Anyone can ID this aircraft seen at a PLAN bomber base? [SOLVED]

© Google

The above is a Google Earth satellite image, taken in January 2010 of Changzhou-Benniu (常州奔牛) airport/airbase in Jiangsu Province, China. It is a civil/military aerodrome, and the military side is the home to a regiment of People's Liberation Army - Navy (PLAN) Xi'an H-6 bombers. So it's no surprise to see H-6s parked on the ramp (like the aircraft on the left in the above photo) on the satellite images of the base taken at various times.

But it's the aircraft on the right that left me scratching my head. Using Google Earth's measurement tool, it comes up to an approximate length of 20m and a wingspan of 18m, with air intakes on either side of the fuselage and twin exhausts just after the wing trailing edge. The wing chord of this unidentified aircraft also appears to be thick, reminding one of the British Buccaneer. It appears to be a military aircraft of some description and is painted in the same white scheme as the PLANAF H-6s, but the plan view and wing shape does no appear to look like any aircraft known (by me) to be in the PLA (either PLAAF or PLANAF) inventory.

So, if you know, or would like to hazard a guess at what the aircraft is, do leave a comment below. It might just turn out to be something really prosaic and nothing earth-shattering, but I'll be most appreciative if it could be identified. Sorry, no prizes for the right answer though! (Other than perhaps a smug sense of self-satisfaction for the person who gets it right)

And if you would like to see the image on Google Earth for yourself, go to 31°55′07″N 119°49′20″E. Remember the image was dated Jan 3 2010, so you have to access Google's historical imagery to see this.

[UPDATE]: Thanks to Blitzo over at Key Publishing Forums, the mystery is now solved. Below is a photo, first posted at China Defense Forum last year, showing that our mystery "plane" is a mockup (for training purposes maybe?) of some sort. As expected, there was a perfectly logical answer, and nothing sinister whatsoever.

New PLAAF base near disputed islands has camouflaged taxiways/HAS

Overview of the base. Numbers indicate exploded view of the area is available below. Click for high-res imagery.

OVERVIEW

First off, a spotter's badge goes to Greg Waldron (@asiajetwatch) over at Flightglobal for spotting and tweeting about this article from the Taipei Times about a new People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) base located at the northern coast of China's Fujian Province.

Sufficiently intrigued, I used clues in the Taipei Times article to locate the base, and found it using Google Earth at the (approximate) coordinates of 26°56'36N 120°04'35E. It was not difficult to spot; a big bald patch carved out of undulating forest north of the town of XiaPu (霞浦) along the northern coast of Fujian Province, roughly 360m above sea level. Google Earth has 3 historical images of the base, dated 18 March 2009, 1st May 2010 and 31st May 2011. The 2009 image shows most of the structures already in place, and the 2010 and 2011 images mostly showed progress on the dispersal/hardened areas of the base (more below).

AIRCRAFT APRONS

1. Composite image of fighter aprons. Click for high-res imagery.

The runway is oriented approximately in an East/West direction (110°/290°) and measures roughly 2,400m (7,867 ft) long from threshold to threshold and 50m wide. The facilities for the base are located to the north of the runway, with 74 parking spaces for fighter-sized aircraft on the apron, divided (from west to east) into 3 groups of 26, 24 and 24 spaces which would work out to be the size of a typical PLAAF Fighter Division. The above composite image of the 3 fighter aprons, courtesy of Google Earth and dated 31st May 2011, shows 4 Chengdu J-10 fighters parked on the eastern apron, indicating that the base is already operational. I have not seen any Su-27s/J-11s as cited by the Taipei Times, and a quick look in the surrounding area revealed no signs of S-300PMU2/HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles or launch sites, although I may be missing something here. If so, please drop me a line via the comments section of this post.

2. QRA aprons at the western (left) and eastern (right) ends of the base. Click for high-res imagery.

In addition to the spacious apron, there are two Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) aprons for four aircraft at each end of the base as seen in the image above. Surprisingly these are out in the open with no protection even from the elements, although shelters (hardened or unhardened) could easily be built at a later date. A large hangar (see main image), presumably for engineering work on the based aircraft, is also present.

