraft plant and then later at Xi’an.
In the intervening years, the Xi’an enterprise has engaged in two activities in this area of aircraft development.
One has been making progressively modified and improved versions of the original Tu-16 configuration. The production timeline of these variants of the H-6 has burned through more than half of the English alphabet, with the present iteration being the H-6N (There are only 10,000 characters of the Chinese language used in everyday conversation, so they still have plenty of their own letters remaining if need be).
From the Korean War Era to 21st Century Designs
The second endeavor for the enterprise has been to work on a new, modern, and stealthy bomber aircraft.
This was not an easy task since the bureau had never produced an original design of this size or type independently.
Like most design concepts for the H-20 the Chinese have produced over the years, and like the Russian PAK-DA, it has always been projected to be a flying wing concept in the vein of the Northrop B-2 and B-21.
Actual Chinese writings on the concept of just such an aircraft stretch back 12 years or more. These are articles from institutions like the PLAAF equivalent of the National Defense University in Washington, which have always spoken of an aircraft in the configuration seen earlier this year flying at high altitude followed by a Shenyang J-16 chase plane.
The B-21 design team at Northrop in the US has decades of experience developing this classification of aircraft, which the Chinese do not have.
This makes many US aircraft industry specialists who understand the principles of low observable/low cross-section design ask if XAC is capable of such an accomplishment.
It means producing a tremendous quantity of new-age materials and an engine that can also be made stealthy, among other requirements, which are tall orders for any aerospace organization.
Technological Challenges for H-20 Bomber
Two claims about this program have been made by multiple sources in the PRC that cause the average US aircraft design-literate specialist to ask if the H-20 program is anywhere near being an operational vehicle.
One claim is that the H-20 would be a supersonic bomber, which would be a first in many respects. Not even the last conventionally designed US bomber, the US B-1B, is supersonic and neither flying wing bomber is either.
There have been numerous studies about a large flying wing aircraft that would be a commercial platform, like the one-time Boeing Sonic Cruiser concept that was abandoned in favor of the 787 Dreamliner. Due to the expense and lack of commercial viability, these programs have never progressed beyond paper designs.
There have been studies in the US by NASA and others on the possibility of a supersonic flying wing, but these vehicles would demand some revolutionary advancements in both materials and propulsion technology, the latter definitely not being a Chinese strong suit.
The other question mark is if what has been seen in the grainy photos or anonymous videos taken at extreme distances—the traditional and false impressions of spontaneity that are the first step in the PRC revealing the existence of a new program—are the final configuration.
Rumors still exist that the real H-20 will not be the design seen in what appeared to be a test flight but that it will be an enlarged version of the JH-36 aircraft seen flying from the Chengdu Aircraft Plant 132 aerodrome on December 26, 2024.
H-20 Cheerleading Deception – Made for Show or For Real?
A reality of Chinese culture is that there is an irresistible impulse to show off any new invention, any new acquisition, any new-found success, regardless of what it is.
One US-based PLA analyst told me, “We call the people who post these ‘anonymous videos’ of new Chinese aircraft ‘cheerleading propaganda artists.’ It is this penchant for showboating that produces these videos. It is no coincidence this occurs so close to Chinese New Year, their biggest holiday and the time when people are waiting for gifts of money in red envelopes. The people waiting in this case are the combat aircraft companies looking for more government funding.”
One also has to remember that the current secrecy laws in the PRC are “even more pathological than they were a decade ago,” he continued. “Any videos or photos of classified aircraft that an ordinary person posted on the internet would last about 5 minutes and the person who posted them would end up in jail in a heartbeat. We only get to see evidence of these programs with the Communist Party wants us to, and we only get to know what we know when they feel it is the right time to reveal these developments.”
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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