China is expanding an air base close to a key southern naval base with the addition of a second runway, widened taxiways and two vastly expanded aircraft parking areas, satellite photos show.
The imagery, taken Sept. 18 and provided to Defense News by Planet Labs, also show one of the new expanded parking aprons at the air base at Suixi in Guangdong province has had markings for more than 40 small and large aircraft painted on it.
The existing runway at the People’s Liberation Army Air Force base is located about 20 miles to the northwest of Zhanjiang city, which hosts a major naval base for ships of China’s South Sea Fleet. The runway was lengthened to 3,500 meters, or 11,483 feet.
This is in addition to a second runway south of the lengthened original, with this new runway measuring 2,800 meters. Both runways are parallel to one another and oriented in a roughly east-west direction.
