Recently, the mainland army sent elite members to Russia to participate in the "Sayan Ridge March" snow combat competition, and they flew on the Y-20, a large military transport plane independently developed by the mainland. When landing at Moscow airports, the Y-20 staged a signature "Afghan-style landing".
I saw the huge transport plane dive down directly from a high altitude, quickly descend to the runway, and then flatten and raised the nose of the plane in a very short time, and landed on the ground with the rear landing gear. I don't know if the vertical speed of landing is too large, but the plane bounced heavily after the wheels hit the ground, and then bounced many times before entering the normal taxiing state.
With such a violent way of landing, I believe that the passengers in the cabin will not be too comfortable, but fortunately, they are all excellent soldiers, and they don't care about this. When we take a civil airliner, the landing process is very smooth, the plane will start to lower the altitude at a long distance, aim at the runway, and then slowly descend. At this time, the nose of the passenger aircraft will be slightly lifted and tilted up, which is to increase lift, reduce the landing speed, and ensure that the rear landing gear with a stronger carrying capacity touches the ground first. After this silky operation, the civil airliner is relatively gentle at the moment of landing, the vertical speed is not high, and it rarely bounces after touching the ground.
But why did the Y-20 land so heavily and bounce so obviously, was it because of the pilot's operational error, or was the plane's performance not good? To get the answer to this question, we must first understand: The Y-20 is a military transport plane, and all its design features and operation methods are aimed at achieving strategic and tactical airlift, and what is pursued is not the stability and low cost of a civil airliner, but more importantly, the high efficiency of transportation and the safety of the aircraft.
What the Y-20 pilots showed us this time is the "Afghan landing method" summed up by the former Soviet pilots in the war, which seems clumsy, but can save the plane's life at a critical moment, not only requires superb piloting skills, but also has good performance, not everyone can play it.
The Y-20 is the first large-scale transport aircraft developed by the mainland itself, and it is of great strategic significance. In modern warfare, strategic airlift capability is an important part of the difference between victory and defeat. Whoever can deliver a large number of personnel and weapons and equipment to the battlefield in the shortest possible time will have the initiative, and the probability of victory will be greatly increased.
The United States has a variety of large transport aircraft such as the C-5 "Galaxy" and the C-17 "Globemaster", taking the C-17 as an example, the maximum take-off weight can reach 286 tons, and the carrying capacity can reach 77 tons, which can transport heavy main battle tanks such as the M1A2. If armed soldiers are transported, 134 people can be transported at a time, and in the evacuation operation in Afghanistan, 823 people were loaded in a C-17, which shows the horror of its loading capacity. These transport planes fly around the world every day, bringing US troops and equipment to their destinations, and making great contributions to the maintenance of US hegemony.
Russia, another military power, is not far behind in terms of strategic transport aircraft, it has inherited the legacy of the Soviet Union, with large transport aircraft such as the Il-76 and An-124, the technology is very mature, and the aircraft are also very reliable. In particular, the maximum load capacity of the An-124 is as high as 150 tons, which can transport large items that other aircraft cannot transport, and even the United States sometimes has to rent them.
As for the mainland, before the emergence of the Y-20, the Y-5, Y-7, Y-8, and Y-9 developed by the mainland were all small and medium-sized transport aircraft, lacking heavyweights. Strategic airlift can only rely on a limited number of Russian-made Il-76s, although the carrying capacity can also reach about 50 tons, but the technology is old, the size of the cargo compartment is small, the key is that it cannot be mass-produced by itself, which has brought great limitations to the construction of the mainland's strategic projection capability.
After years of accumulation and difficult research and development process, the Y-20 was finally born and became China's most cutting-edge large transport aircraft. Its performance is excellent, the early version used the same D-30KP2 medium bypass ratio engine as the Russian Il-76, or the domestic version of the D-30KP2 turbofan-18, but the maximum load has reached 55 tons, surpassing the Il-76MD, and the cargo compartment size is larger. After the replacement of the turbofan-20 with a large bypass ratio engine, the load can be significantly increased to 66 tons, which is close to the level of the C-17.
