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Chinese indigineous AWACS means PLAAF no longer a joke
The recent deployment of China's first four indigenous KJ-2000 AWACS aircraft marks an important milestone in the PLA Air Force's long march from being a 'numbers intensive' low technology force, to a much more modern high technology one.
So, discard your old, dated ideas about masses of MiG-21s rising to the skies only to get shot down by AMRAAM, ok guys?
More fundamentally, though, the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) extends China's deep and broad network of air defence Command Control Communications Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (C3ISR) systems into a key airborne area. In doing so, China is now acquiring the radar and passive early warning and air defence command, control and communications it needs to counter foreign fighters and cruise missiles.

Yet despite the fact that this system employs radar technology two generations ahead of that used by the US Air Force's E-3C AWACS—generally seen as a benchmark by the rest of the world—the deployment of China's new aircraft elicited almost no response from Washington.

The airborne C3ISR segment has also seen investment, with three concurrent programmes to develop AWACS/AEW&C capabilities. Following the abortive KJ-1 effort, the PLA invested in developing a conventional system carried by the Y-8. This system was supplanted by the KJ-200, which uses electronically steered active phased array radar technology that's two generations ahead of the mechanically steered technology used by the US.
I'm sure Boeing will step right up to the plate with a new AWACS that costs far too much and doesn't work.
The much larger KJ-2000 AWACS, which also uses active phased array radar, is directly modeled on Israel's A-50I and Elta Phalcon radar. The PLA had actually negotiated the purchase of the A-50I, only to have the Clinton administration block the sale, resulting in an acrimonious war of words. As a consequence, the Chinese made a national commitment to build their own—resulting a decade later in the recently deployed milestone of the KJ-2000.
Yeah, I remember that one. Thanks a lot, Israel. It's funny how the US-Israel alliance benefits Israel and it's never time for Uncle Sam to get a benefit.
All this means that China is deploying a modern, high technology air defence system based largely on the same or more advanced basic technologies used by the US, EU and Russia in their systems.

Once fully deployed and matured, this system will be effectively impregnable to regional air forces, and largely impregnable to US naval air power, itself the victim of chronic underinvestment. Indeed, the technology being deployed in strength by the PLA is so sophisticated that only the small planned inventory of US Air Force B-2A Spirit and F-22 Raptor aircraft will be capable of confidently penetrating a post-2015 PLA air defence network.
It doesn't matter anyway, if there is ever a shooting war between China and America, the first thing that happens will be all our computers stop working, and the sneak attack will make Pearl Harbor look like the Battle of Barking Creek.
Posted by: gromky 2010-08-16
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=303480