Minimum of 100 aircraft is the standard the U.S. Air Force has written into the B-21 Raider program a clear indication that Washington believes volume, rather than merely exquisite capability, will be the key attribute of penetrating strike in a hardened threat environment.
That context is important since so much of the popular discussion about the still-unseen Xi-an H-20 is continuing to be bogged down in the wrong yardstick, that it can match the B-2 or B-21 on paper, or that it can project a range of “global” retaliation as the U.S. bomber forces have been traditionally called upon to offer. The U.S. senior officials have described the bomber arm of China as regional, and this has been directionally true. It is also incomplete in a strategic manner.
The value of the H-20 is pegged on geography and availability. The first set of problems of China is the first island chain, followed by the second, which is airfields, logistically significant points, sea chokepoints, and the forcing role of uncertainty over fixed infrastructure. To be destabilizing in the Indo-Pacific, a sneak-thief bomber does not have to imitate intercontinental practices, it needs to complicate the basing, expand the dispersion of the defense planners, and add a survivable layer to an architecture of strike that is already largely dominated by missiles and maritime power.
Only a little is known, although open-source descriptions are unanimous that the H-20 was going to be a flying-wing, low-observable, long-range nuclear and conventional aircraft, whose focus was on stealth and internal payload, instead of velocity. A commonly quoted range of estimates cites a range exceeding 10,000 kilometers and payload of such magnitude as to allow it to internally carry a combination of cruise missiles and other large weapons. Even were such figures optimistic, the principle of operation will be as follows: the aircraft is designed to last long enough to develop new targeting problems at a range not to win airshows.
The very design option has engineering logic. The tailless flying-wing planforms including aerodynamic and electromagnetic studies conducted as unofficially as possible, highlight the rationale behind the designers returning to the shape: it can save on drag and structural weight, and provides the geometry that can be optimized to cross-section benefits in relation to radar scattering behavior through control of edge alignment and scattering behavior. In one study the flying-wing shape is said to be easily optimized to stealth in terms of radar cross section, which is a brief explanation as to why a country seeking a first true stealth bomber is inclined to gravitate towards B-2-style designs.
All this does not involve presupposing that the H-20 is already “world-class”. Actually, friction in development is included in the risk. An aircraft delayed is not a dismissed aircraft, but a platform, which can be put on a political timeline, and revealed when Beijing feels that the value of messaging is greater than the cost of secrecy, and repeated and enhanced when it becomes survivable and meets mission-system criteria.
Meanwhile, the U.S. modernization track of the bombers is very clear regarding its direction. The formal program description is that the B-21 is a dual penetrating strike stealth bomber, with dual capability, and is part of a wider family of systems including ISR, electronic attack, communications which will be open-architecture evolvable. It is an ecosystem strategy and not an airplane strategy.
The word that is not a comfortable one associated with the H-20 is uncertainty. Even a “regional” stealth bomber, deployed in volume and incorporated within overall strike systems in China, changes the planning geometry across the Indo-Pacific – not so much by challenging U.S. bombers on an equivalent basis, but by compelling defenses to expand the coverage of directions, nodes, and nights.
