Chinese J-10 vs. US Air Force F-16

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

For many years, the People’s Liberation Army – Air Force has been flying hundreds of single-seat J-10 fighter jets, aircraft which emerged roughly 20 years ago as a potential F-15 and F-16 rival.

While emerging many years after the F-16, it certainly seems possible that China developed and deployed the aircraft in large numbers as part of a key effort to rival US Air Force 4th-generation jets. With a reported range of 1,150 nautical miles and speeds of Mach 2, according to both US and Chinese news reports, the J-10 may have arrived as a slightly more modern or more capable challenge to the 1980s-era US F-15 and F-16.

Chinese J-10 vs. US Air Force F-16

However, not so fast, as the US Air Force has upgraded and improved the F-15 and F-16 in extremely impactful ways for many years with new radar, sensors, EW systems, weapons and avionics, among other things. In fact, an F-16 modernization and Service Life Extension Plan (SLEP) has extended the airframes into the future with thousands more operational miles and flight hours, as part of a clear Air Force plan to fly the jet into the 2040s. In fact, interestingly, years ago a Congressional report on US-China economic and security issues specifically mentioned that upgrades to US 4th-generation aircraft were extremely significant to ensure US Air Force jets remained competitive with and even superior to Chinese 4th-gen planes such as the J-10, J-11 and J-16. A recent report in the Chinese government-backed Global Times newspaper says the PLA’s carrier-capable J-15 is receiving the WS-10 Chinese-built engine.

“The WS-10 Taihang is a series of turbofan engines with high thrust and high thrust-to-weight ratio independently developed by China, and they have been used by a number of China’s warplanes including the J-10, J-11, J-16 and J-20 fighter jets, but carrier-based J-15s used to use Russian Al-31F engines,” a Global Times report from Nov. 2022 states.

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The US Air Force upgrades to the F-16 have been longstanding and quite substantial, as the Fighting Falcon has in recent years been receiving F-35 technologies such as a new Active Electronically Scanned Radar capable of tracking 20-targets at one time and as many as 12 different structural modifications. In 2019, Air Force weapons developers told Warrior that the F-16 was in the process of getting upgrades to its upper wing skin and fittings, upper and lower bulkhead, and canopy sill longeron. These upgrades, service officials said at the time, extend the service life of the F-16 from 8,000 flight hours up to 12,000 flight hours.