Judging by the video, the Y-20 that landed in Moscow has a thinner and longer engine nacelle, which should belong to an early version of the turbofan-18. As a military transport aircraft, the take-off and landing capacity of the Y-20 is far from that of ordinary civil airliners, and it can achieve short-distance take-off and landing under the condition of large loads. The landing gear is also much stronger, and it can also take off and land on improvised runways or even unpaved dirt floors in less favourable conditions. This is all for the sake of actual combat, after all, it is not so easy to find a hardened runway at an airport with good conditions in war.
And the take-off and landing process is precisely the stage when the transport aircraft is most vulnerable to attack. At this time, the speed of the aircraft was relatively low, and the altitude was not too high, which was exactly within the range of portable anti-aircraft missiles. If the enemy lays an ambush near the airfield, an anti-aircraft missile shooter can be used to launch missiles to hit the aircraft by taking off and landing. Especially in the landing phase, the aircraft takes a long time to descend to altitude and cannot do drastic maneuvers, so that the missile shooter can have ample time to aim and launch.
The Soviet Union suffered this loss during the invasion of Afghanistan. At that time, the Afghan guerrillas were carrying US-made "Stinger" portable anti-aircraft missiles and were ambushing next to the Soviet airfield. Throughout the war in Afghanistan, Afghan guerrillas fired a total of 340 Stinger missiles, hitting 269 targets, with a staggering 80 percent hit rate. In 1986-1987 alone, the Soviet Union lost more than 300 aircraft and helicopters of all types, an average of one per day.
Transport aircraft often carry a large number of personnel and weaponry, and if shot down, they will cause heavy losses, so they become ideal targets for Stinger missiles. The Stinger is a man-portable missile, characterized by a relatively close range of only 4,800 meters and a launch height of only 3,800 meters. When the transport plane was flying at high altitude, the Stinger could not threaten it, so the Soviet pilots summed up their experience in actual combat and created the almost suicidal "Afghan landing method".
This is done by flying near the airfield at an altitude higher than the maximum range of the Stinger, and then landing quickly at a very large glide angle to minimize the time spent within the Stinger's range, making it difficult for enemy shooters to aim and launch. The faster the plane lands and the greater the angle perpendicular to the ground, the smaller the probability of being attacked, which the Soviets called the "Afghan landing method".
The risk of this pursuit of vertical landing as much as possible is quite large, and the slightest carelessness will destroy the aircraft and kill people, and if it is not well controlled, the aircraft will descend too fast, and it is very likely to damage the landing gear. Because the aircraft has lift, if you want to descend quickly, you must let the nose press down, forming a "dive" attitude, if you can't adjust the elevation angle to the nose up in time when you are about to land, it will cause the fragile nose landing gear to land first, and it is likely to break off.
Obviously, what our military Y-20 showed in Moscow was the "Afghan landing method", which was not an operational error at all, nor did it mean that the performance of the aircraft was not good. This landing method is not only used by us, but also by the US military sometimes. At this time, some netizens asked: Now that we are not fighting, why do we use such a dangerous landing method? What should I do if the plane is damaged?
That's one-sided. Although it is now an era of peace, our army is going out for exercises for the purpose of tempering its actual combat skills, so everything should be on par with actual combat, and it is all the more encouraging to adopt an operational mode that is close to actual combat. Moreover, Moscow, the capital of Russia, is not very peaceful now, not long ago there was a terrorist attack on the concert hall in Crokus City, which killed more than 140 people, and Ukrainian long-range drones have repeatedly attacked targets in the hinterland of the Russian mainland, hitting St. Petersburg and Moscow. Therefore, the reason why our military Y-20 landed in actual combat is even more sufficient.
The Y-20 was able to successfully show off the Afghan landing method, which also reflected its strong performance, the strength of the landing gear and fuselage is really high, and it fully withstood the huge impact of large-angle landing. In fact, as early as 2022 and 2023, the Y-20 has used Afghan-style landings at Innsbruck Airport in Austria many times and won a full house.
In the future, after the Y-20B with turbofan-20 is put into service, its performance will be even stronger, and our army's strategic projection capability will be raised to a higher level, which is very worth looking forward to.