One of China’s leading defense contractors has just unveiled its new generation jet fighter to wide acclaim, as Zhao Lei reports
If the Aviation Industry Corp of China had announced 10 years ago that it wanted to compete with Western or Russian aviation giants such as Lockheed Martin and Sukhoi, its aspirations would have been dismissed as a daydream.
Now, although the company’s grand goal has yet to be fully realized, observers will have no doubts that AVIC is serious about its ambitions, especially after seeing the results of the company’s past decade of effort.
The hundreds of thousands of aviation enthusiasts and professionals that attended the 10th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, in mid-November, were treated to dazzling displays by AVIC’s new aircraft.
Air Commodore Khalid Mahmood of the Pakistani Air Force was among the crowd at the event, often known simply as Airshow China, and watched a flypast by the J-31 Gyrfalcon, a twin-engine, fifth-generation, radar-evading plane.
“The past 15 years have been very fruitful for the Chinese aviation industry, and now we have seen the results,” Mahmood said, as the stealth jet’s turbofans deafened the observers below.
“I’m a professional in this field, so I can tell you that the J-31 is a next-generation aircraft, and that no one else in the world has made as much progress as quickly as AVIC.”
More details here.
