China aims to fill gaps with a naval Z-20
An image that appeared on the Chinese Internet last week depicted a full-sized mock-up of a Z-20 helicopter sitting on the stern of a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) warship, a strong indication that the ‘Chinese Black Hawk’ will become a key naval platform in the future.
It is believed that the fly-by-wire Z-20, an S-70 lookalike that clearly owes much of its design appearance to the 24 S-70C-2 helicopters that China acquired from Sikorsky in the mid-1980s, was tested aboard the stern flight deck of a PLAN destroyer, the first-of-class Type 055 warship Nanchang.
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