AVIC TA-600 or AG600 & Harbin PS-5 Flying Boats

Prototype is already in production ...
 

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Rollout! :HOT:
Pictures and Source (English):
http://defence-blog.com/news/china-...craft-makes-its-official-debut-in-zhuhai.html
Video:
View: https://youtu.be/MDjgKUpFCp8

Code: 
https://youtu.be/MDjgKUpFCp8
China’s first homegrown amphibious aircraft - the AG600 - has made its debut in Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province. It's been under assembly for more than a year. The seaplane is powered by four turboprop engines. With a maximum takeoff weight of over 53 tons, and an operational range of 4,500 kilometers, this engineering feat surpasses seaplanes from other countries, including Japan and Russia. CCTV's Ge Yunfei reports from the southern city of Zhuhai.
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The Harbin SH-5 wasn't "homegrown"? And the AG600 is bigger than the Beriev A-40?
 
Looks perfect for resupply in the islands that China is building in the South China Sea. Even dredging up millions of tons of sediment is not enough to raise those "islands" much above the high tide mark and full-length asphalt runways require more million tons of dredging.
Indonesians and Taiwanese and Vietnamese and ..... are unhappy about China's expansion into fishing grounds and offshore oil reserves in the South China Sea.
How big is the cargo door on this new flying boat?
 
In May 2015, the Hawaii Mars received a small contract to be used briefly for training Chinese pilots. This was done using the Martin Mars to evaluate against civil certification regulations by The International Test Pilot School, on how to handle such a large amphibious aircraft. These pilots will be involved with the Chinese state owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China as they get ready to launch their forthcoming AVIC TA-600 airplane
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Link: http://www.albernivalleynews.com/news/320994221.html
 
Interesting airplane. Wonder how it will be used?

You would need either specialized docks or a ramp (can it self-beach?) to get large loads on and off: think of the R3Y's nose door and ramp. Would that be much easier, for logistics support, than building a 2500-foot runway and adding some STOL-fu to a Y-9?

It seems as if it would have An-12/C-130 liftoff and approach speed, with none of the drastic STOL tech that the USN (P7M and P3Y projects) and JASDF (PS-1, US-1) used for high sea states.
 
This article gives some vague indications on its uses.

World's largest amphibious aircraft makes maiden flight in China

BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s domestically developed AG600, the world’s largest amphibious aircraft, performed its maiden flight on Sunday from an airport on the shores of the South China Sea, the latest step in a military modernization program.
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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ft-makes-maiden-flight-in-china-idUSKBN1EI01I

View: https://youtu.be/uQXDhFNqUPo
 
Appears not to have the STOL ability of the ShinMaywa US-2 or the spray suppression system. Although I may be wrong and these could be incorporated at a later stage of development.
 

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Shorter nose. Shorter tail(?). Less pronounced dorsal fin. Negative/neutral incidence wing (from positive) and pronounced washout. Flap rails. Vertical/horizontal tail assembly. Smaller rudder. Surelevated cockpit. Taller fuselage. Bulbous upper fuselage section. And as you mentioned it, spray rails on the forward keel...
 
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https://twitter.com/x/status/1560070979534987266
View: https://mobile.twitter.com/lqy99021608/status/1560070979534987266


Absolutely gorgeous looking aircraft. :p This will be the firefighting version. So it appears that the certification process is almost finished if they have started work on specialized versions.

Correction: This is the second revised prototype that was painted in the colors of the fire fighting regiment that will eventually operate it, but it doesn't seem to have any water dumping capability.
 
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https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202302/1286205.shtml
The fourth AG600M prototype aircraft, which is of the firefighting variant in AG600 family, has successfully conducted a flight test in Zhuhai, South China's Guangdong Province. The AG600M variant will obtain the certificate in 2024 and start its initial small-batch deliveries in 2025, said the AVIC.
 

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The Beriev never went into service. The lookalike Be-200 being quite a smaller aircraft.
 
hesham said:
Hi, here is a Chinese amphibian flying boat aircraft, the AVIC TA-600 or AG600.
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frank said:
The Harbin SH-5 wasn't "homegrown"? And the AG600 is bigger than the Beriev A-40?
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TomcatViP said:
Shorter nose. Shorter tail(?). Less pronounced dorsal fin. Negative/neutral incidence wing (from positive) and pronounced washout. Flap rails. Vertical/horizontal tail assembly. Smaller rudder. Surelevated cockpit. Taller fuselage. Bulbous upper fuselage section. And as you mentioned it, spray rails on the forward keel...
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TomcatViP said:
The Beriev never went into service. The lookalike Be-200 being quite a smaller aircraft.
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As was mentioned here, Communist China has an earlier four-engined amphibious flying boat for maritime patrol and waterbombing, the Harbin SH-5, which (as far as I've heard) remains in service today with the 'North Sea Fleet' out of Qingdao, and so presumably cannot be a failed design. To my inexpert eye, the AVIC AG600 and the Harbin SH-5 appear very similar in conception, layout, dimensions, MTOW, and performance. The turboprops of both flying boats derive from the Soviet Ivchenko AI-20 of the 1950s. Harbin and AVIC are basically the same Party-owned company.

