Coming into service from 2015, the Shaanxi KJ-500’s deployment below Chinese language Folks’s Liberation Army (PLA) frontline items represented the end result of efforts over greater than 1 / 4 of a century to develop a world class airborne early warning and management (AEW&C) plane. This had grow to be an pressing precedence after the worth of those belongings was demonstrated in the course of the Gulf Struggle in 1991 by the U.S. Air Drive’s E-3 Sentry fleet, and noticed the KJ-2000 and KJ-200 enter service within the 2000s with capabilities thought-about beneath the leading edge, however which nonetheless supplied necessary expertise in working devoted AEW&C belongings. The KJ-500 boasted necessary developments over its predecessors together with benefitting from enhancements in China’s AESA radar and information hyperlink applied sciences, and gaining the power to trace 100 targets concurrently. Its radar was developed by the thirty eighth Analysis Institute of the China Electronics Know-how Group Company, and homes three separate sensors inside a saucer-shaped dome – which additionally carries a satellite tv for pc communications antenna and two passive digital intelligence arrays.
The KJ-500 was developed primarily based on the indigenous Shaanxi Y-9 4 engined turboprop transport, offering upkeep commonality in addition to comparatively low operational prices in comparison with the bigger Russian Il-76 airframe which was used as the idea for growing the previous KJ-2000 plane. The plane integrates 4 FWJ-6C 5,100 horsepower turboprop engines with six-bladed propellers, and has the next endurance than jet plane just like the IL-76 making it best for loitering as AEW&C plane are sometimes required to. The place the Y-9 had a capability for carrying 132 airborne personnel, the AEW&C variant is crewed by 4 personnel with the remaining carrying capability coated by the burden of the sensor suite and different avionics. Past the principle sensors, different modifications to the Y-9 airframe embody the additions of devoted crew command consoles and antenna arrays. Use of the Y-9 airframe gives an modern technique of reaching low operational prices and excessive availability charges, the place the first AEW&C plane of the U.S. Air Drive and Russian Air Drive the E-3 and A-50 use heavier jet powered plane which have each suffered from very low availability charges and vast ranging upkeep points in recent times.
The Folks’s Liberation Army’s satisfaction with the KJ-500 was mirrored within the a lot bigger numbers it was acquired in in comparison with previous plane. An estimated 17 KJ-500s have been deployed by the start of 2018, which already made it essentially the most quite a few in service, earlier than a rise within the scale of manufacturing was introduced that 12 months. Against this solely 4 KJ-2000s and round 12 KJ-200s had entered service. Expanded manufacturing introduced the fleet as much as an estimated 28 plane by 2022, roughly evenly cut up between the air pressure and naval aviation items. This made it by far essentially the most broadly fielded AEW&C plane outdoors the U.S. Navy, with related belongings being fielded in comparatively small numbers by different air forces whereas the big majority fielded none in any respect. The improved KJ-500A variant was unveiled at Airshow China 2022 in Zhuhai in November, and featured important enhancements to avionics. A variety of sources reported that this variant had begun to enter service in 2020, which indicated manufacturing might have begun in 2018 when manufacturing strains have been expanded.
With AEW&C plane serving as main pressure multipliers for fight belongings throughout the providers, however significantly fight aviation, the KJ-500 has gained explicit prominence attributable to its operations alongside China’s most excessive profile fighter the Chengdu J-20. J-20s have been first delivered to the air pressure in 2016, and by 2022 the fleet was estimated to have grown to round 200 plane after entry into full scale manufacturing the earlier 12 months. The category noticed its first encounter with one other fifth technology fighter confirmed in March 2022, with United States Pacific Air Forces commander Kenneth Wilsbach singling out the KJ-500 on the time for the necessary position it performed in supporting J-20 operations. “We’re comparatively impressed with the command and management related to the J-20… plane within the area… have been fairly effectively commanded and managed by the Chinese language belongings,” he acknowledged. “The KJ-500… performs a big position in a few of their functionality for lengthy vary fires. A few of their very lengthy vary air to air missiles are aided by that KJ-500. With the ability to interrupt that kill chain is one thing that pursuits me drastically.”
Wilsbach’s feedback drew consideration to the truth that China is the one potential U.S. adversary to subject state of the AEW&C capabilities, with its numbers dwarfing Russia’s ageing A-50 fleet whereas different nations akin to North Korea and Iran haven’t any such plane in any way. This and the KJ-500’s place, with a really massive manufacturing scale, very excessive numbers, and capabilities far surpassing these of the E-3 and rivalling these of its lately ordered successor the E-7, makes it by far essentially the most threatening AEW&C platform to U.S. and Western pursuits. Though sustaining a decrease profile than belongings akin to H-20 bombers and J-20 fighters, the KJ-500’s growth has complemented the speedy modernisation of the Chinese language fight fleet and been a number one trigger for concern amongst China’s potential adversaries.
