Will The PLA Acquire A Low-Cost Light Utility Helicopter To Plug A Major Capability Gap?
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The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has a longstanding shortfall in the area of rotary aviation. There are not enough helicopters in the PLA to assign to units that need them, let alone to serve in more general (non-combat) utility and liaison roles across China’s sprawling territorial expanse. While limited procurement Yuan is invariably part of the problem, it is important to keep in mind that China’s aerospace industry has undertaken a very long and steep uphill climb to reach its present position, one in which it will likely take at least 5-10 years to meet the PLA’s helicopter needs given the impending wave of retirements for increasingly outdated helicopters that were procured in recent decades.
Helicopters are complex machines that are very expensive to build and operate. While procurement and operating costs vary by design, a lighter and less expensive helicopter will still need an aircrew of two and several maintenance personnel assigned in much the same manner as a much larger and heavier helicopter that costs more to procure and operate. Although militaries have an incentive to procure larger helicopters, the differences in procurement and operating costs quickly add up when fleets are composed of hundreds of helicopters. As a result, large militaries have major incentives to acquire smaller/lighter and less expensive helicopters to operate alongside larger/heavier and more expensive helicopters. These can be used in utility and liaison roles as well as in training support roles. If deployed to rear areas, such helicopters do not require expensive to procure and operate, as well as upgrade, countermeasure systems.
Given the above dynamics, the American army operates over 450 UH-72 helicopters, which are the (modestly) militarized version of the civilian EC145/H145 light helicopter. The PLA has so far not procured something along the lines of the UH-72, even though it would unlock a wide range of capabilities that the PLA does not currently have. The vast majority of PLAAF airbases, including those in sparsely populated areas, for example, are not assigned even a single search and rescue helicopter to quickly recover a potentially injured trained pilot who cannot be quickly replaced. In peacetime, this can result in a prolonged period of recovery before surviving aircrew can return to service. In wartime, this can result in the permanent loss of potentially impossible to replace—during a war—trained military personnel. Beyond search and rescue roles, a PLA analogue to the UH-72 can be used in utility and liaison roles in China’s mountainous and often densely vegetated south, as well as in the Tibetan Plateau and the vast sparsely populated expanses of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Manchuria. Such helicopters can also be used in rear area security roles in times of war, and will likely play an important part in patrolling the Chinese coastline and bolstering security teams on the ground around potential high-value targets.
The PLA does not currently have a suitable helicopter for such roles. The Z-9 is an increasingly outdated design. The HC-120 and Z-11 are far too light and limited in terms of payload for most roles. A helicopter in the vein of the UH-72 and the underlying EC145/H145 will be far more suitable. There is a candidate Chinese-built helicopter undergoing testing, the AC332, that may, in fully Chinese (component) form, be used by the PLA in roles for which the much larger/heavier and more expensive to procure and operate Z-20 and Z-8D/Z-8L/Z-18 are unsuited.
If and when it is (modestly) militarized, the Chinese AC332 will be broadly analogous to the American UH-72. Such a helicopter may even be automated in much the same manner as the UH-72’s manufacturer has proposed to the American military. In PLA service, an automated uncrewed AC332 can be used to not only deliver supplies to remote positions in the Tibetan Plateau but also undertake high-risk resupply sorties to the island of Taiwan in support of PLA special operations forces and air assault infantry in a Taiwan invasion scenario. This otherwise unimpressive Chinese light helicopter design or something similar may, in time, take on outsize importance.
