On December 7, the American newspaper Wall Street Journal published an article that the success of the Chinese aviation industry is largely due to the copying of Russian fighters. But such an assessment by many experts reminded the saying “do not see the forest for the trees”.
The newspaper writes that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin, in the face of an acute shortage of currency, began to sell a huge amount of weapons to China, including the pride of the Russian Air Force, the Su-27 fighters. According to the publication, China imported these weapons for copying, including radar and avionics, the crown was the creation of a copy of the engine. The newspaper reports that the Chinese J-11B has become a "simple imitation" of the Su-27.
But in fact, some Western military media outlets believe the J-11B was not a simple imitation of a Russian fighter jet. The Australian magazine writes that the Chinese fighter has many original designs, which allows these aircraft to not be considered as ordinary clones. Although the glider and aircraft engines are similar, the Chinese fighter has a completely different ILS, infrared station, completely original "glass cockpit" and other components.
But the most interesting is what people think about this in Russia. Several years ago, Russian media reported that, according to some reports, the head of the Sukhoi holding Mikhail Pogosyan stressed that Russia had never raised this issue with China: “We believe that China has the ability to deploy production of its own components, American“experts”are deliberately exaggerating this question is to sow discord between Russia and China. The West is making a lot of noise to hurt the interests of Russian manufacturers of military equipment.
The history of aviation cooperation between the two countries has a long history. With the technical assistance of the Soviet Union, China launched the production of the then-advanced J-6 (MiG-19) fighters. The next generation of MiG-21 (J-7) fighters was mainly produced by the efforts of the Chinese industry, which began a course towards achieving self-sufficiency. The J-8 fighter was already almost entirely Chinese design, followed by the JF-17 and J-10 fighters, which marked the end of China's efforts to build its own research and development capabilities for advanced fighters. China is currently developing a new generation of fighter aircraft, which shows the tremendous progress of the national aviation industry. People have reason to believe that China will soon reach the world level in this area.
