As the world's largest flying boat, the Martin Mars, lies in pieces awaiting a 200-mile road trip to its final resting place at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Arizona, the Chinese government has announced type certification for a new amphibious aircraft that's about two-thirds the size. The AG600 earned Chinese certification last week. It's a four-engine turboprop with a 130-foot wingspan and China said it made the effort to ensure it's accepted worldwide. "AG600 is China's first large civil special-purpose aircraft developed in accordance with the requirements of the civil aviation airworthiness regulations," the government statement, delivered via the Global Times said.
I must say, rather quite brilliant! I think the size is spot on for firefighting uses and for seaborne exercises is an excellent choice. The Brits were first with the Sunderland series and then Grumman developed their lineup of flying boats. Dornier was a significant player as well. There are still many places on this planet that are not served with dry land runways and having the flexibility to service these places is an absolute advantage commercially, politically, socially and strategically. These folks are not duds.
I agree, not duds. However as has been stated before, definitely copycats.
ShinMaywa US-2 : ShinMaywa US-2 - Wikipedia
U.S. military were looking at these a year or two ago.
For 75 years, Japan and China have cleverly let the US serve as their advanced R&D department. Why fund a large and risky project when you can just sit back and watch for a little while, see how a US development project fares, copy it, and then deploy it for far less investment? Quite a successful strategy actually. We seem to be the only producer who has a hang-up about always being “first”.
If we were smart we would buy a couple of these and tear them down and see if we can learn anything from them. They have been doing that with our products, including aircraft, for years.
Yeah, that’s what I immediately thought of when seeing the picture of this, it looks more than a little like a ShinMaywa, to the point of me wondering if it’s as much a US-2 copy as a TU4 was a B29 copy.