PLA Air Force General News Thread:

That is really optimistic... that weapon is enormous and full of fuel would be enormously heavy... two D-30 engines wouldn't get it off the ground even if the undercarriage still could reach the ground...

no, its S/IRBM. For an ICBM, a C-5/An-124 is needed.

The artists impression shown makes it look like a seriously big ICBM rather than an IRBM or SLBM... it is enormous.

According to the Americans, the missile might have a range of up to 3000km rang...

Sounds like a 750 billion per year budget is not enough and they need to waste more taxpayers money... it is so unfair that those evil chinese and evil russians spend so much on defence.... how can poor merica compete... without needing to spend much much more than they do now.

You couldn't launch a conventional liquid fuelled ICBM from airplane like that... it would snap like a twig and shower fuel over a very wide area.

There are some custom designed rockets designed to be released in flight however... I remember a mockup of a Tu-160 with a long narrow missile mounted between the engine pods, and I have read about plans to carry missiles in large cargo planes and roll them out the rear... but the former should be relatively straight forward... climb up as high as you can in a relatively low speed cruise and then release the rocket and then fire up the rocket motors... not sure whether a parachute attached to the nose could be used to slow it down and get it upright before the rocket motor is fired, or whether you could release it in a 30 degree climb and then have the aircraft turn away and the rocket motor start and thrust vectoring to change the angle of climb from 30 degrees to something like 70 or 80 degrees depending on where the target it...

With it rolling out the back of a cargo plane the bending forces on its structure would be enormous so it might need to be supported in a structure that goes out the back with the missile and then falls away allowing the missile to fire its engines...

The Burlak rocket was designed to be air launched and examples like this:

They could develop the air equivalent of Sea Launch... an An-225 for instance with a large winged rocket with a low power rocket on top to overcome drag and move the rocket forward and away from the aircraft before its main engine lights up and the extra rocket and wings fall away and it accelerates up to space...


It could certainly be done... there is no doubt about it, but the design with the Tu-16 above is not a good example.

The US will hate this because they like the idea that they can attack anyone they like when they like and will achieve significant advantage from a surprise attack.

Russia sharing defence technology that will help China defend itself better from a US attack is a good thing for China and therefore bad for the US, which makes it good for Russia too.

Better relations between China and Russia are good for Russia and good for China and good for the rest of the world... except the west.