China Adds New Engine to J-20 Stealth Fighter, Revs up Production

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

(Washington D.C.) Does having new, domestically produced engines make the Chinese J-20 5th-generation stealth fighter measurably improve the aircraft’s performance and mission scope?

J-20

That is the claim made by Chinese experts quoted in a Communist-party backed newspaper called the Global Times. The paper asserts that the new J-20 WS-10 engines improve the operational performance of the jet to include better handling in extreme environments such as high-altitudes, hard cold weather and high humidity.

A Chinese aviation engineer quoted in the paper said the “domestic engines unleashed the potential of the J-20, since the old engines were not customized for the aircraft, and it had to make compromises in its performance.”

The improvements to the J-20 were not limited to just the engineers but also included some redesigns of the airframe, structure, pipelines, electric circuits and subsystems, the report said.

Video Above: Air War 2050: 5th & 6th Gen Stealth Fighter Attacks to Continue

“The switch to domestically made WS-10 engines from imported ones has made mass production possible…. other systems on the J-20, including the avionics system, radar system and weapons systems, were already domestically developed,” a report in the Global Times from last year states.