China Buys USD700 Million Russian Aircraft Engines

Chinese officers buying Russian engines

According to a report on November 12 on the website of Russian Military-Industrial Courier weekly, due to various military and political factors, Russia and China have become increasingly closer in international political and economical spheres.

Russian export of military hardware has been increasing steadily and the amount of arms trade between the two countries has set record year by year.

China has to import lots of Russian aircraft engines in spite of its great efforts in developing its own Taihang engines for 13 years and progress made in such development.

China’s Taihang engine is now stable in performance and can be used on China’s J-11B, J-11BS and J-16 as substitute for Russia’s AL-31F. Still, China has recently entered into a contract for import of 140 AL-31F aircraft engines for USD700 million to be installed on the Su-27 and Su-30 fighter jets China imported from Russia and China’s homegrown J-11B/BS, J-15 and J-16 fighters.

As Tiahang engine is still not reliable, seven major batches of the current 4 types of J-10 fighter jets all have to use Russian engines instead of Taihang engine; therefore, China has to import Russian AL-31FN engines for its J-10 fighter jet and has already imported 350 to 400 of them.

Its FC-1 Fierce Dragon exported to Pakistan has to use Russian RD-93 engines; while its newest H-6K bomber and the Y-20 freight aircraft China is developing have to use Russian D-30KP2 turbofan engines. From 2009 to 2001, China has purchased 239 D-30KP2 engines.

Moreover, China’s J-15 carrier-based fighter jets have to use Russian AL-31F cep.3 engines special for carrier-based fighter jets due to their high reliability and satisfactory corrosion resistance.

For China’s J-20 and J-31 fifth-generation fighter jets under development, China has expressed its interest in buying Russian new generation of engines such as 117S engine used on Su-35.

Source: huanqiu.com “Russia says China spends hundreds of million US dollars again to buy Russian engines for its homegrown fighter jets” (summary by Chan Kai Yee based on the report in Chinese)

Related posts:

• China’s Aviation Industry’s Serious Bottleneck: Lack of Powerful Engine dated December 5, 2012
• China nears approval of $16 billion domestic jet-engine plan: Xinhua dated February 28, 2013