China's AEW

[kevinkins]

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/c ... -behind-it

Status report, with a bit on the history, on China's capabilities. Probably helpful when designing battles.

[thewood1]

That particular article seems more chicken little-like than normal. The PLAAF and PLAN have been testing and prototyping many different AEW/AWACS designs for 40 years. And have little to show for it beyond a majority of outdated platforms with a few potential production systems. Not to say they can't eventually get something in production beyond 4 or 5 examples before moving on to the next prototype, but they have a poor track record. Since the west cut off selling entire systems to China, they have continued to struggle with a final production system.

So for now and the near future they will depend on a hodge-podge of platforms with many of them having electronic designs over 20 years old.

[SeaQueen]

So for now and the near future they will depend on a hodge-podge of platforms with many of them having electronic designs over 20 years old.

They're all newer than an E-3B.

The KJ-500 is pretty impressive, as is the KJ-200. PLAN/PLAAF airborne C2 is interesting because they have a different problem to solve than Russia. They both are very C2 oriented, but Russia is primarily interested in fighting over land while China is interested in asserting itself increasingly over the maritime domain. That means they can't take advantage of ground based radars to support their C2 the same way Russia can, hence they need to become increasingly interested in using air and sea based radars for C2. Chinese AEW&C aircraft are an important component of that. I also can't help but wonder what kinds of ground based radars they're sticking out on those islands to help them control the airspace.