The Y-20 transport aircraft has been modified into the H-20 and successfully completed a missile parachute air-drop test in the South China Sea?

Recently, a video appeared on a domestic short video platform claiming that on May 22, 2025, our country's Y-20 large transport aircraft successfully conducted the first test of a new type of missile parachute air-drop in a predetermined maritime airspace in the South China Sea. After the missile was released from the tail compartment at high altitude, it was stabilized by a parachute to correct the trajectory and autonomously ignited to ascend, with no radar warning triggered throughout the process.

The video claimed, "This new method of missile deployment effectively expands the tactical application dimensions of large transport aircraft, maintaining the original strategic delivery capability of the transport aircraft platform while integrating long-range precision strike functions..."

This claim in the video, along with the blurred black-and-white images, time and location, as well as what appears to be a silhouette of the Y-20, greatly enhanced the credibility of the video content for some unsuspecting netizens.

Since it's already fake, why not add a logo for the CCTV Military Channel?

However, unfortunately, both the text and the image of the "Y-20 transport aircraft" in this video are false.

The most obvious flaw and the most absurd part of this rumor is that the channel logo in the upper left corner of the video is from the CCTV Children's Channel - everyone knows that news related to China's national defense and military construction is usually broadcast on Channel Seven's "National Defense and Military Channel," while the Children's Channel airs cartoons.

If so, where exactly did this video come from?

By searching through the video footage, it turns out that this video actually comes from an anti-missile interception test conducted by the U.S. military in 2017 to test the "THAAD" system.

This is a screenshot from the original U.S. military video.

In that test, a U.S. "Globemaster" (C-17) transport aircraft released a medium-range ballistic missile over the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii, which was then locked onto and intercepted by the "THAAD" system deployed in Kodiak, Alaska.

As for why the U.S. military used a transport aircraft to launch missiles, this should be considered a kind of path dependence formed since the Cold War era.

In the 1970s, out of anxiety about a potential hot war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the U.S. Air Force believed that its intercontinental missile silos would be destroyed in the Soviet Union's first wave of attacks. Therefore, they proposed a nuclear counterattack "backup plan," which involved attaching parachutes to missiles and deploying them on "Galaxy" strategic transport aircraft (C-5). The transport aircraft would fly over the Pacific Ocean and release the missiles, which would ignite after being released into the air.

In 1974, the U.S. Air Force successfully conducted a technical validation test of the "air-launch" missile from a transport aircraft. An unarmed "Minuteman" missile was dragged out of the aircraft by a parachute and ignited for about 25 seconds before falling into the Pacific Ocean.

Air-launch missile test by the U.S. military in 1974

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this technology was originally sealed away by the self-proclaimed invincible U.S. Air Force, but as the U.S. viewed China as a "competitor" and "strategic threat," in recent years, the U.S. military dug up this technology from old files - in 2021, the U.S. Air Force announced the successful testing of the "Dragon" palletized munitions weapons system on a special operations aircraft (MC-130J).

The so-called "Dragon" system is actually a set of ammunition pallets equipped with missiles, parachutes, and computer targeting devices. It is dropped from a transport aircraft, where the parachute opens in mid-air to slow down the descent of the pallet, and during this process, the missile launches itself from the pallet to strike preset targets.

The "Dragon" system is essentially a missile ammunition rack.

The U.S. Air Force believes that the advantage of this method of launching missiles from transport aircraft lies in two aspects: first, converting transport aircraft into a cost-effective "bomber" gives it a high cost-effectiveness ratio; second, from the perspective of strategic deterrence, using transport aircraft to deploy missiles can greatly confuse enemy reconnaissance systems, making it difficult for them to determine which transport aircraft carries missiles, increasing the unpredictability of U.S. deterrence strategies.

However, the same risks will also amplify the possibility of misjudgment, i.e., blurring the boundary between war preparedness and war attack, especially in certain high-risk geopolitical environments, even if the U.S. transport aircraft carries personnel and supplies, it could easily be mistaken for carrying missiles, leading to attacks.

Original source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7508220474938130981/

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