Recent air force sorties by the People’s Liberation Army near Taiwan indicate the Chinese military may be training its pilots in new combat tactics, with a key role for the J-16 fighter bomber helped by early warning and electronic warfare aircraft, analysts said.
Military observers have noted an increased presence of the KJ-500 airborne early warning and control system (Awacs) and different generations of fighter jets, along with the multi-role J-16, during the PLA’s numerous approaches towards the self-ruled island in recent months.
The Y-8 series of anti-submarine and electronic warfare planes have also been involved in the intensified fly-by combinations, as well as J-11, J-10 and J-7 fighters and H-6 bombers, reaching a record 28 aircraft that entered Taiwan’s air defence zone on June 14.
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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.