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Talk of the Day -- China's Su-27 crosses Taiwan Strait median line 2011/07/25 21:15:21 A Chinese Su-27 jet fighter crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait late last month while chasing a U.S. U-2S high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, a local newspaper reported Monday. It was the first time since President Ma Ying-jeou took office in May 2008 that a People's Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft had crossed the line down the middle of the Taiwan Strait, which separates Taiwan and mainland China, the United Daily News (UDN) said. The Chinese warplane did not circle back to China until after two Taiwanese...

Must read: Rand's view on PLAAF vs. Taiwan By Greg Waldron on April 12, 2011 The implications of a bust up between China and Taiwan are almost too harrowing to contemplate, especially if the United States and Japan were drawn in. The world's inter-connected economy would collapse as the world entered the great unknown. The human toll could be horrendous. Nonetheless, China is dead serious about getting Taiwan back, and force will remain very much on the table. A recent Rand Corporation report ('Shaking the Heavens and Splitting the Earth') does a good job of discussing how the People's Liberation...

Call it China’s ‘Christmas surprise.’ In a series of grainy photos given a pass by government Internet censors starting December 25, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force unveiled the country’s first stealth fighter prototype, the Chengdu J-20. For alarmists, the Pacific balance of power seemed to shift in an instant. Armed with hundreds of fast, elusive J-20s in coming years, the PLAAF could dominate the South China Sea, reaffirming China’s rise as a global power and elbowing aside less audacious, tech-savvy rivals. ‘(The) Asia-Pacific’s political landscape will be changed as China’s military capability can win over countries in this region,’...

Pentagon officials said Tuesday that they were unsure if some of the technology in China’s prototype stealth fighter jet had come from the wreckage of a first-generation American stealth fighter shot down over Serbia in 1999, but they expressed doubt that much could have been gleaned from the debris of a plane developed in the 1970s. Pentagon officials did say they believe that the Chinese picked up pieces of the plane, an F-117 Nighthawk, which had been strewn over a wide area of farmland some 30 miles west of Belgrade, in the NATO bombing campaign during the Kosovo war. “But...

China is reveling in the attention its new stealth aircraft is getting, even though it's not clear whether the J-20 is as technologically advanced as the country's leaders would like the world to believe. Chinese officials are adamant that the aircraft was developed by engineers at home using their own designs, but analysts and aerospace experts presume the J-20 owes at least some credit to others. Here are the leading theories on where China may have copied -- or perhaps even stolen -- designs for its new aircraft.

The U.S. Defense Department is reserving judgment on the capabilities of China’s new J-20 fighter jet, spokesman Geoff Morrell said today. Public reports are only speculation when they assert that the Chinese fighter has cutting-edge “fifth-generation” stealth technologies -- such as advanced sensors, avionics and communications gear -- like those used in Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-22 and F-35 jets, he said. Photos of the Chinese aircraft have appeared on the Internet, and a test flight of the J-20 occurred Jan. 11, during Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s visit to Beijing. “We don’t know what the capabilities of the engine are, we...

After the Chinese military tested its new stealthy fighter during U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates' visit to Beijing, most attention focused on whether or not President Hu Jintao had advance knowledge of the test. The fact that Mr. Hu appeared surprised when Mr. Gates brought it up led to speculation on the relative independence of the PLA and its potential role in next year's change in China's leadership. These are obviously important issues but they should not make us lose sight of the test itself and the central fact that the balance of air power in the region is leaning...

THE shock unveiling of a Chinese stealth fighter plane has changed the power balance in Asia and means Australia must rethink its regional strategy, an Australian analyst has said. Peter Goon, a vehement critic of the F-35 joint strike fighter that Australia has committed to buying from the United States, says the Chinese J-20 is far superior to the American fighter and we must immediately adapt to the new status quo. The Chinese tested the J-20 for the first time last week, on the day that the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, arrived in Beijing for defence-related talks. Although the...

Former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping once advised his future successors to bide their time and hide their capabilities, but China's military leadership has this month done precisely the opposite, appearing in a big hurry to show the world exactly what they are capable of. It is as though China's first working stealth jet was just too exciting a development to be left sitting unsung in the hangar - especially with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates about to come calling. The story of the Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter, whose existence was revealed at the turn of the year, is perhaps more...

