Throughout a current navy train, China employed a strong long-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, the HQ-22, in an uncommon method. The Folks’s Liberation Army Air Drive (PLAAF) transported it from its residence base within the Southern Theater Command (STC) to north central, far northern, and northwestern areas.
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Described as a “systematic confrontational” train, it was flown in China’s domestically developed strategic airlift Y-20 plane to northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Area, northern China’s Interior Mongolia Autonomous Area, and northwestern China’s Gansu Province.
A International Instances report quoted specialists saying it would considerably improve China’s air protection functionality.
China’s Third-Finest Lengthy-Vary Air Protection Platform
The HQ-22 is the PLAAF’s third main long-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) system after the S-300 and the S-400.
On this “systematic confrontational” train, the PLAAF examined its fast deployment functionality by flying with Y-20 giant transport plane. “This methodology will considerably improve China’s air protection flexibility,” the report within the International Instances added.
The SAM platform, which has a spread of roughly 170 kilometers, can have interaction plane, jets, helicopters, cruise missiles, and drones. Every HQ-22 anti-aircraft missile system has three launchers and 4 transport-launch containers every and might direct 12 anti-aircraft guided missiles concurrently at six targets. Every missile has a semi-active radar as a homing head.
The final motion of the HQ-22 was reported on August 2 final 12 months, throughout US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s go to to Taiwan. Movies on social media and the data accompanying them mentioned China was shifting them to the coast when it retaliated with large live-fire air and naval maneuvers across the island.
Stationed in Southwest China’s border area, the missile battalion is affiliated with the PLA’s Southern Theater Command. The PLAAF maneuvers additionally noticed the participation of different aerial fight models, land-based surface-to-surface, and SAM platforms.
Aimed To Get All Working Collectively
International Instances mentioned the “battalion coordinated with pleasant forces towards hostile ones, simulated greater than 50 missile launches, and defended towards over 30 systematic targets in mock combats.”
The CCTV report included footage displaying an HQ-22 air protection missile launcher automobile getting into a Y-20 giant transport plane.
Lengthy-range, speedy deployment of heavy surface-to-air missiles has nice tactical and even strategic significance, because it permits the PLA to boost regional air protection flexibly, based on an unnamed Chinese language navy professional quoted by GT.
The PLAAF’s Y-20 transport airplane seems notably central to the whole scheme of issues since its presence in giant numbers does permit quite a lot of navy and military-oriented motion inside the nation.
Furthermore, since China doesn’t purpose to battle expeditionary wars in faraway lands (besides Taiwan), the place it must switch tens of hundreds of troops, it leaves the Y-20 free for heavy airlifts inside the nation. It helps the conflict effort within the western Pacific.
Furthermore, the International Instances report added that the PLAAF is “practising” the long-range transport of the HQ-22, which raises the query of whether or not the train was meant to refine its strategic airlift functionality or get the HQ-22 crew used to the totally different areas round China. It seems to be each.
Transported In Y-20 Earlier than
That is additionally not the primary time that the HQ-22 has been transported within the Y-20 this fashion. In April 2022, many Y-20 giant transport plane flew from China to Serbia over a number of consecutive days to ship the FK-3 SAM platform (the HQ-22’s export model) that the Balkan nation bought.
Observers referred to as the mission on the time the biggest abroad operation by the Y-20 and Beijing’s rise as a significant arms exporter.
South China Morning Publish (SCMP) put the determine at six Y-20s flying “12 covert sorties” to move a part of the three FK-3 models. Hong Kong-based navy professional Liang Guoliang estimates 12 Y-20s to haul the total complement of the techniques bought by Serbia.
One other protection of a separate HQ-22 system in CCTV quoted one of many navy personnel saying that the aim was extra in the direction of synergizing models utilizing totally different techniques and weapons. “It’s to completely conduct the workouts in all its totally different levels, with totally different models that use totally different weapons on the similar time,” he mentioned.
“The officers and troopers who carried out the air protection mission beneath shut coordination used the simulated countermeasure system to shoot down targets launched by their comrades,” the CCTV reporter mentioned of the separate train.
