The Limitations of China’s Defense Industry

Defense Talk ^ | 6/9/2010 | Greg Grant

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

I thought that Russian military official’s slapdown of the Chinese knock off of their Su-33 carried based fighter (Chinese designation J-15) was really interesting. Now, as I mentioned yesterday, this could all just be posturing for the global arms market, a bit of tainting the competition if you will.

Or, it could just be public griping over the Chinese stealing intellectual property from Russian aircraft builder Sukhoi. But then again, there is not much of a global market for carrier based fighters. Also, what the Russian official said about shortcomings in China’s aerospace industry resonates with what I’ve seen from other sources.

This 2005 RAND report, Modernizing China’s Military, though a bit dated, is one of the more analytically rigorous assessments of China’s defense industry that I’ve been able to find. Key sections:

“The limitations of China’s defense industries are reflected in the long production cycles for major defense systems. China’s JH-7 (FBC-1) fighter-bombers and J-10 (F-10) multirole aircraft, its most advanced indigenously produced military aircraft, were both under development for two decades. The JH-7 only recently entered into service for the PLA Navy (PLAN), even though it was first designed in the early 1970s. Despite the very long development times involved, the project is still dependent on jet engines imported from Britain—China has been unable to produce the engine on its own. The J-10 has just entered series production despite the fact that the program was initiated in the early 1980s, and the design is largely derived from Israel’s canceled Lavi fighter program (which in turn was based on U.S. F-16 technology).

[valkyry1]

Okay so China makes junk airplanes, but they can make whole lots of them and put relative untrained pilots in them.

In a Taiwan situation they might be able overrun just like they did in Korea (for awhile)