CHINA got the technology for its first stealth fighter jet from Russia, a senior US lawmaker said on Tuesday, one week after the airplane apparently made its maiden flight. 'My understanding is that they built it on information that they received from Russia, from a Russian plane, that they were able to copy,' House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon told reporters. Mr McKeon, a Republican, said he hoped to 'hear more' on the issue from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was on a visit to Beijing when Chinese state media published photographs of the J-20 fighter in the skies...

On January 11, the new Chinese J-20 stealth fighter made its first flight, two weeks after it was seen doing taxi tests at a factory airstrip in central China. There are two J-20 prototypes, one with Russian AL-31 engines, and one with Chinese WS-10As (a copy of the AL-31). Of the four stealth fighters than have been built and flown so far (U.S. F-22 and F-35, Russian T-50 and I.42), the J-20 looks most like the I.42, a MiG project that was cancelled in 1997. China is releasing very little information, and apparently accepted the fact that flight tests could...

Images of a Chinese stealth fighter prototype in flight suggest that China has moved to the next stage of testing an aircraft that appears designed to rival the American F-22 and challenge U.S. air superiority in the Asia-Pacific region, aviation experts say. Tuesday's flight means China is likely now testing the J-20's flight software, engines and aerodynamics, following weeks of runway tests at the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute. The aviation experts say there is a limit to what more they can tell about the J-20's capabilities—especially its radar-evading technology—from the low-resolution images, which mostly appear to have been shot from...

On 11 January China's Chengdu J-20 had its maiden flight, sending a signal about the country's aerospace ambitions and possibly spurring fighter programmes among its neighbours. The 15min flight took place at midday at the Chengu Aircraft Design Institutes' aerodrome. The pilot took off and circled the airfield several times before landing. The tests show the purported fifth-generation aircraft is large, roughly the size of the General Dynamics F-111, and features a delta wing and forward canards. Otherwise, little is known about the aircraft, though analysts question whether it is truly stealthy.

China's now test-flying its new J-20 stealth fighter, coincidental with a visit to the nation by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. But exactly how does the Chinese aircraft stealth tech work? Unlike the U.S.'s vintage SR-71, world's first stealthy aircraft the F-117 and the hugely impressive B-2, all developed under the utmost secrecy, the J-20 is having a particularly open development process (even more unusual when you consider China's normal habitual secrecy).

Much has been written over the past few days about how the Chinese military's decision to flight-test its new J-20 fighter during a visit by U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates was an embarrassment for China's civilian leaders. Apparently, nobody in the Peoples Liberation Army had bothered to mention the flight to President Hu Jintao, so Gates was the first person to give him a heads up. Imagine how it feels to find out from a visiting foreign dignitary what your own military is doing -- the military that you supposedly lead. But the person who should really be embarrassed is...

Recent public disclosures, including the revealing article that ran in this magazine about China rolling out its first known stealth aircraft (AW&ST Jan. 3, p. 18), will keep military strategists and interested observers in the West busy for a long time trying to accurately establish the full implications—accurately being the operative word. U.S. intelligence knew about the J-20, but not that it would begin taxi tests in December. The twin-engine, single-seat aircraft bears a striking resemblance to the F-22. Moreover, it is considerably larger than the U.S.’s most advanced air superiority fighter, implying long range, a generous internal fuel capacity...

The Chinese announced today that their new stealth fighter made first flight while Def. Secretary Gates was in country. Takes off at 3:06, touch and go at 4:30 in the following video. CHINESE J-20 STEALTH FIGHTER IN 1ST FLIGHT

As I reported over the weekend, the Chinese have rolled out their 1st Stealth Fighter Prototype, the J-20...several years early and conducted taxi tests. They may conduct the first flight this week. This story is now being picked up by Aviation Week, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, BBC, Google, Yahoo, etc. The PLAAF 1st Prototype Stealth Fighter, the J-20, in Taxi tests As reported in my 2011 Update to the Rising Sea Dragon in Asia

China plans to test flight its 1st stealth fighter this month Tokyo/Washington, Jan 5 (PTI) China plans to begin test flight of its first J-20 stealth fighter as early as this month and plans to deploy them by 2017, a development which comes just days before a visit to Beijing by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates. Beijing appears to have completed a prototype of the stealth fighter, which Chinese experts are comparing to the US F-22 fighter, reinforcing the country's rapid military build-up, Japanese newspaper Ashai Shimbun reported quoting Chinese military sources. The fighter will be equipped with large missiles...

