Chinese bombers deployed to Hotan during recent Indian exercises

Umbra imagery shows PLAAF bombers and AEW&C aircraft at Hotan airbase in western China. The aircraft were deployed as a response to India's Exercise ‘Trishul 2025'. (SAR data © 2025 Umbra Lab, Inc. (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)/© 2025 Janes)

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery captured at 1342L on 7 November 2025 continued to show four Xi'an H-6 bombers at the Hotan civil-military airport located approximately 230 km from the Indian border. It is unclear if the aircraft were armed at the time of image capture.

The bombers were parked on the south apron in line with two airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) platforms, a Shaanxi KJ-200 and a Shaanxi KJ-500, and 18 Flanker series fighters. On the north apron, SAR showed 12 Chengdu J-20 stealth fighters and four Xi'an Y-20-series strategic transports of which one was previously identified in electro-optical imagery as a YY-20 tanker variant. Three additional KJ-500s were also parked near the main terminal.

This is the second identified deployment of the J-20 to Hotan in 2025 and the only confirmed deployment of the H-6 to the airport. Previously, H-6s deployed to regional airbases during periods of heightened tension, including deployments to Kashgar during the 2020 India-China border crisis and to Shigatse in 2019 amid elevated India-Pakistan tensions. More recently, a pair of H-6s was deployed to Woody Island in September 2025 in response to joint exercises by the Philippines, Japan, and the United States.