BEIJING: The official commissioning of China’s new generation, main battleaircraft into the Pakistan Air Force marks the systematized, organic exportof such aviation equipment by China, and is yet another major milestone inthe export of China’s advanced aviation equipment, the Global Times learnedfrom the aircraft’s maker, state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation ofChina (AVIC), on Friday.
With the delivery of the J-10CEs, China and Pakistan opened a new chapterin aviation defense cooperation, and it will significantly contribute tothe further deepening of the China-Pakistan All-Weather StrategicCooperative Partnership, (AVIC) said.
“Pakistan is a traditional and important partner of Chinese aviation armsproducts”, AVIC said, noting that the country not only commissioned the J-6fighter, the J-7 fighter and the Q-5 attacker, it also joined China’sdevelopment of K-8 basic trainer. In the 21st century, facing new combatenvironment and the international market, China and Pakistan jointlydeveloped the FC-1, an all-weather, single-engine, lightweight, multi-rolefourth generation fighter jet also known as the JF-17.
Independently developed by China’s aviation industry, the J-10CE is anall-weather, single-engine, single-seat, multirole, fourth-plus generationfighter jet.
It excels at systematic, cooperative combat, is capable of strikingmultiple targets from beyond visual range under complex electromagneticenvironment, and can deliver precision attacks on ground targets withmultiple guidance modes.
Equipped with advanced comprehensive avionics and weapon systems, theaircraft boasts outstanding mid-to-low altitude combat maneuverability,supersonic flight, short-range takeoff and landing, large combat radius,long range and mid-air refueling capabilities.The media reports suggest that Pakistan purchased a total of 25 J-10CEs.
The J-10CE is not only more powerful than the lightweight JF-17 because ofits bigger size, it is also more powerful than Pakistan’s old US-made F-16fighter, Shi Hong, Executive Chief Editor of the Chinese magazine,Shipborne Weapons, told the Global Times in a previous interview.
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It can rival the Rafale fighter jet that recently entered service with theIndian Air Force, Shi said.Pakistan’s J-10CE will not replace the JF-17, but form a combination,leading to higher combat capabilities, Shi pointed out.
Photos of the Pakistan Air Force’s J-10CEs show that the aircraft areequipped with China’s domestically developed WS-10 engines, and theaircraft also come with China’s most powerful short-range combat missile,the PL-10, and China’s most powerful beyond-visual-range-missile, the PL-15.
Both the PL-10 and the PL-15 were displayed at Airshow China 2021 in theirmade-for-export variant, the PL-10E and the PL-15E.
The J-10CE is not the only advanced weapon system China has delivered toPakistan recently, as the Pakistan Navy in January inducted its first Type054A/P frigate.
“This demonstrates that defense cooperation between China and Pakistan isgoing even wider and deeper, and the large-scale adaptation of Chineseequipment by all Pakistani military services will significantly boost theircombat capabilities,” Shi said, noting that a more powerful Pakistanmilitary can better safeguard the shared interests of the two countries inthe region.