Experts doubt 'stealth' capability of Chinese fighters 2011/01/04 19:55:11 Taipei, Dec. 4 (CNA) Local military analysts expressed doubt Tuesday about the "stealth' capability of a Chinese stealth fighter that reportedly has been performing high-speed taxiing tests recently. Pictures of the prototype J-20 stealth fighter were posted on several websites after the U.S.-based Aviation Week reported that the aircraft had been carrying out taxiing tests at an airfield in Chengdu, western China, late last month. The debut of the J-20 was announced in November 2009 by General He Weirong, deputy commander of the People's Liberation Army Air Force, during an interview...

PRC’s fifth-generation jet pictures cause stir in US By William Lowther / Staff reporter in WASHINGTON Sat, Jan 01, 2011 - Page 1 Signaling a greater-than-ever military threat to Taiwan, new information emerged this week showing that China might be much further ahead in its development of a fifth-generation fighter aircraft than previously believed. In what has caused a major stir within the Pentagon, Beijing Internet censors earlier this week allowed high-resolution photographs of the Chengdu Aircraft Corp stealth fighter to be published for the first time. “For Taiwan, this means that even a sale of the latest versions of...

Chinese fighter of nominally the same technology generation as the Lockheed Martin F-22 will soon enter flight testing, while a jet airlifter larger than the Airbus A400M should be unveiled by year-end. Beijing’s fighter announcement suggests a serious failing in U.S. intelligence assessments, mocking a July 16 statement of U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates that China would have no fifth-generation fighters by 2020. Industrial competition looks more remote than strategic competition, however, since China will want to fill domestic requirements before offering the aircraft abroad, even if it judges export sales to be a wise policy. The new fighter “is...

During the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, the United States intervened by deploying two carrier groups in response to Chinese missile tests near major Taiwanese ports. These tests were a means of coercively influencing pro-independence elements during the Taiwan presidential election and were considered by China to be an "internal" matter. The U.S. action therefore triggered enormous nationalistic resentment, rooted largely in historical humiliations and infringements on Chinese sovereignty by foreign powers. They also fueled a determined drive to mitigate or prevent such infringements on Chinese sovereignty in the future. The national security strategy of China is built upon the concepts...

Pakistani officials have inspected the first of four Chinese ZDK-03 AWACS (Air Warning And Control System) aircraft. The aircraft was recently completed, and will enter service in a few months. These aircraft were ordered two years ago, for nearly $300 million each. Pakistan is also buying similar aircraft from Sweden. China has been developing its own AWACS for a decade, ever since the U.S. forced Israel to back off selling China the Phalcon AWACS (which used some American technology). China then bought some AWACS from Russia, while hustling to develop their own. The Chinese Air Force was not happy with...

PLAAF's 6th Gen Fighter? Posted by Robert Wall During the Airshow China here at Zhuhai, Avic Defense and one of the country's aeronautics academic institutions, launched a competition with the Chinese air force for new UAV designs. The prize is to be awarded next year and to spur some innovative thinking. On one of the Chinese CD handouts were a couple of concept drawings. Where they are from or what they represent is unclear, but they are nonetheless entertaining. And with China already working on its J-10 follow-on, here's some fodder for speculation (the airframe, below, actually looks very little...

The 8th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition is inaugurated in Zhuhai of south China’s Guangdong Province on November 16. Different from the previous ones, this air show is hosted by the Air Force of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for the first time. The PLA Air Force also shoulders a series of brilliant aviation activities including stunt flight, parachuting performance, resuming flight of old military aircraft and display of all types of military aircraft during the exhibition. Thus, the “PLA Air Force” becomes a famous brand and highlight at the Zhuhai Air Show. 11 types of military aircraft...

