Monday, December 30, 2019

China Finally Closes the Engine Gap: 100% Domestic Jet Fighter Engines

A series of recent images has confirmed that China is no longer reliant on Russian turbines to power it's burgeoning fleet of combat aircraft.  New-build production J-10C and J-20 aircraft are leaving the Chengdu factory with indigenous WS-10 "Taihang"engines installed.  Previously these aircraft were delivered with variants of the Russian-produced Salyut AL-31 engine.

In the case of the J-20 pictured below, the engine is the WS-10C variant, a non-thrust vectoring model.  This came as a surprise to some observers who expected a TVC-capable WS-10 to be installed on the aircraft, but it may be that full TVC integration with the aircraft flight controls just isn't ready yet.  Alternately, the long postulated "stealth interceptor" aka "AWACS killer" role of the J-20 may not need TVC.





2 comments:

jason toms said...

Even if these are just J-20 test aircraft, if would seem that the WS-10 is ahead of schedule. This is a major step forward for the Chinese aviation industry. This also makes the export of J-10C aircraft much easier.

SteveM said...

These are production aircraft. Prototypes had Russian AL-31F engines.