I can tell you that they are not there yet. That harsh judgment of the Gen. Stephen L. Davis of Air Force Global Strike Command is less an insult than an image of how difficult it is to transform the flying wing lines into a deployable, penetrating bomber capable of fulfilling on-demand missions.
The long-teased Xi’an H-20 of China is long anticipated to be akin to the U.S. air force lineage of stealth bombers- most evidently the B-2 Spirit and the B-21 Raider as the flying-wing design is one of the most effective means of minimizing radar signatures but carrying significant pay at long range. The brief moment of a bomber-like flying wing at the end of a PLAAF promotion video also served the purpose of not letting the program drop out of the public consciousness, but the more notable point is what has not been seen which is a proven operationally representative prototype with a definite route to service.
Davis put before us the larger problem, operationally. The United States has a bomber force capable of developing long-range strikes within a short time, on a regular basis whereas, in his vocabulary, China is a bomber force in this region at best. That difference is not one related to intent, it is a difference between whether the aircraft, tanking, training, basing, mission planning and all the integration pieces are at a stage whereby the platform is more than a national prestige project. Those pieces may not come together yet the H-20 is still a promise and the PLAAF is still relying on updated H-6 designs, which are based on the Soviet Tu-16, but never rebirth as survivable, deep-penetration weaponry.
The most technical warning is the most acute one, the type of issue which is not photographed. An intelligence official of the U.S. said that the H-20 is likely nowhere as good as U.S. LO platforms attributing this to engineering and integration problems of the system operating in a B-2 or B-21-like manner. That brief term system function is inclusive of signature management over maintenance cycles to sensor fusion, emissions control, thermal management, mission systems stability and the hard reality that stealth is more of a manufacturing art than an aerodynamic one.
Reasons why the Raider is not the right yardstick to a “looks similar” comparison are explained in one paragraph. The B-2 has been designed to penetrate and deliver weapons; the B-21 is being postured as an infiltrating aircraft which also moves like a linked combat node, drawing in information, processing it, and redistributing it. Davis explained that trajectory in a direct way with the increased sensor and input system of the B-21 and how this incorporated information in a mission. Even the method of production is reflective of a design expected to advance: the development of the Raider incorporates at least six test planes flitting through production phases in a manner expected to record repeatability and quality experience early, and an open systems architecture restricts any upgrades to being a rebuild.
The fighter programs in China have been fast in getting airframes into the air and commentary on the J-36 has pointed to prototyping momentum. The H-20, however, has been described as relatively stagnant publicly the H-20 has been nearly here for the years, but without the supporting indicators that typically attend a shift of the platform beyond the guarded development stage into a sustainable force.
To the watchers of the engineering profession, the lesson learnt is short and rather decisive: imitation of the sketch is the least challenging step. The issue that determines whether a program changes reach, not just rhetoric is the problem of building a stealth bomber that remains stealthy, remains connected, and remains mission-ready, at scale.
