Chinese H-6K Bomber internal bay. a question.

[stealthflanker]

So yeah. currently China's main aerial cruise missile delivery platform would be the H-6 bomber variants.

One variant that interests me is the H6K which maybe the first all-new "modern" variant with land attack cruise missile, mainly the CJ-10/DH-10. It boasts 6 external pylons and retain its internal bay.

I'm kinda curious however on whether the internal bay can also carry cruise missiles.

So far the only source i found that depicts internal bay for the H6K is this

https://twitter.com/x/status/1025252964934418432

View: https://twitter.com/rajfortyseven/status/1025252964934418432


Which sourced from here :

Air Force pilots conduct flight training for “Aviadarts 2018” - Ministry of National Defense

An H-6K bomber attached to the Chinese PLA Air Force taxis on the runway before takeoff for a flight training exercise for the “Aviadarts” event on August 1, 2018.

eng.mod.gov.cn

In the link the bay is currently used for conventional bombs.

-----

This brings question on how big actually the CJ-10 is. Since the Air launched variants would lack solid rocket booster. it would be small and short. If it's as big as Tomahawk then it at least in theory could fit inside the internal bay (assuming 6.07 meter long bay is retained from Tu-16 from which H6 was based from).

If the missile is bigger, then the question is why did Chinese didnt constrain the weapon's dimension or Design the H6 internal bay to accommodate the weapon ?. Even just adding 4 weapons in rotary launcher + 6 in external pylons is quite amount of firepower of 10 missiles or maybe 2 weapons making it can carry 8 in total.

 

[Deino]

Just in short - and at least by my understanding - the bay is not large / long enough and cannot hold the KD-20.

Why it is too short or the ALCM too long, I don't know.

Will come back later again.

 

[stealthflanker]

Just in short - and at least by my understanding - the bay is not large / long enough and cannot hold the KD-20.

Why it is too short or the ALCM too long, I don't know.

Will come back later again.

Thanks.

That's kinda puzzled me for a while. especially to consider how new and different was the H6K to the earlier H6 family. I would think China will actually make changes to the bay, extending it somehow or during the long cycle of development of KD-20 missiles.. they would actually consider internal carriage of the missile.

The common "wisdom" i see so far in standoff range weapon development nowadays is to make the weapon as small as practical to let the platform carry as many of them as possible. It has large payoff in terms of cost as smaller weapon usually cost less and mass production of it to fill the platform will further brings down the price to the point it might be "economical" to expend large numbers of it in the times of war.

 

[Josh_TN]

I thought that the H-6K version used that space for additional fuel tankage? In any case, I'm not sure the bay would be long enough and perhaps more importantly, I think six CJ-10/YJ-12 is pretty much the entire payload capacity of ~10,000kg. I don't think a significant amount of additional ordnance could be carried internally unless you sacrificed the wing mounted weapons or fuel load. There also could potentially be separation issues, though since the underside of the aircraft is largely smooth and not interrupted, I would not have thought so.

 

[Blitzo]

I thought that the H-6K version used that space for additional fuel tankage? In any case, I'm not sure the bay would be long enough and perhaps more importantly, I think six CJ-10/YJ-12 is pretty much the entire payload capacity of ~10,000kg. I don't think a significant amount of additional ordnance could be carried internally unless you sacrificed the wing mounted weapons or fuel load. There also could potentially be separation issues, though since the underside of the aircraft is largely smooth and not interrupted, I would not have thought so.

There were some incorrect articles from many years back suggesting H-6K removed its bomb bay for fuel, but it was disproven when we had pictures proving it did have a weapons bay.

There are no cruise missiles that we know of that are designed for H-6Ks bay, and it cannot carry any of the ones that it carries on the pylons.