The Rollout Ceremony of first Chinese ZDK-03 AWACS aircraft for Pakistan Air Force was held at Hanzhong, China on Saturday. The ZDK-03 system is an advanced Airborne Warning and Control System with sophisticated integrated sensors and communications suite. Pakistan Air Force had signed a contract in 2008 with CETC of China for the joint development of 04 ZDK-03 AWACS aircraft configured to Pakistan Air Force specifications Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman, Chief of the Air Staff, Pakistan Air Force was the Chief Guest on the occasion. The ceremony was attended by Commander PLA Air Force and other senior military...

CHINA SPECIAL: Air force rejuvenation gathers steam By Siva Govindasamy In late 2009, websites monitoring China's armed forces reported that Shenyang Aircraft, a leading military aircraft manufacturer in the country, made a test flight for a fighter jet that closely resembled Russia's Sukhoi Su-33. Photographs of the jet emerged a few months later, confirming a long-held suspicion that China was developing a copy of the Su-33. This was part of its plan to build a naval fighter fleet to operate on its forthcoming indigenous aircraft carrier fleet, as China sought to acquire a deep-sea capability. The J-10 is said to...

The air forces of China and Turkey have carried out a joint exercise, the U.S. Defense Department said on Friday, in what appeared to be the first such drill involving Beijing and a NATO member country. Turkey assured the United States it would take the "utmost care" to protect sensitive U.S. and NATO technologies, said U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Tamara Parker, a department spokeswoman. She described Turkey's government as committed to the NATO alliance and the continuation of strong ties to the United States. "To the best of our knowledge, U.S.-made F-16s were not involved in the exercise," Parker said....

Iran opens airspace to China warplanes Chinese fighter jets, file photo The Islamic Republic of Iran has reportedly opened its airspace to Chinese warplanes taking part in joint military maneuvers with Turkey. Ankara and Beijing conducted the drills in Turkey's Central Anatolia region last month. The war games, codenamed the Anatolian Eagle, were the first involving Turkey and China. Turkey had previously carried out Anatolian Eagle maneuvers with the US and other NATO members as well as Israel. Turkish F-16, Chinese Su-27 and Mig-29 fighter jets took part in mock dogfights during the drills. The maneuvers come ahead of a...

Chinese Su-27s Fly Mock Combat in Turkey Posted by David A. Fulghum at 9/30/2010 10:29 AM CDT An unexpected military cooperative exercise between China and Turkey has caught the eye of Washington-based analysts. The two air forces were involved in a joint air exercise in the central Anatolian province of Konya, the first such exercise involving the air forces of China (People’s Liberation Army Air Force – PLAAF) and NATO member Turkey. Part of the significance is that the PLAAF recently demonstrated major advances in long-range strike during their own “Peace Mission 2010.” The latest joint exercise, “Anatolian Eagle,” in...

Chinese air force trains for precision strikes Saibal Dasgupta, TNN, Sep 21, 2010 BEIJING: Friendship with Kazakhstan, built partly on transactions in oil and gas sector, is helping China train its air force to conduct sudden and precision strikes. The first-ever simulated cross-border strike by Chinese air force took place on Monday. This could be a gradual move towards achieving the kind of capability that the US air force demonstrates in their precision strikes on Taliban hideouts in Pakistan and Afghanistan, observers said. Senior air force officials described the operation involving six warplanes as "sudden attacks" conducted under the aegis...

The Global Times' correspondent, Sun Wei, conducted a question-and-answer session by e-mail Wednesday with Craig Caffrey (Caffrey), the author of "Chinese military aircraft: Up and coming." GT: Why are you concerned about the Chinese air force in particular? The Diplomat magazine said China is "building a force that will be without rival in the Asia-Pacific." What do you think of such a comment? Caffrey: China's emergence as a global power is one of the most important geo-political issues at present, and this process has a number of significant implications in the defense and security sector. The modernization of the Chinese...

China Air Force Steps it Up July 01, 2010 By Carlo Kopp US assumptions about China’s air power look outdated. It’s building a force that will be without rival in the Asia-Pacific. This is the first in a series of articles looking at recent developments in China’s military. The formal retirement ceremony this June for the last People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) Shenyang J-6 / MiG-19 Farmer fighter marks an important milestone for China’s air power, as it transitions from a Cold War era, Soviet-style force to a modern and technologically sophisticated air force with a fleet of high...

