Key Points and Summary: China’s aerospace advancements have significantly surpassed Russia’s, highlighted by the Shenyang J-16 fighter jet. Originally based on the Russian Su-27, the J-16 incorporates sophisticated indigenous upgrades, including advanced radar, composite materials, and improved avionics.
Key Point #1 – Introduced in 2015, it has effectively replaced older Russian Su-30s in China’s arsenal. A dedicated electronic warfare variant, the J-16D, underscores China’s strategic shift toward robust power projection. Unlike Russia, which prioritizes homeland defense, China’s J-16 reflects broader ambitions to project airpower far beyond its borders.
Key Point #2 – This illustrates China’s successful strategy: acquiring foreign technology, refining it domestically, and ultimately surpassing the original designs in capabilities and production scale.
China’s J-16: The Aircraft That Changed the Power Balance in East Asia
As recently as five years ago, the Russian and Chinese air fleets were broadly similar in several regards. Moscow and Beijing relied heavily on the Flanker family of aircraft, the then backbone of their respective airpower. Though both countries had made initial forays into indigenously developed stealth aircraft, their efforts paled compared to the stealth technology fielded by the United States.
That trend has since changed: China has several different stealth aircraft in service that play various roles, though their performance and the quality of their stealth capabilities are still the subject of intense debate. Russia, on the other hand, has a single low-observable aircraft, the Su-57.
However, that aircraft almost certainly has a much larger radar cross-section than its Chinese or American counterparts and has been produced only in very limited numbers.
China’s aerospace industry has eclipsed Russia regarding capabilities and production numbers, a trend that has been a long time in the making, but one that began with the Shenyang J-16.
Shenyang J-16
Developed from the Shenyang J-11, itself a license-build of the Soviet era Sukhoi Su-27, the J-16 features several improvements, including longer-range air-to-air missiles, a modernized cockpit design, extensive use of composite materials, and superior active electronically scanned array radar.
A close look at China’s aircraft advancements reflects the country’s ambitions compared to the Russian fleets. The analysis provides an interesting backdrop for China’s long-term goals.
As wiser minds have pointed out, Russia’s inability to directly compete with Western low-observable aircraft has led the country’s aerospace industry to focus on developing very long-range air-to-air weaponry and increasingly powerful fighter radar to offset the disparity in stealth partly.
Russian aircraft prioritize national defense, leveraging robust land-based radar systems and a host of anti-aircraft weaponry.
On the other hand, China is working to field a credible power-projection capability that can directly challenge the United States far away from China’s border, and the J-16 is emblematic of that desire — and a crucial piece of the power-projection puzzle.
Since the J-16 entered service with the PLAAF in 2015, it has replaced the Su-30 variants in Chinese service thanks to its aforementioned edge over its Russian counterpart. With Chinese missile technology eclipsing Russia’s domestic weaponry, it also provides for better integration with Chinese weapons in a similar fashion to how Israel’s modified F-15, F-16, and F-35 fighters can integrate more smoothly with indigenous weaponry.
In addition to the baseline J-16, China also has a Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) and Electronic Warfare (EW) variant, the J-16D, which will play a similar role to the United States Navy’s EA-18G Growler, itself a F/A-18F Super Hornet, as well as a marinated variant for the PLANAF.
The trend in Chinese military aircraft is clear. Rather than focusing solely on patrolling borders and national defense, as with Russian aircraft, China intends to have a robust power-projection capability that could challenge American supremacy.
J-16D. Image Credit: Chinese Military.
The J-16 is emblematic of the Chinese strategy: securing access to advanced foreign aircraft, initially reproducing those aircraft domestically, and then making many incremental advances to those designs regarding materials and capabilities to field fighters that eclipse their predecessors.
Thus far, the strategy has been decidedly successful.
About the Author: Caleb Larson
Caleb Larson is an American multiformat journalist based in Berlin, Germany. His work covers the intersection of conflict and society, focusing on American foreign policy and European security. He has reported from Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most recently, he covered the war in Ukraine, reporting extensively on the war’s shifting battle lines from Donbas and writing on the war’s civilian and humanitarian toll. Previously, he worked as a Defense Reporter for POLITICO Europe. You can follow his latest work on X.
