FPI / March 21, 2024
Geostrategy-Direct
By Richard Fisher
China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) could reveal this year its new flying wing stealth bomber, the Xian Aircraft Corporation (XAC) “H-20,” as U.S. Air Force officials highlight that Chinese bombers could soon join Russian bombers in intimidation exercises against the United States.
Both developments herald the emergence of the third leg of China’s “strategic triad” of nuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) and nuclear-armed bombers.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) desires a powerful intercontinental bomber force to increase the flexibility of its strategic nuclear forces and to advance its ambition to achieve global nuclear superiority to enforce eventual global hegemony.
In addition, intercontinental range stealth bombers can launch non-nuclear and nuclear attacks to support the CCP’s regional wars against the U.S. and many other democracies.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been developing its stealth bomber since the 1990s, assisted in no small part by the espionage of former Northrop Grumman B-2 stealth bomber designer Noshir Gawadia, arrested in 2005.
In early 2014 an Asian military source told this analyst that China’s H-20 bomber would emerge by 2025, but China may exceed this estimate.
Related: U.S. confirms China’s nuclear superiority; Government failing to provide for national defense, March 13, 2024
On March 9 at the National People’s Congress, a reporter from the Hong Kong Commercial Daily asked Deputy PLAAF Commander Wang Wei when to expect the H-20 and when it will be ready for testing and production.
General Wang replied, “It's coming soon, just wait!,” and to the second questions, “This will be soon, we will follow it directly!”
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