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July 11, 2021
The PLA started flying J-7 fighters in the 1960s.
Photo: Handout
The Chinese military’s use of ageing J-7 jets in a Taiwan fly-past last month has raised questions about why the second-generation fighters were deployed alongside more modern warplanes.
Military sources raised the possibility that the planes had been converted into drones, which offer a cost-efficient way of honing the People’s Liberation Army’s combat drills and testing Taiwan’s response, and added they may also have been a way of testing whether all the island’s warplanes have resumed operations.
The “island encirclement exercise” on June 17 included four J-7s – fighters originally modelled on 1960s Soviet MiG-21s and known as “grandpa fighter jets” in Taiwan – the first time they had been used on such an operation since they started in 2016.
Published date: 3 March 2021 15:55 UTC | Last update: 1 month ago
Azerbaijani forces used a sophisticated method to destroy Russian-made S-300 air defence systems during the Nagorno-Karabakh war last year, combining Soviet-era single-engine planes with Israeli-made suicide drones, Middle East Eye can reveal.
Azerbaijan’s battle strategy was based on the use of advanced drone technology in the disputed mountainous territory, tactics that won Baku the 44-day war against Armenian forces. Yerevan suffered huge losses of Russian weaponry, including six S-300 systems, according to the Azerbaijan military.
A senior official, who was briefed on Azerbaijan’s drone warfare, told MEE that at first Baku found it difficult to detect the S-300s, which were concealed and difficult to spot.