3. Large aircraft apron (left of image) and unused apron space. Click for high-res imagery.

There is also a large apron space in between the western and central fighter apron. Judging from the lines on this area (see above image), the section on the left is set aside for large aircraft. The taxiway leading from the runway to this apron is also much wider than the other taxiways (38m/125ft at it's narrowest) which would appear to confirm the expected purpose of this apron. This could mean that the base is expected to house "force multiplier" support aircraft used to enhance the capabilities of the fighters at the base, such as the locally-built KJ-200/2000 Airborne Early Warning aircraft, as well as Xi'an H-6 tankers.

DISPERSAL/HARDENED SHELTERS

4. Aircraft Dispersal area. Note the camouflaged taxiways. Click for high-res imagery.

Definitely the most interesting aspect of the new base would be it's hardened and camouflaged dispersal area(s). There are two such areas; a fairly large dispersal with two entrances/exits north of the western/large aircraft apron and another smaller one north of the western apron. The larger of the two dispersals (pictured above) contains 15 Hardened Aircraft Shelters (HAS) with each appearing capable of holding one fighter jet-sized aircraft inside, while the smaller dispersal, which is located to the east of the large dispersal area, holds five similar HAS.

Close up of a HAS and camouflaged taxiway. Click for high-res imagery.

What really threw me when I first saw this base was the camouflage the Chinese have applied to the dispersal areas. Each HAS is well camouflaged, with foliage atop each shelter. And to top it off, every inch of taxiway in the dispersal areas has been finished in a camouflage scheme of dark and light blotches. While it is safe to say every Chinese airbase operating combat aircraft contains dispersals (see here) and/or HAS (see here), and camouflaged taxiways have been observed before (see here), seeing the entire taxiway being camouflaged in this manner is certainly an eye-opener for me.

SOME ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS

According to the Taipei Times article, this new base is seemingly "designed to bolster China’s claim to sovereignty over islets in the East China Sea". Given that the base is 70km (1 mile = 1.6km) from Taiwan's nearest frontline islands, 230km from Taiwan and 360km from the disputed Senkakus/Diaoyutai islands, that sentence would seem pretty much on the money to me. This base is obviously designed as a frontline base, with the number of aircraft it was designed to support, and the effort taken to hardening and camouflaging parts of the base. What does surprise me, however, is the comparatively small number of HAS on the base, given that only 25% of the base's aircraft strength is able to take advantage of the hardened facilities.

Taiwanese military sources the Taipei Times spoke to estimate that PLAAF fighters taking off from the new base could reach the Senkakus/Diaoyutai within 12 minutes, improving China’s response time for various contingencies in the East China Sea, most especially over the contested islets and the Chunxiao oil fields (春曉氣田), which are also the object of a dispute between the China, Japan and Taiwan. Up to now, the Japan Air self-Defense Force (JASDF) has frequently intercepted Chinese Y-8 maritime patrol aircraft over the Senkakus/Diaoyutai, as well as conducting their own patrols with P-3 Orions with no interference from Chinese fighters. However, the presence of this base may soon see that change, which will serve to further ratchet up an already tense situation.

An interesting aside is that there is what appears to be a tunnel running underneath the base, running north to south with the north entrance just next to the smaller dispersal area. It appears to be for a public road, and not for any nefarious military purposes connected to the base.

NOTE: I was initially struck by the seemingly undulating nature of the imagery of the base. One can only surmise that the area's relief had been mapped before the satellite photos were taken, and when the satellite image of the area was made, the fact that the Chinese would have levelled the area to construct the base had not been taken into account and hence the base seems to have been built on undulating terrain when viewed in Google Earth. Checking the relief in Google Earth along the runway alone would yield heights of 340m to 410m above sea level, so the above speculation would make sense.

Is this one of North Korea's elusive Su-7s?

Click on image to view in high resolution

The above image is of North Korea's Pukchang East Airbase, lifted off Google Earth (A godsend for digital voyeurs of North Korea like yours truly, incidentally) and dated 28 May 2009. Part of the Pukchang Airbase complex, Pukchang East is nominally a helicopter base, home to the Mil Mi-26 "Halo" heavylift helicopters of the Korean People's Air Force (KPAF) as well as various other helicopter types including the Mi-2 "Hoplite", Mi-4 "Hound" and Mi-8 "Hip". But the object that piqued my interest was the lonesome combat jet parked in a revetment in the base, as shown in the close up in the image above. A satellite pass of the base in 2006 showed a similar aircraft parked a couple of revetments away, although it was not there in the other two images of the base in Google Earth, taken in 2004 and 2011.