For anyone here with knowledge: why the all-new AG600? If amphibious flying boats are deemed needed, why didn't Beijing simply continue (or restart) low-rate SH-5 production, adding improvements to the design from time to time? The recent blurb about AG600 progress in Aviation Week and Space Technology doesn't engage with such questions.
 
Owens Z said:
As was mentioned here, Communist China has an earlier four-engined amphibious flying boat for maritime patrol and waterbombing, the Harbin SH-5, which (as far as I've heard) remains in service today with the 'North Sea Fleet' out of Qingdao, and so presumably cannot be a failed design. To my inexpert eye, the AVIC AG600 and the Harbin SH-5 appear very similar in conception, layout, dimensions, MTOW, and performance. The turboprops of both flying boats derive from the Soviet Ivchenko AI-20 of the 1950s. Harbin and AVIC are basically the same Party-owned company.

For anyone here with knowledge: why the all-new AG600? If amphibious flying boats are deemed needed, why didn't Beijing simply continue (or restart) low-rate SH-5 production, adding improvements to the design from time to time? The recent blurb about AG600 progress in Aviation Week and Space Technology doesn't engage with such questions.
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SH-5 has been out of production for decades, all the tooling is gone/destroyed and the design is outdated hence upgradability is limited even if they could get it back into production. Making a new design with modern material/construction method might in fact be easier/cheaper than trying to dig out decade old schematics and trying to reproduce all the tooling required. AG600 is also a pretty big upgrade over SH-5 considering it is capable taking off from choppier seas, carry significantly more payload when operating in open waters(SH-5 can only takeoff with 45t MTOW from runways while AG600 could do 50t from water). It also uses much better engines with a WJ-6 variant which is a significantly upgraded Al-20 with modern materials while SH-5 used WJ-5.

It's not really fair to say SH-5 is a successful design considering only 4 production aircraft were built, it was probably the case of "Welp, we built these already why not use them anyways". The navy isn't a customer of AG600 from the looks of it though, it was mainly meant for the coast guard SAR, firefighting and export to island countries like Malaysia and New Zealand etc.
 
Tomboy said:
SH-5 has been out of production for decades, all the tooling is gone/destroyed and the design is outdated hence upgradability is limited even if they could get it back into production. Making a new design with modern material/construction method might in fact be easier/cheaper than trying to dig out decade old schematics and trying to reproduce all the tooling required. AG600 is also a pretty big upgrade over SH-5 considering it is capable taking off from choppier seas, carry significantly more payload when operating in open waters(SH-5 can only takeoff with 45t MTOW from runways while AG600 could do 50t from water). It also uses much better engines with a WJ-6 variant which is a significantly upgraded Al-20 with modern materials while SH-5 used WJ-5. It's not really fair to say SH-5 is a successful design considering only 4 production aircraft were built, it was probably the case of "Welp, we built these already why not use them anyways".
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Thanks, Tomboy. There seems to be, if not a contradiction, at least a tension between "we built a handful of four-engined amphibious flying boats so might as well find some backwater use for these white elephants" and "we now have a serious need for a fleet of four-engined amphibious flying boats".

What I meant is that it seems wiser in hindsight for the SH-5 to have continued in low-rate production to the present, adding in improved Ivchenko AI-20 knock-offs and the 'modern material/construction methods' that you mention as those ripen, to eventually become something like the AVIC AG600, such as for example the Boeing 737 (1968-present) and Lockheed C-130 (1956-present) have done. Communist China's J-7 fighter (MiG-21 clone) ended production just a decade ago, so they too know about lengthy production runs.

Tomboy said:
The navy isn't a customer of AG600 from the looks of it though, it was mainly meant for the coast guard SAR, firefighting and export to island countries like Malaysia and New Zealand etc.
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riggerrob said:
Looks perfect for resupply in the islands that China is building in the South China Sea. Even dredging up millions of tons of sediment is not enough to raise those "islands" much above the high tide mark and full-length asphalt runways require more million tons of dredging.
Indonesians and Taiwanese and Vietnamese and ..... are unhappy about China's expansion into fishing grounds and offshore oil reserves in the South China Sea. How big is the cargo door on this new flying boat?
Click to expand...
LowObservable said:
Interesting airplane. Wonder how it will be used? You would need either specialized docks or a ramp (can it self-beach?) to get large loads on and off: think of the R3Y's nose door and ramp. Would that be much easier, for logistics support, than building a 2500-foot runway and adding some STOL-fu to a Y-9? It seems as if it would have An-12/C-130 liftoff and approach speed, with none of the drastic STOL tech that the USN (P7M and P3Y projects) and JASDF (PS-1, US-1) used for high sea states.
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I'll take your word for it, Tomboy, but the AVIC AG600 design does seem adaptable for Peoples Liberation Army Navy cargo supply to disputed South China Sea islets à la Convair R3Y Tradewind (as Rob Warner and Bill Sweetman mentioned earlier), and/or for armed maritime patrol/ASW à la Shin Meiwa PS-1. We'll see how things go with this airplane.
 
From this book.
 

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