There’s a crisis in Chinese jet fighter production. Quality-control issues threaten to ground ambitious plans to provide modern aircraft to Chinese forces and for sale to foreign air arms.
Recently, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force rejected delivery of 16 J-11B fighters from Shenyang Aircraft. “When the Air Force was checking them up for delivery, J-11B had abnormal vibration after taking off,” Kanwa Defense Review quoted a source as saying. “As a result, the Air Force refused to accept the aircraft.”
The J-11 is a licensed version of the Russian Su-27.
Meanwhile, China’s newest combat aircraft has suffered an embarrassing string of accidents. The J-10B, built by Chengdu, is a reverse-engineered version of the Israeli Lavi fighter from the 1980s. On April 22, a J-10 crashed, killing a senior pilot. It was the second known crash in two years of the new fighter, and came just nine days after the Chinese military hosted delegations of African and Middle Eastern arms buyers, in hope of selling them the J-10 and other weapons.
Beijing has tried to cover up the J-10 crashes, according to Manu Sood. “The 22 April crash became public because a senior colonel had died in the crash and the funeral became too big to keep the story hushed. The news report also claims that the design of the 200-odd J-10s produced have not worked out as desired by [the] developers.”
“The pitfalls of reverse engineering without paying royalty and truly understanding the technology are high accident rates,” Sood wrote.
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