【Military Subplane】Author: Big Ivan
January 26 is the 11th anniversary of the first flight of the Y-20 large transport aircraft of China Aviation Industry Co., Ltd., as the first large aircraft with a maximum take-off weight of more than 200 tons developed by China's aviation industry, the Y-20 transport aircraft is of great significance to China's aviation industry. With the advent of the Y-20 transport aircraft, China's aviation industry system has made frequent successes in the field of medium and large aircraft development, and civil passenger aircraft models such as ARJ-21 and C919 have been put into commercial operation.
So, what is the current level of the continental aviation industry in the field of large aircraft development, and what kind of development path may it take in the future?
The development of China's large aircraft industry
Big Ivan's point of view, China's aviation industry system (including the aviation industry and COMAC, hereby noted) on the road of research and development of large aircraft, has gone through the difficult start of the seventies and eighties, the repeated exploration in the nineties, the slow development at the beginning of this century and the current initial results:
The first stage, that is, the difficult start of the seventies and eighties, was represented by the Y-10 project of Shangfei. I remember that when Big Ivan was still in high school, he just in time for the ARJ-21 project to be approved by the State Council, and the Y-10 project was turned over on the Internet. Some people believe that the Y-10 project was eventually abandoned because of its historical factors, while others believe that the Y-10 project cannot be abandoned, must be persevered, can be used as a special aircraft, and can be used for 10 to 20 years for China's large aircraft industry, etc. Later, the quarrel also led to conspiracy theories, believing that the Y-10 passenger plane was fruitless and ended up colluding with internal and external parties to suppress China's civil aviation industry.
ARJ-21
In fact, with the gradual disclosure of information, the Y-10 passenger aircraft can only be called a detour and a price that had to be paid when the technical foundation of China's aviation industry was quite weak in the 70s. After all, whether it is from the overall design, or from the structural design, or from the flight control, avionics system design, the Y-10 aircraft is too far behind, these gaps not only make the performance of the Y-10 aircraft far from catching up with the Boeing 707 aircraft that the United States first flew in the 50s, and even after more than 100 hours of flight, even the basic flight safety can not be guaranteed.
Y-10
This determines that if the Y-10 aircraft is converted to civilian use, there is no competitiveness in the cost of use, no civil aviation company will buy this kind of aircraft, the more it flies, the more it loses, if it is used for military purposes or only as a special aircraft, it may not even be able to pass the safety level, and if we want to solve the safety problem, we must continue to invest, and it is possible to see results after investing for more than ten years, and the price is too great for China in the eighties of the last century. Therefore, the Y-10 aircraft did not follow in the end, which can be regarded as a helpless epitome of that era.
Boeing 707
After the end of the Y-10 aircraft, China's large aircraft industry entered the stage of repeated exploration from the 90s to the beginning of this century. At this stage, the mainland did not have any new large-scale aircraft development projects in its entire aviation industry system, but only developed the Xinzhou-60 regional passenger aircraft on the basis of the Y-7 aircraft, and developed the Y-8C medium-sized transport aircraft with a fully airtight cargo hold on the basis of the Y-8.
MA60
At the same time, it also undertook the MD-82 aircraft assembly project of McDonnell Douglas, and assembled 35 aircraft in the Y-10 production plant, of which 30 were received by the Civil Aviation of China and 5 were sold back to TWA. In the late 90s, AVIC was still negotiating with McDonnell Douglas to build a relatively new MD-90 aircraft in China, but due to the merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, McDonnell Douglas was abandoned by Boeing and abandoned halfway. Finally, China's aviation industry also proposed a joint development of regional airliners with Japan and South Korea, the plan is codenamed AE-100 "Asia Express", this project once aroused the interest of Boeing and Airbus, Boeing tried to make Boeing 737-600 into an AE-100 OEM product, and Airbus also launched a configuration based on A320 (eventually became A318), due to many factors, the project ended in failure.
A318
Generally speaking, in the eighties and nineties of the last century, to the beginning of this century, a number of civil aircraft projects promoted by China's aviation industry were basically many failures, few successes, and few finished products, which was limited by the overall technical level of China's aviation industry. But from another point of view, these less successful civil aircraft R&D and manufacturing projects have also accumulated experience for us.
