The PLA air force planes are seen conducting training exercises, Nov. 19, 2017. The PLA air force recently conducted a combat air patrol in the South China Sea and conducted training exercises after passing over the Bashi Channel and Miyako Strait. (Xinhua/Chen Liang)
J. Tyler Lovell & Robert Farley, RCD: The Problem With China's Powerful Air Force
The Chinese defense industrial base is infamous for its tendency to “borrow” from foreign designs, particularly in the aerospace industry. Almost the entirety of China’s modern fighter fleet has either borrowed liberally from or directly copied foreign models. The J-10 was reputedly based on the Israeli IAI Lavi and by extension the United States’ General Dynamics F-16; the J-11 is a clone of the Russian Su-27; the JF-17 is a modern development of the Soviet MiG-21; the J-20 bears an uncanny resemblance to the F-22, and finally, the J-31 is widely believed to rely heavily on technology appropriated from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Appropriation saves China time and money on research and development, allowing it to modernize the PLAAF at a fraction of the cost of its competitors. However, the appropriation strategy remains constrained by bottleneck technologies due to lack of testing data and industrial ecology. This problem is starkly illustrated by China’s ongoing difficulty in producing a high-quality indigenous jet engine.
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WNU Editor: The problem for he Chinese is that they may be able to steal blueprints and designs, but you cannot steel experience and know-how.
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