The chatter in China, and military deployments, indicate that the leadership believes they are now able to take Taiwan by force, before the United States can intervene. Such an attack would have to be without warning, because the United States would put forces in the way if there was any indication that an invasion was imminent. This development comes as no surprise to those who have been watching military and political developments in China and Taiwan during the past two decades. At the end of the Cold War, China had three million troops on active duty, but their weapons, warships...

A senior Chinese admiral delivered a three-minute “rant” to 65 visiting US officials in Beijing last month, in which he said that US arms sales to Taiwan proved that Washington viewed China as an enemy. Since then, US diplomats and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have tried to portray the remarks by Rear Admiral Guan Youfei as at odds with the thinking of the rest of the Chinese government. But in a Washington Post report published on Tuesday, Post reporter John Pomfret interviewed a wide range of experts, officials and military officers in China who indicated that Guan’s speech...

China’s Shenyang Aircraft Corporation created a copy of a Russian deck-based Su-33 fighter jet. The Chinese model of the aircraft was called J-15, Interfax reports with reference to the May issue of the Kanwa Asian Defence military publication. The Chinese fighter jet is based on the Soviet T10K training aircraft, which China received from Ukraine. Chinese engineers found it very difficult to solve the problem of folding wings of deck-based fighter jets. Now the problem has been solved. It is not clear yet, if the new plane has performed its first flight yet: the Chinese Air Force does not have...

In my formative years as an aspiring defense analyst, the military balance bean counting game was dominated by main battle tanks: how many could NATO field to meet a dreaded Warsaw Pact armored blitzkrieg across the North German Plain. Today, the bean counting game is 5th generation fighters: how many we’ll have versus how many the Chinese will have. Of course all of this is based on some rather spurious projections because with our own constantly fluctuating Joint Strike Fighter program we don’t know for certain how many 5th gen fighters we’ll field in another decade, let alone how many...

A senior U.S. military intelligence official confirmed that China will be capable of deploying an advanced fifth generation fighter comparable to the U.S. F-22 within eight years, years ahead of previous Pentagon assessments. “We're anticipating China to have a fifth-generation fighter ... operational right around 2018," said Wayne Ulman of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center. He made the comments before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on May 20. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in defending his decision to end production of the F-22, stated last year that China "is projected to have no fifth-generation aircraft by...

For the second time in three years, it was revealed that one of China's J-10 fighters crashed. There may have been more. The two crashes that are known were initially kept quiet. News of these mishaps escaped only because of special circumstances. The most recent loss (on April 22nd) killed its pilot, who was a senior colonel. That rank and reputation led to a big funeral, attracting a lot of military and political officials. That made it difficult to conceal how the colonel died. The 2007 crash was in a rice paddy in the rural northeast. The wreckage was not...

Taiwan's military Tuesday lifted the veil on how it would respond to a massive Chinese air attack, showing that the island still takes the risk of war very seriously despite improving ties. Journalists were invited for the first time to a drill simulating aerial assaults on Taiwan's major air bases and testing the military's ability to recover quickly from such a shock. The manoeuvres, staged at a military air base near Hualien city in eastern Taiwan, played out a scenario in which runways were bombed by waves of bombers or missiles from the mainland. "The drill is aimed to test...

Engines screaming, China’s most advanced fighter jets took off, soared into a vertical climb, spun into rolls and veered off into a clear blue sky leaving a trail of smoke and the acrid smell of aviation fuel in its wake. The 24th Fighter Division of the Chinese Air Force yesterday showed off a formation of its J10 — or Annihilator 10 — to a select group of international military attachés for the first time. Back on the ground after the demonstration of aerial acrobatics Senior Colonel Yan Feng, commander of the division, gave the 51 attachés their first glimpse of...

