China’s J-10 Fighter Jet: Could it Take on the Air Force’s Best in a Dogfight?

Here is what you need to know.

TNI Staff [2]

The Chengdu J-10 Firebird was the People’s Republic of China’s first attempt to develop a fourth generation fighter comparable to the American Boeing F-15C Eagle and Lockheed Martin F-16 Falcon as well as the Soviet Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker [3] and the Mikoyan MiG-29 Fulcrum. [4]

While initially envisioned as a pure air superiority fighter when development started in 1988 as a direct counter to the Su-27 and MiG-29, the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union meant that Beijing could retool the J-10 into a multirole fighter that would complement the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s (PLAAF) growing fleet of Flanker derivatives—which a formerly adversarial—and impoverished—Russian [5] Federation was more than willing to supply in exchange for hard currency. Indeed, while the J-10 has evolved over the years into a formidable warplane as new technologies are added to the jet, various unlicensed Chinese copies of the Su-27 and Su-30 including the J-11B, J-15 and the J-16 among others have largely overshadowed the Firebird.

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Nonetheless, since 2004 when the Firebird entered service, the J-10 has made up an important part of the PLAAF ‘s order of battle with roughly 350 jets in service—providing China with a relatively low cost and capable fourth-generation strike fighter. Indeed, before the service embarked on an upgrade program for its Boeing F-15C fleet, the United States Air Force had considered [9] the most modern fielded versions of the J-10 to be a potent threat to the Eagle. The Chinese aircraft combines an advanced airframe design—largely derived from the Israeli Lavi fighter [10]—with advanced avionics. And over the years, Beijing has upgraded—and indeed continues—to upgrade the J-10 with advanced new features.