Prasun K. Sengupta

The Airshow China 2022, or the 14th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, held from November 8 to 13, 2022, in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, was an aerospace expo only by name.

Zhuhai Air Show

For, the expo site was full of ground warfighting exhibits that included a wide variety of manned and unmanned armoured vehicles, tube and rocket artillery systems, ground-based air-defence systems, small arms and ammunition, warships of different types, and a wide variety of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).

Accompanied by marketing/sales literature in Arabic language, such exhibits were clearly aimed at export markets in conflict zones spread through the African continent and West Asia from where the issuance of end-user certificates is an exception. But some of the notable aerospace-related exhibits provided useful pointers towards ongoing research and development (R&D) efforts undertaken by China’s military-technical and military-industrial complexes.

Combat-Capable UAS

One such exhibit was a conceptual stealthy, tailless sixth-generation multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) design that was showcased at the Aviation Industry Corporation of China’s (AVIC) Ultravic kiosk.

Another notable exhibit was the unmanned FH-97A ‘loyal wingman’, shown by the China Aerospace Science & Technology Corporation (CASC). The FH-97A’s fuselage, wings, and vertical stabilisers were all different from the baseline FH-97 design unveiled a year ago. The FH-97A features engine intakes on either side of the fuselage and are of a divert-less supersonic inlet (DSI) design. The FH-97A also features two distinct and exposed traditional engine exhaust nozzles at the rear, unlike the stealthy shrouded design seen on the earlier FH-97.

It is not clear if the FH-97A also has tricycle landing gear and is expected to take off and land from conventional runways. The FH-97 was designed to use a ground-based rocket-assisted take-off concept involving a static ground-based launcher. The FH-97A also houses an optronic sensor installed within a stealthy gold-plated windowed enclosure at the top, plus gold-coloured transparencies on either side of the forward fuselage, possibly housing dedicated side-looking sensors that could allow the FH-97A to spot and track multiple airborne and ground-launched targets from different angles, and do so in a way that is immune to radio-frequency jamming and is passive in nature, the latter feature helping to reduce the chance that opponents might know they have been detected at all.

The FH-97A also does away with the FH-97’s ventral internal store