China air force woos allies with J-10 fighter jet Tue Apr 13, 2010 5:46pm IST * China woos allies with J-10 fighter jet * PLA Air Force seeks to boost own fighting, flying capacity By Lucy Hornby YANGCUN AIR BASE, China, April 13 (Reuters) - Four Chinese J-10 fighter jets banked and sported in perfect formation in the blue skies near Tianjin on Tuesday, before executing a neat landing, their braking parachutes billowing out just in front of a viewing stand filled with military attaches. Many of the 51 attaches, some from Africa and the Middle East, may be future...

China air force woos allies with J-10 fighter jet Tue Apr 13, 2010 5:46pm IST * China woos allies with J-10 fighter jet * PLA Air Force seeks to boost own fighting, flying capacity By Lucy Hornby YANGCUN AIR BASE, China, April 13 (Reuters) - Four Chinese J-10 fighter jets banked and sported in perfect formation in the blue skies near Tianjin on Tuesday, before executing a neat landing, their braking parachutes billowing out just in front of a viewing stand filled with military attaches. Many of the 51 attaches, some from Africa and the Middle East, may be future...

China now has eight battalions of S-300PMU2 anti-aircraft missile systems, on the coast opposite Taiwan. These missiles have a range of 200 kilometers, and are positioned to fire on Taiwanese fighters as soon as they begin to cross the 180 kilometer wide Taiwan straits. This deployment dismayed most Taiwanese, although Taiwanese military leaders pointed out that they have Patriot anti-aircraft missiles deployed along the island coast. But the Patriot only has a range of 70 kilometers, and no one wants to talk about any electronic countermeasures Taiwan might have, that could neutralize the S-300 radars and missiles. It gets worse....

About 25 years ago, an American intelligence officer was asked how far the Chinese could project military power. His terse answer: “About as far as their army can walk.” Today, that statement is most assuredly no longer true. China has accomplished perhaps the most remarkable expansion of military power since the US geared up for World War II. In the last 15 years it has deployed nuclear and conventional missiles that can reach US forces from the western Pacific to Washington, D.C. China’s military is also assembling a set of capabilities designed to avoid or offset traditional US advantages. This...

The commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific said last week that Taiwan's air forces will eventually need upgrading but he would not say whether he would recommend the White House approve sales of new F-16s to the island, as the Taipei government has requested. Adm. Robert Willard told reporters in Washington March 25 that the discussions within the Obama administration has taken place by what he called a “whole-of-government process” evaluating the need in line with the 1972 Taiwan Relations Act. “Pacific Command's responsibility is to make recommendations to [Defense] Secretary [Robert] Gates with regard to their defense needs...

Russia has shipped China 15 advanced surface-to-air missile systems, the director of the Russian plant which produces the weapons was cited by news agencies as saying on Friday. The truck-mounted air defence S-300 batteries, known by NATO as SA-20 Gargoyles, can target aircraft and ballistic missiles at a range of over 15 kilometres. "We just fulfilled a large contract for the delivery to China of 15 batteries of the new S-300 missile defence systems," Igor Ashurbeili, director of the Almaz-Antei plant was quoted as saying. The contract included the supply of a total of 15 batteries, each usually consisting of...

The top commander of US military forces in the Pacific on Thursday confirmed reports that the Chinese army has been upgrading and deploying larger numbers of missiles across the Taiwan Strait. “The PLA has focused considerable effort on building up its integrated air defense capabilities and has deployed an increasing number of upgraded Russian SA-20 PMU 2 along the Taiwan Strait,” Admiral Robert Willard said, ­confirming ­earlier reports by a Canadian defense magazine that said China has deployed eight battalions of advanced missile systems in Fujian Province. Willard also said that Taiwan must someday improve upon its existing fighter jets...

Only the United States-made F-16 fighter jets were strong enough to help Taiwan repel an attack from China's more sophisticated aircraft, reports said yesterday. The Chinese-language Liberty Times daily said internal Ministry of National Defense reports showed the air force's Indigenous Defense Fighters and French-made Mirage 2000 jets were not up to the standards of China's most recent aircraft. Taiwan has been trying to obtain upgraded F-16 C/D jets from the U.S., but the Obama Administration has so far failed to agree on the deal. One Russian-supplied Sukhoi-30 from China's air force was the equivalent of 2.8 Mirages or 1.7...