On Dec. 23, at 14.11 Local Time, Chinese medium lift utility helicopter dubbed Z-20 made its first flight.
As the image (published on a Chinese Internet website and then made available by Alert5) shows, the chopper is clearly based on the U.S. Black Hawk type (China operates 24 Black Hawk procured in 1983 as S-70C-2).
Still, it features some peculiar things: the 5-blade rotor, a larger cabin and a different landing gear and tail.
Z-20 is believed to be a 10-ton chopper that will be used to replace Mi-17 and Mi-171 helos within People’s Liberation Army.
David Cenciotti is a freelance journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written four books.
So far, with the help of Ugo Crisponi, I’ve been able to offer my readers a possible view of the Stealth Black Hawk involved in the Osama Bin Laden’s raid. However, although I’ve already underlined […]
The following video, allegedly showing a Syrian Mil Mi-8 helicopter shot down by the rebels, was published by several media outlets all around the world as the first kill achieved by the Free Syria Army […]
According to a brief news published by the ecodicaserta.it website, on Jul 17, an AB.212 of the 9° Stormo of the Aeronautica Militare, performed an emergency landing near Mondragone after experiencing an engine fire. The […]
This website makes use of cookies, both proprietary or by third part, in order to improve your browsing experience. For more information check our cookies policy.
By closing this message, proceed surfing or using this website, you accept to use cookies. Don’t show this again
