What if China’s KJ-600 aircraft could serve older carriers as well as Fujian?

Name: China’s most advanced aircraft carrier, the Fujian, enters service
Uploaded: 2026-01-03T14:00:12.000Z
Duration: 1 min 34 s
Description: China’s most advanced aircraft carrier, the Fujian, enters service

Military magazine article speculates that interoperability may be behind the early warning plane’s lack of aerial refuelling capability

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A KJ-600 airborne early warning and control aircraft makes an arrested landing on China’s catapult-equipped aircraft carrier Fujian. Photo: Xinhua

Liu Zhen

Published: 10:00pm, 3 Jan 2026

China’s first fixed-wing carrier-based early-warning aircraft may have sacrificed aerial refuelling to be able to operate from both ski-jump and catapult-equipped vessels, according to a Chinese military magazine.

The KJ-600 airborne early warning and control aircraft was designed for catapult-launched operations and made its debut at the Victory Day parade in early September, flying over Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

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China’s most advanced aircraft carrier, the Fujian, enters service

Later that month, video was released of its take-off and landing via electromagnetic systems on board China’s Type 003 aircraft carrier Fujian, which entered service late last year.

While most of the KJ-600’s specifications and performance capabilities are comparable with the US Navy’s E-2D Hawkeye, its apparent lack of aerial refuelling capability was “puzzling”, according to an analysis in the December issue of Shipborne Weapons.

The report speculated that the KJ-600’s AEP-400 turboprop engines might be less powerful than those of the E-2D, making it difficult to support the additional weight of an aerial refuelling system.

However, the article went on to suggest that the lighter design of the KJ-600 was more likely to be “highly relevant” to the requirements of the Chinese navy’s two Kuznetsov-class carriers, which rely on traditional ski-jump launch operations.

The Liaoning and Shandong carriers would continue to be important assets for the Chinese military, despite the advances of the Fujian and future catapult-equipped carriers, the report noted.

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What if China’s KJ-600 aircraft could serve older carriers as well as Fujian?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Military magazine article speculates that interoperability may be behind the early warning plane’s lack of aerial refuelling capability

Military magazine article speculates that interoperability may be behind the early warning plane’s lack of aerial refuelling capability