China’s biggest planes are spreading their wings

Chinese Y-20s hauled troops and equipment to Belarus and Tanzania in July, showing off the range that makes the heavy transport plane a central part of the Chinese military’s plans to project power across the planet.

In Belarus, a Y-20 carried troops and equipment for an exercise that kicked off at the start of the month. It was billed as an anti-terrorism exercise in which the two militaries would “work out the issues of night landing, overcoming water obstacles, and conducting operations in a populated area.” The number of Chinese participants was unclear, but official media showed only one Y-20 arriving, suggesting a small contingent.

Chinese troops participated in another anti-terrorism exercise in Tanzania at the end of July. Among the drills it included were “joint combat planning” during its land phase and “joint main gun shooting” and “anti-terrorism and anti-piracy missions” in its at-sea phase. It featured a much larger Chinese force and was described as a demonstration of China’s “continental power projection capabilities.”

State media said the People’s Liberation Army “organized a multidimensional cross-border transport operation to send troops to Tanzania via air and sea,” and a Chinese military expert told Global Times it was "the first time the PLA has sent whole units to an exercise in Africa with Y-20 strategic transport aircraft, showing the PLA's long-distance airlift capabilities.”

Long flights are nothing new for the Y-20. The plane has demonstrated its reach with flights across the South China Sea, a mission to deliver 33 tons of humanitarian aid to Tonga in February 2022 — a 6,000-mile flight that caught Western attention — and a semi-secret operation to deliver Chinese-made surface-to-air missiles to Serbia in April 2022. (Chinese reporting indicates the Y-20 has a maximum capacity of about 70 tons and a range of 4,800 miles and 6,200 miles, depending on its load.)

But the exercises in Belarus and Tanzania took place as Chinese soldiers participated in a multinational exercise in Mongolia and as Chinese naval and air forces trained with Russian forces across East Asia — in the latter case, at least two Y-20s flew to Russia’s Far East to support a joint bomber patrol that ventured near Alaska late last month.

Conducting “simultaneous military interactions” on three continents “shows the PLA's capabilities in global reach, as China now has a large number of advanced, ready-for-combat strategic transport aircraft,” an unnamed Chinese military expert told Global Times in a separate article, which said those activities "are not targeted at any specific third party or regional situation.”

A growing fleet

Like much of China’s air force, the Y-20 is relatively new. Its development began in the late 2000s with the goal of replacing the few dozen Soviet-designed Il-76 airlifters and Il-78 tankers used by China since the 1990s. It first flew in 2013 and entered service in 2016.

Since then, and especially over the past few years, the fleet has expanded in size and capability. Variants have been introduced, most notably an aerial-refueling tanker, the YY-20, which improves upon the less efficient Il-78s and converted H-6 bombers previously used as tankers and allows Chinese jets to stay aloft longer and fly farther. Y-20s are also receiving a new, more powerful engine, the WS-20, which was developed domestically, a milestone for China.

The PLA Air Force is also trying to get new pilots interested in the Y-20. State media said in February that an aviation regiment with the Western Theater Command Air Force, the first unit to introduce Y-20s, had since 2023 been trying “to recruit newly graduated cadets in a move to train more young pilots,” shifting from the previous practice of picking experienced pilots to fly the Y-20.

“The need for more pilots is a reflection of mass delivery of Y-20s,” Global Times said at the time, citing a Xinhua report that quoted one of the first Y-20 pilots and flight instructors as saying that “we must broaden channels to recruit and train, and accelerate the pace of personnel growth at different stages” in order to "boost personnel training for combat-oriented strategic airlift.”

The Y-20 fleet now numbers about 60 to 70 aircraft, according to Western analysts. Aviation Week said in October that construction of the Y-20A — the airlifter variant with the older engine — had been completed at 48 aircraft and that six Y-20Bs, which have the new engine, could be expected to be delivered each year for the next decade. The outlet also said YY-20A production was finishing at eight planes and that six YY-20Bs would be built each year in the 2020s, rising to eight planes annually in the 2030s.

“The tanker version is forecast to take slight priority over the airlifter,” Aviation Week said.

Work in progress

The Y-20 doesn’t get as much attention as China’s new fighter jets or warships, but it is one of the capabilities that the PLA is “aggressively developing” to provide options with which “to dissuade, deter, or, if ordered, defeat third-party intervention in the Indo-Pacific region” and to operate “deeper into the Indo-Pacific region and globally,” the US Department of Defense said in its most recent report on Chinese military power, published in October.

That report said the Y-20 is “intended to support airborne [command and control], logistics, paradrop, aerial refueling, and strategic reconnaissance operations as well as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.” The tanker variant will “improve the PLAAF’s ability to operate beyond the [first island chain] from bases in mainland China” and support a growing fleet of aerial-refueling-capable fighters, bombers, and special-mission aircraft that “will significantly expand the PRC’s ability to conduct long-range offensive air operations,” the DoD report said.

While Chinese strategists and analysts are clear about the importance of airlifters and tankers, they appear to believe the PLA still doesn’t have enough of them or enough of the related capabilities — such as crews with experience doing aerial refueling — to use them effectively.

According to a review of articles that Rand Corporation researchers conducted for a 2022 report, “PLA analysts clearly identify strategic airlift as a critical weakness in the PLA’s overseas power-projection capability” and “PLAAF logistics researchers even state that strengthening cross-border strategic airlift is ‘a long-term dynamic process’ that is part of the goal of building a ‘world-class military.’” Similarly, until China “fields significant quantities of a high-capacity aerial tanker,” the report noted, "the PLA’s ability to carry out long-range or overseas combat aircraft deployments in general will be limited.”

China’s overseas operations will also remain limited if it doesn’t have access to overseas bases, an issue acknowledged by Chinese sources. The Rand report cited one study "focused on developing overseas airlift capability” that was “candid in stating that ‘[China lacks] overseas strategic strongpoints for aviation due to strong sensitivities in geopolitics.’”

Beijing may be overcoming those sensitivities, however. The PLA opened its first overt foreign base in Djibouti in 2017 and its second, in Cambodia, now appears operational. Those bases are designed to support naval operations, but facilities for air operations may emerge in the future. A few dozen miles from China’s new base in Cambodia, a Chinese firm is building an airstrip that the US and others worry could eventually host military aircraft.