Bradley Perrett covered China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. He is a Mandarin-speaking Australian.
Before joining Aviation Week in 2006 he was a macroeconomics, politics and aerospace journalist with Reuters. Perrett holds a bachelor’s degree in law from Macquarie University, Sydney. He left Aviation Week in 2020.
Avic Aircraft thinks it is time that turboprop airliners are widened—if only because passengers seem to be getting wider, too. The Chinese manufacturer plans a notable jump in airframe diameter for its proposed 76-seat MA700 regional aircraft, a competitor for the established, relatively svelte ATR 72 and Bombardier Q400. MA700 entry into service is now slated for 2017, having slipped repeatedly while Avic has been preparing the technical and probably political ground for project launch. It should be followed by a version seating more than 90 passengers.
It can be assumed that China is developing a combat drone, maybe several. The technology is so obviously part of the future that the rising power cannot ignore it. But making even tentative conclusions about China's progress in the field is not easy. The country's rapid advances in fighter technology suggest it may be little more than a decade behind the West; yet even the U.S. is still years from deploying an unmanned strike aircraft with the penetration capabilities of a modern fighter.