AE-100
Compared with the Y-10 developed in the 70s of the last century, the ARJ-21 has made great progress in terms of R&D system, performance and practical application:
ARJ-21
In terms of R&D system, the R&D system led by Aviation Industry Corporation of China (later changed to Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China in 2002) has been established, and the R&D force has been highly centralized and unified, and the R&D technical force has been strengthened, and the R&D efficiency has been improved; in terms of the performance of the whole aircraft, many subsystems of the ARJ-21 have adopted advanced equipment at home and abroad, which has reached the international advanced level at the beginning of this century, and at the same time opened up the global supply chain to reduce procurement costs, improve production efficiency, and ensure the advancement and competitiveness of the whole aircraft; in practical application, the ARJ-21 successfully made its first flight in 2008In 2015, it obtained the airworthiness license issued by the Civil Aviation Administration of China to deliver users, and by the beginning of 2024, more than 120 aircraft have been delivered, with a total production of more than 130 aircraft, and the fleet utilization rate, daily flight hours, and average failure rate have reached the level of similar products in the world, which means that the ARJ-21 aircraft has indeed been completely successful after more than 20 years.
C919
After the success of the ARJ-21-700 project, China's aviation industry (AVIC, COMAC) has completely opened up the second pulse of the development of large civil/military aircraft, and then brought about a big explosion of large aircraft models. For example, the Y-20 transport aircraft of the aviation industry system was formally developed in 2009, and the C919 passenger aircraft of COMAC was also at the same time to clarify the development unit, and then, the development of China's large aircraft is even more unstoppable, on January 26, 2013, the first flight of the Y-20 large transport aircraft was successful, and on May 5, 2017, the C919 trunk passenger aircraft made its first successful flight at Shanghai Pudong Airport. On June 15, 2016, the year before, the first batch of mass-produced aircraft of the Y-20 large transport aircraft has been delivered to the troops, and China's aviation industry system has gone through more than 40 years of large aircraft development after the second decade of the 21st century, in the independent research and development of large transport aircraft and trunk passenger aircraft, it can finally be regarded as "the first fruit".
For the current large aircraft industry in China, Big Ivan believes that our current state can be regarded as insufficient compared to the above, and more than enough. In comparison, in the field of civil aircraft industry, we still have a relatively large gap compared with the United States and the European Union, after all, the strength of Boeing and Airbus is too strong, and it is very likely that we will not be able to match it for a long time. However, compared with aviation industry companies such as Embraer and Bombardier, we can at least have the product line of mainline airliners, compared to Aeroflot's Tu-214 and Yak-242, etc., our C919 has at least officially started commercial operation, and the fuel economy is relatively good. It is precisely because of the C919 that we can have our own place among the major civil aviation industry powers.
In the field of large military aircraft, because of the existence of the Y-20, our status is much higher, after all, the advanced nature of the Y-20 is obvious to all, and the performance of the C-17A is better, and the Russian Il-476 cannot be compared with the Y-20. As for Europe, Brazil, Canada and other countries and regions, there is no similar model of large transport aircraft at present, so in the field of military 200-ton large transport aircraft, we are now properly sitting on the second side.
Expectations for China's large aircraft
So, where are our expectations for China's large aircraft industry in the future?
One is to roll out the large-scale commercial operation of C919 passenger aircraft as soon as possible, there are only a few of China Eastern Airlines, and it seems that the delivery plan of COMAC will not be able to deliver about 100 aircraft a year until 2030, which is indeed too low, especially in front of Boeing and Airbus;
The second is to promote our own large wide-body passenger aircraft project, that is, the C929 project that is finally on the right track, which is a project for our civil aircraft industry to truly keep pace with Boeing and Airbus in technology and product lines, and is the second strategic project after the C919 project;
The third is in the field of military large aircraft, similar to the An-124 and C-5 large transport aircraft research and development projects, this project mainly solves the problem of military strategic transport aircraft blank, but also the Chinese Air Force really has the ability to intercontinental projection of key equipment, strategic significance is also very significant; of course, in addition to these models, such as the C919 model of serial development and in-depth technical improvement, such as the Y-20 large transport aircraft serial development is also very important, can be China's large military, The models of civil airliners have been further expanded in depth and to both sides, and we will continue to improve our military and civil aircraft product lines and application scope.
All in all, after decades of hard work, our large aircraft industry has reached the moment to harvest the fruits, and our road will inevitably go more and more smoothly. Of course, compared with overtaking in corners in the fields of high-speed rail and electric vehicles, in the large-scale civil aircraft industry, Boeing in the United States and Airbus in Europe have been deeply involved in this market for decades, which can be said to have an extremely deep foundation, and they also have the right to formulate standards. We still have a long way to go before we can truly achieve the world, and it may take more than 20 years to recast the strategic map of the international civil aircraft market, and we look forward to this day as soon as possible.