At first glance, the sharply swept wing and the flat nose section appeared to be that of the MiG-19/Shenyang J-6 (NATO: Farmer) fighter, a mainstay of the KPAF's combat fleet. But a double take soon revealed some detail differences that hinted at something else. For one, the leading and trailing edges of horizontal stabilizers are swept at vastly different angles. In addition, the wing appears to be set much further back along the fuselage than the typical MiG-19 design. Finally, it appears that the trailing edge of the wing joins the fuselage at a right angle. All of which were characteristics unlike the MiG-19/J-6 family, and the image below shows how the Sukhoi Su-7 (NATO: Fitter-A) and MiG-19 appears in plan view (drawings are roughly to scale, to show the size difference between the types). Finally a quick check using Google Earth's measurement tool shows the aircraft to be approximately 16m in length from nose to tail. This is much longer than the single seat MiG-19 day fighter (12.54m) but much closer to the Su-7 (16.8m).

Even by the standards attached to the secretive Korean People's Air Force, the issue of whether North Korea's Air Force operates (or had operated) the Su-7 attack aircraft has been divisive among observers, to say the least. Depending on who you believe, North Korea:

1) Never operated the Su-7 in any way, shape or form
2) Operated 10-25 (1-2 squadrons) Su-7s up till the late 1980s
3) Operated the Su-7 up to the early-mid part of the 2000s

It was noted by some that there was no records of North Korea's state media having shown the Su-7 in it's propaganda, whether in print or television footage. Another (more tenuous) claim was that there have been no Su-7s seen in publicly available commercial satellite imagery of North Korean airbases (it must be noted high-resolution imagery of several North Korean airbases is still publicly unavailable). On the flipside of the argument, there were reports that as recent as 2002 that the KPAF's Fitter-As were still operational and US aircrew stationed in S. Korea were being briefed as such at the time.

So is the aircraft on Google Earth parked at Pukchang (East) in 2009 a rare glimpse of a Su-7 in North Korea? I would put my neck on the line and say most likely. As for what was a solitary Su-7 doing at a helicopter base that has no active runway (NOTE: Pukchang East is linked to Pukchang West by a long taxiway, and the latter has active runways for the resident KPAF MiG-23 regiment) is anybody's guess. And of course, other questions like where are the rest of the reported KPAF Su-7 fleet and what happened to the mystery aircraft since 2009 will be another subplot that is the enigma of the aptly-named Hermit Kingdom.

Czechoslovak Su-7BMK Fitter-A

Background: The Sukhoi Su-7 is a swept wing, supersonic fighter aircraft developed by the Soviet Union in 1955. Originally designed as low-level dogfighter, it was not successful in this role. However, the Soviet Union soon fielded the Su-7B series and the type subsequently became the main Soviet fighter-bomber and ground-attack aircraft of the 1960s. It was exported in fairly large numbers to Warsaw Pact members and client states in the 1960s, and saw action in the Middle East during the 1967 and 1973 wars, as well as in Indian hands against Pakistan during the 1971 conflict. The Su-7 was fast and rugged in its simplicity but its shortcomings included poor range/combat radius, tricky handling characteristics and relatively poor payload (even if it's pair of NR-30 30mm cannons packed a hefty punch).

Google Maps reveals China's new carrier-based AEW

Click on thumbnail for higher res image

Google Earth/Map's latest imagery of China's Xi'an-Yanliang airfield, home of the Xi'an Aircraft Industrial Corporation (西安飞机工业) and the China Flight Test Establishment, has revealed what appears to be a Airborne Early Warning (AEW) platform based on the Xi'an Y-7 transport aircraft. There were already reports (and blurry photos) purporting to be the Chinese Y-7 AEW on Chinese defence sites and forums a while back and this latest satellite photos would lend further credence to those reports. Speculation is that the Y-7 AEW is to be a carrier-based AEW platform, similar to the E-2 Hawkeye in U.S Navy service.

Hat-tip to @Combatair on Twitter.