The crash
acquisition raises a chilling prospect, that the people's liberation army could
load up most of the roughly 400 assault
helicopters in its inventory with a
couple squads of infantry apiece and
send them back and forth across the
100-mile wide taiwan strait as part of a
broader attempt to seize the island
country by force.
The PLA's 500 attack and scout
helicopters could escort the assault
force. but it could be a bloodbath for chinese
aviators and their passengers, Tom Fox a
u.s army aviator concluded in a new
study for the u.s naval war college.
Planners would have to assume some
attrition of helicopters in each sortie, fox wrote. Just because an air assault across the
strait might be costly doesn't mean the PLA won't try it. It's not for no reason that beijing has
poured billions of dollars into rotary
wing programs over the past decade.
In 2011 the PLA had 207 Mi-17 and Z-8
assault copters and 136 Z-9 and Z-10
attack in scout copters. 10 years later the army's aviation corps
had nearly tripled in size with more
than 400 Mi-17s, Z- 8s and new Z-20s in the assault
force plus around 500 Z-9, Z10 and new Z-19 in the attack and
scout force, that's a lot fewer helicopters than the
us army possesses. A third is many in
fact, but it's not an insignificant force
and it's big enough. in theory to lift
tens of thousands of soldiers in
successive waves over a 24-hour period.
