Kris Osborn
(Washington D.C.) A quick look at available renderings of China’s emerging H-20 bomber reveals a striking, if not surprising, resemblance to the US B-2 Spirit bomber with its sleek blended wing-body, curved engine inlets and apparently “buried” engine with indented exhaust ostensibly for reducing the aircraft’s “heat” signature. Certainly China is well known for its publicly documented efforts to copycat or simply “steal” US military technology, designs and weapons specs, however as of yet there is likely still very little known about the still in development H-20.
One documented area of concern, however, was cited as far back as 2018 in the Pentagon’s China Military Power Report which said that the H-20 would potentially be able to reach a paradigm-changing range of 8,500km. While this may appear slightly less than the B-2 reported range of 6,700 miles, this H-20 range, if true, would present a comparable like ability to hold large areas of the globe at risk on a single mission. Specifically, the 2018 report discusses the H-20 range with a mind to Asia, explaining that the H-20s reported range would “expand long-range offensive bomber capability beyond the second island chain,” placing areas such as the South China Sea at risk.
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