KJ-3000
The KJ-3000 is China's next-generation flying radar — a Y-20B-based heavyweight AEW&C in flight test since December 2024, which the Pentagon says will probably be the world's first with a digital radar. Beijing has never acknowledged it; every number is OSINT or state-media claim.
The radar plane for a stealth war — the KJ-3000 (a community designation; Beijing has acknowledged nothing) is China's next-generation airborne early warning and control aircraft: a heavyweight built on the Y-20B airlifter, flying since December 2024 with an aerial-refueling probe for persistent orbits and a radome analysts still argue about. The Pentagon's December 2025 China report says it "will probably be the world's first model to use digital radar"; Chinese state-media channels claim it tracks F-35s at 360 kilometers. One airframe is confirmed, still in primer — and every number in this file is either inference or propaganda.
Overview
The KJ-3000 closes the biggest structural gap in China's air-battle architecture: a modern heavyweight AEW&C. The PLA's radar fleet today is a pyramid with a missing top — some sixty Y-9-based KJ-500s form the mass tier, the carrier-borne KJ-600 is coming for the navy, but the heavy tier has rested on just four Il-76-based KJ-2000s, capped forever by Russian airframe supply that dried up two decades ago. The KJ-3000 solves that with an indigenous airframe: the WS-20-powered Y-20B — China's own strategic airlifter (see Y-20) — carrying a large dorsal radome, dense antenna farms, a tail-base ram-air inlet read as electronics cooling, and an aerial-refueling probe that signals persistent, tanker-extended orbit doctrine over Indo-Pacific distances. First photographed on 26–27 December 2024 — the same extraordinary week as the J-36 and J-50 reveals — the sole confirmed prototype (serial 7821) progressed through steadily clearer imagery in 2025 into what analysts read as integrated-systems testing. The assessed mission is double: counter-stealth early warning (the state-media framing claims 360+ km detection of F-35-class targets — unverifiable) and, more consequentially, the battle-management node for a networked air force whose sixth-generation fighters and CCA drones will need exactly this kind of quarterback. The Pentagon's hedged assessment — "will probably be the world's first model to use digital radar… capable of anti-jamming, passive detection, and target identification" — is the closest thing to an official specification this aircraft has.
Development
The KJ-3000's public record is spotter photography with dates attached — program events are invisible. A Y-20-based AEW&C had been anticipated for years, gated (analysts assess) on the WS-20 high-bypass engine that turned the Y-20A into the Y-20B around 2020, providing the fuel efficiency and electrical margin a radar platform demands. The reveal came on 26–27 December 2024: small, blurry images of a Y-20B with a big rotodome and tail bulge, with veteran PLA-watcher Andreas Rupprecht reporting the type had "performed its maiden flight" at Xi'an Aircraft Corporation's Yanliang plant, per TWZ — landing in the same news cycle as China's two sixth-generation fighter debuts, a triple reveal nobody reads as coincidence. Follow-up imagery a day later showed the refueling probe and prompted Rupprecht's read of a rotodome housing two AESA arrays rather than the KJ-2000's fixed three — a configuration debate still unresolved. Through 2025 the picture sharpened: the best ground image yet in May (serial 7821, primer coat, antenna farm, cooling inlet), a high-resolution airbase photo in June, Janes' assessment of improved radar configuration, and sightings through October and late December 2025 that suggest the move from airworthiness trials into systems testing — the aircraft still unpainted throughout. The December 2025 Pentagon China Military Power Report confirmed the 2024 debut flight and delivered the headline forecast: probably the world's first digital-radar AEW&C, per FlightGlobal. Reports of a second prototype in 2026 and IOC projections of 2026–27 rest on aggregator-tier outlets and are treated here as unconfirmed.
🔒 The rest of the KJ-3000 file is for BattlePolicy Pro members. Stop here and you miss the part that actually matters: the radome debate and what imagery actually supports, the counter-stealth claims examined, how it stacks up against the E-7, A-50 and GlobalEye, the complete specifications table, and our analysts' program and assessment notes. Unlock the full file with BattlePolicy Pro →