China has built the largest seaplane. Video – BBC News

China’s State Aircraft Corporation AVIC held a ceremony of rolling out a new amphibian amphibians AG600 “Jiaolong” – “Water Dragon”, reported the Chinese news agency “Xinhua”

aircraft dimensions exceed all now operating “flying boats. “so the aircraft can be called the greatest among amphibians. The length of the plane reaches 39.3 meters, and its wingspan is only a little less – 39 meters. Take-off weight of the machine (depending on sources) called from 53.5 tons to 60 tons. On the wings of the plane four turboprop engines WJ6 Chinese production, which are a copy of the Soviet AI-20, take-off capacity of 5100 hp each.

The machine features exceed those existing global patterns of seaplanes, as Japanese ShinMaywa US-2, Russian Be-200 and Canadian Bombardier CL-415. A truly “Water Dragon” could measure their performance only with the Soviet A-40 “Albatross”. However, in 2012 the project was closed and, despite claims of revival in 2016, the real prospects of “Albatross” is very vague

It is already known about the development of two versions of Chinese flying amphibians -. Search and rescue and fire. The rescue version of the aircraft is able to take on board up to 50 people, and in the fire – up to 12 tons of water.

program development seaplane AG600 officially launched in 2009, although, as noted bmpd, actual work on the project were held with end 80-xx years of the last century. According to official information, the investment in the project amounted to 3 billion yuan (nearly half a billion US dollars). The development and production of AG600 involved about 150 institutes and research centers, and 70 industrial enterprises of China.

In the future, the manufacturer promises to expand the list of versions. The AVIC also did not rule out the creation of the military option “Water Dragon”. Given China’s territorial claims to all of its neighbors and, first of all, to the islands in the South China Sea, there is no shadow of a doubt that the military modification has its first points.

At the moment we know nothing of package orders in 17 amphibians AG600 from Chinese customers.