This year, China has been invited to RIMPAC for participation. China is sending No. 171 (Haikou), No. 575 (Yueyang), No. 886 (Qingdaohu) and No. 886 (Peace Ark) to the exercise.
I’m sure some others would disagree but I think such participation is great for not only relationship between the 2 countries and lowering naval tension. Aviation week posted a good article of its visit on No. 171 Haikou. It’s certainly no surprise to me that the reporters were allowed to take pictures and interview the captain and crew member, since China has had this kind of “open house” on its new ships in different port calls around the world. The article promised an “exclusive and rather frank sit down with Senior Capt. Zhao Xiaogang” coming up, so I’m interested in seeing how that goes.
We are also seeing what appears to be a new prototype of J-20 coming out this past week for low-speed taxi test. From what we’ve seen so far, there is no much changes on this new prototype (No. 2012) compared to the last prototype (No. 2011). There might be some changes in the tail area and around the engine going forward, but I think CAC has mostly settled on the design of this aircraft. We can see it below:
Would be interesting to see how this proceed vs PAK-FA going forward.
