Recently Chinese military commentator Xi Yazhou revealed that in last year’s air force exercise, China’s domestic J-10C fighter could suppress imported Su-35 fighter.
In respects of avionics fire control and ammunition performance, Su-35 jet’s passive phased array radar is completely suppressed by J-10C’s active phased array radar. Su-35 fighter only has an advantage in the field of voyage and flight time, while in close combats, J-10C with PL-10 missile is not inferior to Su-35. It is said that these have been verified in a number of free air battles.
In addition, before Su-35 fighters were fully delivered, China could not wait to upgrade them. In May 2018, one of the first Su-35 fighter batch delivered to China in 2016 returned to Russia for modification. This made China the first foreign customer to upgrade the Russian-made four-and-half-generation fighters. The modification included: to equip domestic long-range air-to-air missiles and new information helmets, to install more complex fire control and electronic systems. After the modification, the Chinese version of Su-35 far exceeded the original Russian version.
Although China Air Force’s new fighters are emerging one after another, many second-generation fighters remain. The successive retiring of these second-generation fighters will result in a large number of equipment vacancies.
However, production capacity of domestic new fighters is limited and insufficient to meet the needs of China Air Force. As Su-35 fighter is a mature product, and China Air Force is familiar with the use of the Sukhoi fighter, the purchase of Su-35 fighters can fill a certain combat vacancy.
Besides, many interesting features and components on Su-35 fighter attracted Chinese engineers, such as super-mobile flight capability, powerful combat capability on paper, some airborne equipment, and IRBIS-E passive phase array radar system, the legendary new RVV-BD air-to-air missile with a range of 200 kilometers, and AL-41F1S engine most concerned by China Air Force, which is the transitional version of AL-31F engine to 117 series engine used by fifth-generation fighter Su-57 of Russia.
However, according to China military’s point of view, this aircraft served ideally ten years ago. The modernization degree of Su-35 warfare electromechanical subsystem is now unable to meet PLA’s expectations for three-and-half fighters.
As early as the negotiations about introduction of Su-35 fighter into China, Chinese team had requested to install a homemade electronic system for the aircraft to integrate into PLA’s Air Force combat system. The two sides had long and difficult negotiations. Before the delivery, a Russian expert wrote that as the replacement of electronic system would take too long test time and could not keep up with the delivery schedule, the final batch of Su-35 fighter to be delivered to China would be exactly the same as the Russian-owned equipment. In fact, the first four aircraft were originally produced for Russian Air Force.
China Air Force is more concerned about the super-long range and flight performance of Su-35 fighters. The maximum fuel capacity of Su-35 fighters is as high as 11 tons. In 2017, Russian pilots directly drove Su-35 fighter jet from Russia to South China, which spanned more than 4,000 kilometers, and did not undergo any transitions and aerial refueling on the way, showing an extremely long voyage. Since Su-35 fighters entered China’s Air Force, its flight performance, especially the perfect combination of vector propulsion and flight control systems, has been greatly appreciated by Chinese pilots.
The Chinese version of Su-35 aircraft uses the same cockpit display system as the Russian version. The Chinese finally gave up the requirements for Chinese display of data. The only difference is the integration of the Beidou navigation satellite system. This shows that Chinese pilots don’t feel difficult to read Russian. They should be familiar with Russian display interface. On Su-27 and Su 30MKK fighters introduced in China in the early days, the display interface is also in Russian. On the other hand, it also shows that the Chinese side is not at ease with Russia’s translation quality. Russian interface can still be understood when it’s not translated, while no one would be able to understand it once it’s translated.
The latter two batches of 20 Su-35 fighters were alleged to have undergone some partial modifications, such as changing their navigation system to receive Beidou satellite signals. It is said that it is also possible to use the new helmet sights of the Chinese Air Force. But overall, its electronic system has not been greatly improved.
Since the introduction of Su-27 fighters in the last century, China has independently developed its own multi-type fighters, such as J-11B, J-11BS, J-11D, J-15, J-16, J-16D jets. However, these aircrafts were developed on the basis of old Su-27 series fighters, while Su-35 fighter is the ultimate version of the Flankers based on Russia’s experience, with a lot of latest technologies applied, including phased array radar, new engine, vector thrust, internal structure optimization and aerodynamic improvement, which could be the best demonstrations for China’s domestically improved aircrafts. Therefore, the purchase of Su-35 fighters can promote improvement of China’s domestic “Flanker” fighters via its technical reversal engineering.
The first batch of 24 Su-35s imported by the Chinese Air Force was originally purchased for an aviation flight regiment, as the number of standard pilot aircraft of a Chinese Air Force pilot was 24, but from now on, the Chinese Air Force’s fighter regiment is being upgraded to brigade, and the number of allocated fighters has increased to 36, which has led to equipment vacancies. Therefore, China will probably purchase 12 more Su-35 fighters in the next year or two.