China's AG600 amphibious aircraft wraps up four-month Daxing'anling fire-garrison deployment

According to the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, the home-grown AG600 "Kunlong" large amphibious aircraft has completed all tasks of its 2026 northern-frontier garrison rotation at Jiagedaqi, concluding a four-month spell of airborne emergency standby and active firefighting in the Greater Khingan Range virgin forest.

The deployment began formally on 15 May. By its close, the aircraft had logged 35 forest-patrol sorties, accumulated 100 hours of safe flight time and dropped roughly 390 tonnes of water in operations aimed at containing the spread of forest fires. During the rotation the AG600 took part in the "Ping'an Beijiang 2026" live-fire exercise in the virgin Greater Khingan forest, carrying out ground-air co-ordinated operations and group assault missions against crown fires, drawing on its low-speed low-altitude handling, large water-carrying capacity and manoeuvrability.

The AVIC garrison team refined the full working chain — standby dispatch, flight operations, water-drop firefighting and logistics support — into a standardised, replicable routine for sustained deployment. Regular training alongside live forest scenarios has been built around a 30-minute rapid-response launch capability and precision water drops at an altitude of 50 metres, keeping the aircraft on round-the-clock standby across the forested area.

The rotation follows the AG600's receipt in 2025 of both the type certificate and the production certificate from the Civil Aviation Administration of China, and represents a step toward scaled, routine garrison duty for the type. Extended on-site operations have allowed the support team to adapt to the rugged terrain and variable weather of the northern forest and to accumulate first-hand field data on reliability, environmental fit and real firefighting performance, feeding into the standardisation of Chinese large aerial emergency-rescue operations in forested terrain.